OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Biden administration is preparing to revive what analysts say will be a scaled-down version of former President Obama’s Delayed Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that allowed migrants who illegally crossed into the U.S. as minors to remain 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.
To qualify for the privileged status, illegal migrants must also have “good moral character” and make the case that they “would suffer exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” if they were 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.
Previous federal courts have ruled that the Obama-era DACA and DAPA programs were unconstitutional in that they granted amnesty to a class of illegal aliens by executive fiat, not by an act of Congress. But in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to rescind the program violated the Administrative Procedures Act, thus allowing the program to remain intact.
“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.
On their first day in office, the Biden administration proposed a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country.
The White House has made it clear that their immigration policy prioritizes granting citizenship to individuals who have entered the country illegally, regardless of any feel-good veneer they may use to cloak their proposals, Davis noted.
“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.
