Rafael Carranza,Erick TrevinoArizona Republic
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President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday an executive order that would allow more than half a million spouses and children of U.S. citizens who have been living in the United States without authorization for more than a decade to apply for permanent residency without having to leave the country.
The executive action uses existing authorities to speed up the process for undocumented spouses, and their children, who already qualify to adjust their status and get a green card through their marriage with a U.S. citizen, rather than to create a new program that would almost certainly be challenged in court.
The most notable change is that the spouses and children of U.S. citizens already living in the country will receive a three-year parole-in-place status that would allow them to work during that period. It also encourages them to apply for U.S. permanent residency without having to leave the United States for an undetermined amount of time while their application is processed from a U.S. embassy or consulate in their country of origin, as is currently the case.
"They have to leave their families in America with no assurance that they will be allowed back in the United States," Biden said. "So they stayed in America, but in the shadows, living in constant fear of deportation without the ability to legally work. All of this, even though under the law today, they're eligible for long-term legal status."
Biden announced his executive order at a White House event joined by first lady Jill Biden and flanked by Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocates who had been pressing for this type of action for months. The attendees included Alejandra Gomez, the executive director for Phoenix-based Living United for Change in Arizona.
Gomez said the room was filled with a sense of accomplishment and pointed to Biden's announcement as proof that community organizing works to deliver results to mixed-status families in Arizona and around the country.
"We're letting our community know that this victory was delivered by them because they have been fighting for this for such a long time" Gomez said. "And so we want our communities to feel really proud that they had a demand and the president delivered."
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz, was among the handful of Democratic lawmakers also present at Tuesday's White House event. He also welcomed the announcement and what it means for families in Arizona.
"These families deserve to be together without the fear that they can be separated at any moment," Kelly said in a statement. "As we continue working towards immigration reform that secures our southern border and keeps families together, this proposal will protect thousands of families in Arizona with deep roots in our communities."
The White House said the program would benefit approximately 500,000 noncitizen spouses of U.S. citizens, as well as 50,000 stepchildren of U.S. citizens who are under the age of 21.
In order to apply under this fast-track process, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens must have been living in the United States for the past 10 years and be legally married to a U.S. citizen, as of June 17.
The White House said that, on average, the spouses who qualify to apply under the sped-up process have been in the country for 23 years. Children of U.S. citizens must be unmarried and have been under the age of 18 when their parents were married.
Karina Herrera, a Phoenix resident, is one of the half-million spouses of U.S. citizens who will benefit under this executive order. Her parents brought her and her brother to Arizona without authorization when she was 7 years old. She welcomed the announcement with hope and excitement.
"I would really love to actually be able to do my paperwork here, without being afraid to leave the country and then not being able to come back," she said.
Herrera said she and her husband had discussed the possibility of separating so she could adjust her legal status from Mexico and have him visit back and forth. But that decision became almost impossible when their family began to grow. They have two children now, ages 5 and 17 months old. There were also other concerns.
"I was kind of scared because, even though it's the country that I was born in, I don't really know what to expect when I go over there," Herrera said.
"Separating from my children, my husband, my mother. Because right now she's really ill. In her health, and wanting to be by her side, and then knowing that I'm far away. And if something happens, and obviously I'm not able to come back as soon because I'm waiting for a process to be done outside, it's pretty scary," she added.
Mario Montoya, a fellow and youth leader within the Phoenix-based community group Aliento, represented the group at the White House event on Tuesday. He called the announcement "a game-changer for mixed-status families like mine to be finally recognized as what we are: American families," he said. "It gives us hope and a sense of security that we haven't felt in years."
In addition to targeting spouses and children of U.S. citizens, Tuesday's announcement will speed up the process for noncitizens who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities and receive a job offer in their chosen degree field to get a work visa.
That includes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients like Herrera and other undocumented youth known as Dreamers. The White House event also served to mark the 12th anniversary of the creation of the DACA program on June 15, 2012.
"I want those who have been educated at a U.S. college or university to put their skills and knowledge to work here in America," Biden said.
Applause, criticism directed at Biden
The announcement received wide support from Latino and Democratic elected officials in Arizona, as well as migrant and legal advocacy groups. But it was opposed by conservative groups, as well as Republican lawmakers.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., commended the president for allowing college-educated Dreamers a chance to remain and legally work in the country without the fear of deportation.
"However, it is still the responsibility of Congress to pass strong border security measures and meaningful, commonsense immigration reform. We need comprehensive legislation to keep our southern border secure and create orderly pathways,” Stanton said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., added that "this compassionate decision recognizes the invaluable contributions these individuals make to our communities and upholds the fundamental principle of keeping families together.”
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who is the daughter of immigrant farmworkers, released a statement in support, calling Biden's executive action "a welcomed and a necessary step.”
America First Legal, a right-wing policy and advocacy group spearheaded by Stephen Miller, who was former President Donald Trump's White House adviser on immigration, pledged to sue the Biden administration over the executive order.
