Biden is expected to unveil the policies at a White House banquet marking the 12th anniversary of another executive order he took while vice president to help immigrants. In 2012, President Barack Obama announced that undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children would be allowed to apply for work permits, a program that has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
The White House had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s announcement.
Marrying a U.S. citizen is usually a fast track to U.S. citizenship, but immigrants who cross the border illegally face significant bureaucratic hurdles and can be stuck in limbo for years. Federal law requires such immigrants to leave the U.S. for up to 10 years and then apply to reenter, a penalty that immigrants say is excessive.
Biden would allow undocumented spouses to apply for legal residency without leaving the U.S., a major relief for people who have jobs and are raising young children and worry there is no guarantee they will be allowed back into the U.S.
“It’s too much of a risk for me to leave my wife, my son and everything I’ve built in the United States,” said Foday Touray, a 27-year-old immigrant from Sierra Leone who is married to a U.S. citizen and was invited to Biden’s announcement at the White House.
Turay illegally crossed the Mexican border in 2003 at age 7 to join his mother, who had earlier fled Mexico’s war. He is now an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia and has work permit status under Obama’s 2012 program, but has said he wants to pursue citizenship.
About 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens and about 50,000 undocumented stepchildren are expected to be eligible to apply, said a federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the proposal.
To qualify, immigrants must have lived in the United States for at least 10 years and meet other requirements.
Biden is also expected to announce a work visa program for current recipients of President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and those who were shut out of the program when the Trump administration called it an illegal amnesty and tried to end it in 2017.
A federal court in Texas ruled DACA illegal and limited it to existing enrollees while litigation is pending. Biden plans to allow some Dreamers to apply for work visas, which would put them on stronger legal ground than those in the Deferred Action program, officials said.
Details of both programs are still being worked out but are expected to be announced over the summer, officials said.
All applicants will be required to follow standard immigration procedures, pass a criminal background check and meet other requirements.
Angela Kelly, senior counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security under Biden, called the measure a “game changer” for migrant families.
“They no longer have to look back and worry about their families being separated,” she said of their U.S. citizen relatives.
As with DACA, immigration advocates expect the program to face fierce backlash from Republicans, who have fought similar policies in court.
But lawyers said Biden’s program for undocumented spouses should be on strong legal footing. This is because the legal authority would be “parole,” which is already recognized by federal law and therefore may be protected from any legal challenge in court.
“Parole has been around for decades and has been used in a variety of situations,” said Kelly Talbot, executive director of the immigration advocacy group Immigration Hub. “Courts will recognize the importance of that power.”
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that between 1.1 million and 1.3 million illegal immigrants are married to U.S. citizens, meaning hundreds of thousands of immigrants who haven’t been in the U.S. for 10 years, have criminal records or for other reasons would be barred from the program.
Immigrant advocates say even a modest spousal program would be a major relief for immigrants and the millions of relatives of U.S. citizens who are counting on them to vote in November’s election.
“Hopefully, this announcement will inspire people not to sit on the sidelines and watch this,” said Marielena Hincapié, a Cornell Law School scholar and former executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “We hope that an announcement like this will indirectly benefit people.”
Some Democrats have expressed displeasure with Biden as his early efforts to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants have been overshadowed by record numbers of new migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border, spurring a crackdown on illegal crossings. Biden enacted new asylum restrictions this month, saying border apprehensions had reached emergency levels.
But Biden has used executive power to protect undocumented immigrants more broadly than any other president. His administration has granted temporary protected status to more than 1 million immigrants in the U.S. and allowed hundreds of thousands more from other groups fleeing violence and poverty overseas. The Biden administration also halted workplace raids and other enforcement efforts targeting long-time undocumented immigrants.
Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups have been urging Biden for months to expand relief for long-term illegal immigrants, as his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, has threatened to carry out mass deportations if elected in November.
Prosecutor Turay expressed frustration that he is the only member of his family who is not a U.S. citizen, despite having lived in the U.S. for decades, earning a law degree and working as a civil servant. He married his wife on June 17 last year and has a 10-month-old son.
Turay said her mother first fled Sierra Leone because she had refugee status, but was unable to bring her over straight away. She left him in her grandmother’s care, and called her over when she became ill, but she later died.
“She took extreme measures,” he said of his mother. “There was no way she would leave her only child alone.”
But because he entered the country illegally, he said he fears he will not be allowed back in, even if he leaves to apply for legal residency through his wife.
“It’s absurd that I’m still dealing with all this,” he said. “Instead of focusing on the victims of crime, I’m asking for relief to stay here.”
