Biden Offers Amnesty for Illegals Married to Americans
A morally right but politically fraught move.
WaPo (“Biden to waive penalties for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens“):
President Biden will clear the way on Tuesday for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens to apply for legal residency in one of the most expansive immigration programs of his presidency, administration officials said.
The policy shift is a bold move for the Democratic president months before the November elections, and a rebuke to congressional Republicans who have ignored his calls to expand border security and to create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many for decades.
Biden will unveil the policies at a celebration at the White House to mark the 12-year anniversary of another executive action taken to aid immigrants when he was vice president. On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama said he would allow undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children to apply for work permits, a program that transformed hundreds of thousands of lives.
The White House had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s announcement.
Marrying an American citizen is typically a fast track to U.S. citizenship, but immigrants who cross the border illegally are subject to significant bureaucratic hurdles that have left them in limbo for years. Federal law requires such immigrants to leave the United States for up to 10 years and then apply to return, but immigrants call the penalty excessive.
Biden will allow undocumented spouses to apply for legal residency without having to leave the United States, a major relief for those who have jobs and are raising young children and worry that there is no guarantee they will be allowed back into the country.
[…]
About 500,000 undocumented spouses and 50,000 undocumented stepchildren of U.S. citizens are expected to be eligible to apply, according to a copy of the plan released by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. To be eligible, immigrants must have lived in the United States for at least a decade as of Monday, have been married by that date, and meet other requirements. Their immigrant children must be under 21 to qualify, officials said.
Officials said the majority of immigrants expected to benefit from the program are Mexican nationals who have lived in the United States for an average of 23 years. Applicants who are approved will have three years to apply for permanent residency, also known as a green card, and will have work permits in the meantime.
NYT (“Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens“):
President Biden on Tuesday will announce sweeping new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens, officials familiar with the plan said.
[…]
Under the policy, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship. Officials briefed on the conversations said it could affect up to 500,000 undocumented spouses, although the exact scale of the program remained unclear.
[…]
Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally — rather than arriving in the country with a visa — must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.
That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status.
Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.
[…]
The decision comes as Mr. Biden tries to strike a balance on one of the most dominant political issues in 2024. Aware that many Americans want tougher policies on the border, Mr. Biden just two weeks ago announced a crackdown that suspended longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek asylum here.
Almost immediately after he issued that order, White House officials began privately reassuring progressives that the president would also help undocumented immigrants who had been in the nation for years, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
The program Mr. Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday is known as “parole in place,” which has been used in the past for other populations, like families of military members. It gives unauthorized immigrants in the United States protection from deportation for a period of time and access to a work permit.
Republicans have already assailed the policy.
“This is an attack on Democracy,” Stephen Miller, the architect of former President Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigration policy, said on social media on Monday.
The action could, however, help Mr. Biden in battleground states, like Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, each of which has more than 100,000 voters who live in “mixed status” households, according to the American Business Immigration Coalition, which represents hundreds of companies and supports the proposed policy change.
I’m more of a stickler for the rules than most but it’s really hard to make a good moral argument for deporting people married to American citizens because they didn’t have permission to be in the country at the time of the ceremony. While there are doubtless some small percentage of people who get married to game the immigration system, the overwhelming number of these people are simply building lives together and starting (or have long since started) families. Sending them back to their countries of origin, and thus separating them from their family, for months or even years would be unconscionably cruel.
At the same time, it’s not obvious to me that this is a sound political move. I’m skeptical that the number of “mixed families” in battleground states outweighs the percentage wanting to crack down harder on the border.
The newfangled site operating under the venerable Newsweek brand and other right-leaning sources are touting a new CBS/YouGov poll under headlines like “Majority of Hispanics Now Favor Mass Deportation.”
A recent poll found that a majority of Hispanic people favor the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that a majority of registered voters overall (62 percent) would favor the government starting “a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally.” Thirty-eight percent said they would oppose it.
The survey polled 1,615 registered voters between June 5 and 7, and had a margin of error of 3.8 points.
Notably, the poll found that mass deportation was popular with Hispanics, with 53 percent saying they would favor such a program and 47 percent saying they would oppose it. White people were more supportive of mass deportations, with 67 percent saying they would back the program, and 33 percent saying they would oppose it. Among Black people, it was 47 percent in favor and 53 percent opposed.
An Axios poll published in April also found that a majority of Americans support the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, including 45 percent of Latinos who were in favor of such a measure.
To be sure, there are umpteen caveats about polling on a headline policy issue, let alone parsing subsamples. But there’s no reason at all to doubt that Americans writ large are frustrated by our border policies and, unfair though it may be, blame Biden as the incumbent President.
Even the Newsweek report notes that the polling is not necessarily indicative of real policy preferences:
But a “much smaller portion of Americans who purport to favor mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would support what it would practically entail,” Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, U.K., told Newsweek.
