The Biden administration is getting ready to reintroduce a modified version of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which experts believe will be smaller in scope compared to the one implemented by former President Obama. This program will provide a pathway for undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children to stay in the country.
“President Biden is weighing giving out green cards to up to 4,000 undocumented immigrants facing deportation, so long as they have resided in the US for at least a decade and have not been convicted of ‘serious crimes,’” the UK’s Daily Mail reported late last month.
“The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review floated a proposal to make thousands of migrants lawful permanent residents in September 2023,” the New York Post added, citing the DM report.
In order to be eligible for the esteemed status, undocumented immigrants must also possess a “good moral character” and demonstrate that they would endure “extraordinary and highly uncommon hardship” if they were to be deported.
“You will have to wait your turn before an immigration judge can approve your application,” the proposal document reads. “This may take years.”
“EOIR defers to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for information regarding the issuances of ‘green cards,’” a spokeswoman for the office said in a statement, The Post noted. “As an adjudicatory agency in the Department of Justice, EOIR does not issue benefits.”
The Post adds:
“Over 85% of migrants who enter the US are subsequently released into the country, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed earlier this year, along with 1.8 million “gotaways” who evaded arrest altogether. More than 320,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have also been flown into or directly entered the US due to Biden’s expansion of humanitarian parole.”
Earlier, federal courts had determined that the DACA and DAPA programs implemented during the Obama administration were unconstitutional. This was because these programs provided amnesty to a group of undocumented immigrants through executive action rather than through legislation passed by Congress. However, in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court made a 5-4 decision stating that the attempts made by then-President Donald Trump to revoke the program were in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. Consequently, the program was allowed to continue without any changes.
“For more than a decade, DACA and DAPA have served as the twin towers of immigration lawlessness, and now the current administration appears prepared to expand and normalize executive amnesty,” writes Will Davis, a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, in The Daily Caller.
“The arguments for this latest amnesty proposal will likely be similar to the ones repeated ad nauseam in favor of DACA and DAPA. Anti-border advocates will argue that the people set to benefit from this program have been in the country a long time, have become part of their community and that it would be cruel to make them return to their home countries,” he added.
“This argument, taken to its logical conclusion, would allow anybody who arrives in the country illegally and stays here long enough to remain here forever and eventually gain citizenship. Of course, this is the endgame for the administration and their extremist allies in the illegal immigration lobby,” Davis wrote.
Davis pointed out that the Biden administration, on their inaugural day, put forth a plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for countless undocumented immigrants residing in the nation. Despite any attempts to present their proposals in a positive light, the White House has emphasized their immigration policy’s focus on granting citizenship to those who have entered the country unlawfully.
“It’s been roughly two months since reports emerged that the Biden Administration was considering an executive order to reduce the flow of illegal aliens at the border, but no such order ever came. Instead, it appears that the only executive order the White House is seriously considering is one that would give green cards to thousands of illegal aliens,” he wrote.