"This is a colossal amnesty and a thunderous attack on American democracy in the form of an imperial edict," Miller said in a statement that conflates migrants with crime and uses nativist rhetoric of a looming invasion.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. was one of the few Republicans in Arizona to criticize Biden's announcement on his X, formerly Twitter, account.
"Biden's unilateral mass amnesty order will only exacerbate the immigration crisis he created when he took office. We should be fighting for MASS DEPORTATIONS, not mass amnesty," Biggs wrote.
Heritage Action for America, a conservative grassroots group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, accused Biden of circumventing U.S. laws and Congress. The group has supported individual efforts by the states, including Arizona, to tackle border security.
“President Biden sees the writing on the wall and knows his disastrous and unpopular border policies will put him out of a job in November. But instead of trying to fix the crisis he made that’s getting Americans killed, he’s doing everything he can to further destroy our immigration system before his executive authority is taken away by the voters," said Ryan Walker, the group's executive vice president.
Members of the Arizona Latino Legislative Caucus gathered Tuesday afternoon at the Arizona State Senate to applaud Biden’s executive order, while offering stark criticism of its limited function.
Rep. Lydia Hernandez said the experience of being in a mixed-status household has brought a lot of trauma for her, and that because of Biden’s new executive order many will benefit including children who lived with the trauma of having their parents deported.
“The immigration system is broken in that it’s inundated with overflowing applications that have not been processed,” said Hernandez.
Emilia Pañuelos, an immigration attorney for the past thirty years, said the executive order has been the best tool since 2001 when 245(i) was passed — which allows green card holders to renew without leaving the country — but it’s still very limiting.
“(The executive order is) very conditional. You have to have been here for ten years. You have to have been married since yesterday. So I don’t like these conditions,” said Pañuelos. “It’s not amnesty. It’s not immigration reform. This is just an executive order.”
Pañuelo advised people that the executive order won’t go into effect most likely until the fall, asking people to be cautious and not fall victim to frauds that promise residency in exchange for a down payment. The best way is to check with multiple immigration attorneys and see if they’re saying the same thing.
Mario Anleu, an immigration lawyer who migrated to the U.S. from Guatemala, said Biden's action will provide relief for mixed-status families by allowing family members to stay in the U.S. while they go through the process of obtaining a green card. However, he still would like to see the end of Permanent Bar, one of the biggest issues his law firm faces.
According to USCIS, a Permanent Bar, also known as the Permanent Unlawful Presence Ground of Inadmissibility, is a punishment from the agency that prevents foreign nationals from entering the U.S.
“If there is a way to get rid of that (Permanent Bar), a lot more families will be able to adjust their status in the United States and give that protection of becoming a resident,” said Anelu.
Yadira Sanchez, executive director for the Washington-based advocacy group Poder Latinx, was in attendance for Biden's announcement at the White House. Like thousands of other mixed-status families in the country, her stepfather would be eligible to apply under this process.
"This is a protection that we don't take for granted," she said. "It will allow a lot of people to come out of the shadows and live with dignity and respect."
The culmination of a monthslong campaign
The executive order was the culmination of a monthslong campaign by migrant advocates to pressure the Biden administration to take concrete steps to protect mixed-status families and to provide them with work permits in the absence of permanent congressional action.
Advocacy groups said the next step is for the Biden administration to release as many details about the application process as possible. Once that happens, the groups will then begin outreach efforts within their communities to get as many people who qualify to apply under the changes unveiled on Tuesday.
"We saw that before with DACA, that there were folks that took advantage of our community, and we're trying to prevent that from happening this time," Sanchez said. "So we want to make sure that folks get information from trusted messengers, from trusted organizations that are fighting for immigration reform."
The changes announced on Tuesday do not guarantee that applicants will be able to adjust their status or get a work visa. Applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis, according to White House officials. Existing disqualifications, such as criminal histories or having been deported previously, remain in place.
Some questions about those changes remain unanswered, for now. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes the applications, faces a massive backlog in applications that could impact the agency's ability to prioritize and speed up the status adjustment process for spouses and children of U.S. citizens.
The White House said the application process under this change is expected to open by the end of the summer but added that more details would be released soon, including costs and how to determine the validity of marriages.
'Entire lives that have to be renewed': 12 years of DACA marked by lengthy processing delays
Tuesday's announcement comes on the heels of an executive action restricting access to the asylum system that the Biden administration implemented along the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this month. Those restrictions allow U.S. border officials to shut down asylum processing in between ports of entry when migrant encounters outside of border crossings surpass 2,500 per day.
Those changes immediately took effect at the border. In Mexican border cities such as Nogales, Sonora — where U.S. border officials have been removing hundreds of people each day — migrant advocates accuse the U.S. Border Patrol of denying Mexican migrants credible fear interviews, even if they express a fear of being returned to Mexico or claim they are being persecuted.
Immigration and border security remain top concerns among voters, ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Attempts by senators to pass a bipartisan agreement on the border, negotiated in part by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., failed in February after former president and presumed Republican nominee Donald Trump criticized the Biden-backed agreement.