“Showing papers on-demand. Racial profiling. A huge increase in the number and scale of ICE raids. But the polling is reflective of just how dissatisfied American voters are with the failure of both Republicans and Democrats to secure the border. Immigration is again surging to the top of the ‘most important problem’ list because Washington has shown itself completely ill-equipped to execute common-sense immigration enforcement.”
Which is a point Steven and I have been making for years, since well before Trump got into politics. It’s all well and good to say we should send illegal immigrants home en masse, it’s quite another to actually do it. Even aside from the positive impacts these workers have on our economy and the moral issues surrounding upending their lives, sometimes after years or even decades of building roots here, there is no magic wand solution. Rounding up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people involuntarily would be a brutal policy logistically. And would essentially make anyone who “looks Hispanic,” regardless of their legal status, targets of constant harassment.
Biden is on the right side of the issue, wanting to toughen border enforcement and end the abuse of the asylum system while treating folks who have been here for years in violation of our immigration laws with some sense of humanity. We’ll see whether that pays off politically.
You know, I can’t help but feel that acknowledging Biden is doing the right thing but worrying about whether it’s politically sound (siting a poll as evidence) is a pretty good example of Inside the Beltway thinking.
@Not the IT Dept.: On the one hand, I understand your point. One the other, anyone worried about the outcome in November has to worry about that political impact of everything Biden does from now until Election Day. That is: such worries are not just tactical concerns but concerns about where the country will be come next January.
Being concerned* about an action that positively affects, at the outside, about half a percent of the population seems petty and ridiculous from where I look. And don’t worry about not finding a moral justification for the act; Steven Miller wasn’t able to either. “An attack against democracy” isn’t an argument, it’s blather. He might as well have said “an attack against the rule of law.” He’d at least been closer to an actual argument. It would still have been blather, though.
*And in a refreshing change of rhetoric for me, I’m not accusing anyone specific of being petty and ridiculous, I’m noting the idea of being concerned as such.
Back in the days when the Republicans wanted actual policy with some coherent reasoning, a cautious approach to avoid provoking them might have been justified.
But those days are long gone. The mere act of a beer company hiring a trans spokesperson sent them into a frothing rage; a corporation saying “Happy Holidays” makes them incandescent with loathing.
Their rage is implacable- nothing Biden or the liberals can do will soothe it. We may as well be aggressive.
@just nutha: To be clear: I support this move. I can support the move and also note that the precarious nature of American politics is such that short-term gains could lead to medium-term disaster.
So, I am glad he did it. I am not saying that he shouldn’t do it. We (I think it is fair to include James) are saying that there is some risk inherent in just about everything at the moment–I can’t help but notice that fact.
To be as clear as possible: given the margins for November, it would be a poor trade-off to have a policy move help Trump get elected–especially a policy move that Trump could then reverse.
This may be the first time Stephen Miller ever talked about an attack on democracy and didn’t mean it as a good thing.
Yesterday, there was the post about blue State politicians taking steps ahead of a possible loss in November to ensure certain medications, freedoms, etc., were still there in the event of a Trump win.
Biden is the “bluest” politician around, being the President of the United States, so I actually think this is the type of bold move he should be taking ahead of the election and continue making these bold moves, please and thank you.
Anything that makes it more politically fraught for Trump to undo is a okay in my book.
It is easy for Trump to say things to get his MAGA crowd cheering at his rallies, but even though it is rare, sometimes he gets major pushback from his base when it comes time to actually implement his rhetoric.
This is certainly a bolder move than Kid Rock writing no taxes on a restaurant receipt.
Well, I find it hard to believe that this initiative was undertaken without any concern for the political impact it might have on the race.
I mean, the Biden team could think this will help them and be wrong, but I don’t think they didn’t give any thought to what the impact might be.
I think the lovely angle of this that I quite like is that it puts Republicans who want to attack it on the wrong side of marriage. It forces them into brand-new exhortations to more cruelty and anti-marriage. That’s not a place they are comfortable.
Let’s see a few press releases about the very happy and normal and hard-working families this policy has helped. Where’s the counter press release about the harm this policy has done?
I mean the usual rhetoric is the usual rhetoric right? “Open borders, defend the borders, criminals, yada yada” It will have the same effect, but maybe look marginally worse for calling someone’s spouse a “criminal”.
@Not the IT Dept.: you are in an election year. It is election thinking.
The timing of this rather seems unfelicitious for election results, although well-founded idea.
Actually winning your upcoming election rather than reversible grand moral gestures would be wiser. Timing.
I wish the common term for the impacted population was not “illegals”…it is something of a blunt edge to the status that carries a lot of pejorative implications.
