During the week of the Democratic National Convention, the Biden-Harris administration launched what critics call an amnesty program for illegal immigrants.
The U.S. immigration authorities call this “keeping families together,” which will allow an estimated 500,000 non-citizen spouses and another 50,000 non-citizen stepchildren to be paroled.
The agency states: “Noncitizens who are in the United States without legal status or parole may be considered for parole through this process.” Legal status means that you have legal permission to be in the country through a green card, visa, or other reasons.
“This is a massive amnesty that Congress never authorized,” Andrew Arthur, a law and policy fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News Digital.
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Migrants are processed by U.S. Border Patrol agents after entering the United States from Mexico via an abandoned railroad line in Jacumba Hot Springs, San Diego, California, on June 28, 2024. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
“Under a Harris-Waltz administration, everyone who is in the country illegally could eventually be eligible for such a process,” added Arthur, a former immigration judge. “It would be a big challenge for Republicans to reverse the process afterward, but as we saw with DACA, administrative amnesties are difficult to reverse.”
DACA stands for Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals and is an executive action by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2012 that granted legal status to the children of illegal immigrants.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization Service (USCIS), the new Keeping Families Together program requires the spouse to have physically resided in the United States for 10 years, “without entry or parole,” “have no disqualifying criminal history and not otherwise be considered a threat to public safety, national security or border security,” and undergo a background check.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden appeared together, hours after reports emerged that she was seeking “distance” from his policies. (Getty Images)
Noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens must have been under 21 as of last June, when the executive action was first announced; their parent must have been married to a U.S. citizen before June; and they must not have a disqualifying criminal history.
But even the criminal history section comes with a caveat. USCIS added that an applicant with a criminal history may be eligible if he or she “demonstrates positive factors that can rebut that presumption and show that they warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.”
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In addition, illegal immigrants who are in the middle of deportation proceedings could still be released on parole as part of that process, the USCIS website says.
“If your case includes a final, unenforced removal order, a non-disqualifying criminal record, or other derogatory information, you may submit additional documentation that you believe demonstrates that your parole is warranted based on substantial public benefit or pressing humanitarian grounds and that you deserve a favorable exercise of discretion,” the USCIS statement said.
Get the latest updates on the ongoing border crisis from Fox News’ Digital Immigration Hub.
