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“President Joe Biden ordered expansive election-year action Tuesday to offer potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status… The president announced that his administration will, in the coming months, allow certain U.S. citizens’ spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country. The action by Biden, a Democrat, could affect upwards of half a million immigrants.” AP News
The left supports the order, arguing that it is both good policy and also popular.
“Federal law already allows U.S. citizens to petition for green cards for undocumented spouses. But under the law many must leave the country first (often for up to three or 10 years) to apply. The new policy would simply allow those undocumented spouses—provided they’ve been here at least 10 years and meet other conditions—to remain lawfully here and get work permits while entering that already existing application process…
“Congress created the executive discretion Biden is using… Marielena Hincapie, a visiting scholar at Cornell Law School, points out that ‘parole in place’ was used by the administration of President George W. Bush to grant protections to undocumented spouses of individual military families, and President Barack Obama made it policy for those families more broadly. ‘Now Biden is extending this long-established policy used by Republican and Democratic administrations to benefit [American] families,’ Hincapie said.”
Greg Sargent, New Republic
“By any definition, this policy is pro-family and pro-child. And it doesn’t increase immigration, as it only applies to people who are already in the country and have been for many years — roughly 500,000 adults and some 50,000 children, all of whom are currently living in limbo. It’s basic and humane: Imagine the stress of knowing your spouse of many years, and perhaps the parent of your child, could be picked up and deported in an instant.”
Jill Filipovic, CNN
“The president’s team believes that polling shows the electorate largely approves of what they see as a ‘balanced’ approach — a combination of border security and solutions for long-term, undocumented immigrants. In particular, they have honed in on [a recent poll] that found overwhelming support for the action the president took on Tuesday. The poll showed that 71 percent of voters believe these undocumented residents should be able to stay in the U.S., while 78 percent of Hispanic voters shared this sentiment…
“‘At a time where so many Americans worry about whether a democracy can actually work, I think President Biden needs to go out there and show folks not just how bad Donald Trump will be, but how he pushed forward real changes in government that make life better for everyday people,’ said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in an interview.”
Myah Ward, Politico
“On 15 June 2012, against the advice of his advisers, Obama stepped out into the Rose Garden to announce the new policy: if young people came forward and registered with the Department of Homeland Security, he would give them what some would call amnesty. Rather than being electrocuted on the so-called ‘third rail’ of US politics for advancing immigrants’ rights, Obama won re-election with an overwhelming share of the Latino vote…
“By November, after Obama secured a come-from-behind victory, Beltway pundits acknowledged that it had been a good idea to advance equal rights for undocumented immigrants. Even Sean Hannity of Fox News changed his tune and declared that he had ‘evolved’ to support a ‘path to citizenship’ for the longterm undocumented… At this dire moment for the country’s future, we need more courage, not less.”
Chris Newman, The Guardian
The right is critical of the order, arguing that only Congress has the power to change immigration policy.
The right is critical of the order, arguing that only Congress has the power to change immigration policy.
“Like Barack Obama before him, President Biden seems to believe that Congress is not the sole repository of all the federal government’s legislative powers but is instead an advice bureau that can be consulted when the executive feels like it. President Biden did not consult Congress when he decided to open up the border, and he has not consulted Congress now that he has decided to pursue a mass amnesty…
“That Congress has not passed the policies that Biden now seeks is not an accident but the product of a reasonable mistrust in the Democratic Party’s willingness to address the crisis at its roots. Were the border to be secured, the public might well be more open to dealing sympathetically with the often-difficult question of who to prioritize for deportation and who to put on a path toward legalization. But the border has not been secured…
“Just this month, polling showed that, in nearly every demographic group, majorities of American voters have come to support mass deportations. That Biden’s response to this has been to announce the ultra vires amnesty of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants is not solely bad politics; it is an affront to our constitutional system, to our democracy, and to the claim that nobody is above the law.”
The Editors, National Review
“Immigration parole is supposed to be a narrow exception to immigration limits, temporarily allowing in what is supposed to be a handful of inadmissible aliens for things like emergency medical treatment or court testimony, after which they’re supposed to be escorted back to the border. This administration has already used it to admit more than a million foreigners who don’t qualify for legal entry…
“Reining in this abuse needs to be at the top of the list for any future Republican Congress and administration. Parole either needs to be abolished altogether or explicitly circumscribed and numerically limited. The issuance of a work permit to those who don’t already have a lawful visa status that permits it must be banned…
“The alternative is more of what we’ve seen over the past three and a half years — presidents amnestying or letting in anyone they feel like, regardless of immigration limits set by Congress.”
Mark Krikorian, National Review
“Mr. Biden is politicizing the fates of another pool of migrants for political gain. He can’t guarantee that his order will survive in court or that Donald Trump won’t immediately reverse it. The President would have done better by these families if he had let the status quo stand. But Mr. Biden wanted to make a political gesture to progressives who are angry at his recent executive actions to reduce the flow of migrants claiming asylum at the border…
“The President’s order will further inflame the politics of immigration and make compromise in Congress even more unlikely. The move will stoke Republican complaints of Democratic bad faith, and Mr. Trump is already calling the program ‘mass amnesty.’ The losers will be the illegal migrants, and anyone who wants reform to allow more legal immigration. No President in a century has done more to damage the cause of legal immigration than Joe Biden.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