That or everyone starts to refer to any business that operates without all applicable licenses or in compliance the regulatory requirements as “criminal businesses”, and all the persons selected to act as electors for their State’s Presidential who were not legally authorized as “criminal electors” or “illegal electors”. I am sure there are many many other examples of RW(NJ) talking points and vocabulary eventually becoming the common term without regard to neutrality or impact on shaping our cultural perceptions.
At any rate, this is a great thing that the Biden administration has done, and I am eagerly awaiting the details on how it will be applied, as I have a vested interest in seeing this work well.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/06/17/fact-sheet-dhs-announces-new-process-promote-unity-and-stability-families
@Steven L. Taylor: Also to be clear, I understand the move is politically fraught. For me, the political “danger” is a sign of how irretrievably broken our society has become.
@Robert in SF: There has been a movement to use “undocumented” but I find that unhelpful. Not only do many of them have documents, albeit fake or expired ones, the thing that distinguishes them from everyone else is their immigration status. I don’t find it problematic to see them as human beings trying to make a better life for themselves and/or their family and recognize that they are here in violation of our laws.
@Jay L Gischer:
I was thinking this, too. But I’m not sure the discourse gets that granular for movable voters.
@James Joyner:
Yes I do see that point/circumstance. I appreciate it even. I just don’t like it.
I do think my proposal has merit, of course. Illegal businesses, criminal electors, unlawful CEOs, idictable politician, etc.. All the various way to use the same technique in paraellel situations. Maybe not the most artful, but perhaps the absurdity helps make the point.
I hope this did not come across personal against someone here, or would be interpreted by some as extremist ‘librul tears’ or ‘Gen Z word policing’. It’s just a newish pet peeve of mine.
Edited to add: maybe we can use ‘illegally immigrated’ instead? A little more wordy….
Just dropping by to say that no human being is illegal. I see that this has been partly addressed in the comments, but “illegal” is an adjective, not a noun, and usually applied to actions. An alternative adjective is “undocumented,” used by some of the newspapers cited in the OP. That can carry the implied “undocumented within the immigration system.”
It’s easier, psychologically, to deport “illegals” than it is to deport people without the proper paperwork who are married to American citizens.
@just nutha:
If Steven Miller had invoked the rule of law, it would at least be an argument. The attack on democracy angle requires belief in the replacement conspiracy theory and widespread voter fraud.
Biden seems intent on continuing to do his job as president, without paying much attention to politics. I hope it works. I doubt this will move many votes one way or the other, unfortunately we are down to very narrow margins. I’d like to see a better risk-to-reward ratio. He did the right thing, I just wish he’d done it six months from now.
@Kurtz: Eh. Gay marriage was the vanguard in full gay acceptance legally and socially. For the same kind of reasoning. For instance, some very conservative writers were saying, “we don’t stop people from having gay sex, after all. Marriage is something we like and want more of.”
Maybe a different way of looking at it is that this is likely to be a wedge issue on the right.
@Cheryl Rofer:
I am baffled by the belief in euphemism. How many different terms have we used for Black people, only to see George Floyd choked to death by a cop, while other cops watched?
We live in an age of hyper-targeted ads.
Nearly simultaneously Biden has:
– shut down the asylum system (bad!)
– given a big boon to families with undocumented members (good!)
One of these policies will appeal to nearly every voter, unless they just don’t care. It’s not going to be the same policy for each voter. (My preference is in the parentheticals)
We also only care about low-information voters in swing-states, and semi-regular voters in swing-states. Everyone else has made up their minds or just doesn’t matter*. Campaigns also often know exactly who those voters are, by name.
Can the Biden campaign get ads promoting the “good” policy in front of each low-information or wavering voter in a swing state, and “inform” them? Maybe!
——
*: My blue-state vote is superfluous, so I’ll leave the spot for President blank on my ballot, because of Gaza, vibes, and a desperate hope that we can get a Democrat elected without a popular vote majority and trigger Electoral College reform. It may be silly, but it’s harmless.
@Michael Reynolds: Ok, groomer*.
Language has power, and some language is dehumanizing. It’s all a matter of degrees, and I don’t think there’s a big difference in black vs. African-American vs. Person of Color vs. Black, but referring to people as their crime** is a big dehumanizer. I’m a little surprised you don’t see that as a writer.
Also, my cat is a groomer.
ETA: Also, the change in language on Black folks away from n-based slurs coincides with white people beginning to care that Black folks are getting killed by the police for no good reason.
——
*: You do tell kids it’s ok to be gay, trans, whatever.
**: or mislabeled civil infraction
I can’t wait to hear the GOP predictions of an impending flood at the borders of people who have been living here for more than 10 years…
@Kurtz: I thought I acknowledged that. My apologies.
Oh, eff off Miller. It is not, your crew has a corner on that particular market.
Is there anything Biden could do that you’d consider morally right and NOT politically fraught? Posts like this are why every thing he does gets twisted into a negative.
@Lounsbury: “Actually winning your upcoming election rather than reversible grand moral gestures would be wiser. Timing.”
Or maybe the people running the Biden campaign — including the candidate himself — have thought this through and decided it was a political positive. I mean, it’s true that they are only lifelong politicians, and therefore not nearly as wise in these matters as you, but it could be their thinking.
@Kazzy:
I don’t think Biden can do anything at all that can’t be spun as being politically fraught.
@Jay L Gischer:
Good point.
@wr: Of course they very well have convinced themselves such is a positive – although it is rather difficult to see by what angle for a tiny number of direct beneficiaries versus the known, and evident in sub-national polling in notably the swing state geographies, weakness of the Democrats in respect to immigration. But gaining more urbane urban Left votes on the coasts, well…
Appeals to Biden authority are as well considered as your usual interventions. Lifelong politicians ran Ms Clinton’s campaign, and lost to Mr Trump. Genuis that and to such great moral benefit.
However much you lot so very much adore your secular religion of moral superiority, timing. A correct moral action that opens up election risk months before election, well I am constantly reminded of the French army command who felt that élan and moral superiority was what was needed to defeat the Germans, more than excellent logistics and planning on the timing of actions.
Timing.
But I do recognise that a certain loud fraction of the Lefty commentariat here are all about Team Cheerleading for the morally correct own-Team, rather than actual reflection
Drs. Joyner and Taylor are right to worry about potentially negative political outcomes from this and other Biden moves. Anyone who wants Trump not to win this election that he is favored to win (according to media prognosticators) should be worried.
But I also recall that 538’s final 2022 prognostication guessed that Republicans were favored to win the Senate with a 60% propabiility, while the media across the board expected Republicans to sweep the House by 20-40+ seats. Here and elsewhere, Biden was criticized as tone deaf and divisive for his speech centering right wing extremist attacks on democracy as an important campaign issue.
So. While I worry, I also know that the political graveyard is littered with the bodies of people who have underestimated Joe Biden, that the pundit class and their pollsters are frequently out of touch and asking the wrong history, and that history keeps proving us the data guys are not clairvoyant and can’t predict the future any better than the rest of us.
@wr: You have to admit though that half a million
wetbpeople who have lived here for 25 years on average is a pretty steep price to pay for a move that is destined to alienatebigomoderates of the cloth of Lounsbery and others when keeping them in their closets, or better yet announcing another (ineffective) crackdown on them would have played to the swing voters much better.@Kathy: At this point he should just push Trump’s agenda!
@Lounsbury: Good to know that politics is yet one more subject on which you know more than absolutely everyone on earth. I wonder why you are — or present as, as the kids say today — a mere trader in energy when clearly you could be three times richer than Musk.
@Lounsbury: The timing is most likely fine. We’re 20 weeks from election day, which is practically a lifetime in politics.
Before you (or anyone) argues with me on this point, a reminder that I’ve worked in politics. Heck, we’ve got an entire hurricane season ahead of us that worries me more than this, because the response will need to be damn near perfect if there are one or more big, damaging storms that hit land.
@Robert in SF:
Oh a few more:
Illegal churches, for those that are clearly using their tax-exempt classification as a church and illegally providing political endorsements, etc. (I am not sure of the actual law here, but know that surely there are large evangelical and small community churches breaking them!)
Illegal politicians, accepting or pursuing political contributions from illegal sources and colluding with them for money, or not living in their supposed district/state!
Illegal citizens, who are cheating on their taxes, or performing illegal voting acts such as multiple state registrations, or voting using dead parent’s ballots, or driving without a license, and therefore not following the laws.
Illegal businesses or illegal owners/CEOs, who hire personnel without the proper work authorizations, or break OSHA laws with impunity.
We don’t short cut their identity to “illegals”, so why would we do that with immigrants, except that the RWNJs succeeded in setting up the vocabulary to dehumanize them, in an effort to make it easier to treat them very very badly when addressing their illegal behavior.
@Robert in SF:
I don’t know if the law has changed at all since I worked in politics, but IIRC, there’s a loophole in that an organization can provide information, but not an endorsement. During my time in politics, there were a lot of “voter guides” disseminated at churches, that would essentially list a side-by-side of the candidates, with an indicator where they stood on issues. Nowhere on the form did it say “vote for X” or “this is why voting for X matters.” It was simply a list, with check marks (example: under the issue column, there’d be “repeal Roe v. Wade” and then the R candidate there’d be a big check mark and under the D it would be blank). A quick glance at one of these and you’d know who they wanted you to vote for, but they got away with it because it was considered parishioner education, not advocacy.
ETA: I know this wasn’t your point, it’s just an aspect of our election laws I’ve always found to be extremely sketchy and I think that churches–particularly evangelical ones–have long abused this loophole. It drives me nuts.