Biden weighs move to unlock legal status for some unauthorized immigrants

President Biden’s administration is mulling a far-reaching measure that would unlock temporary legal status and potentially a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people. immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, five people familiar with the internal discussions told CBS News.

The plan under consideration by the White House would give work authorizations and deportation protections to certain unauthorized immigrants through immigration parole authority as long as they have U.S. citizen spouses, the sources said. The policy, known as “in-force parole,” could also make beneficiaries eligible for U.S. permanent residency and eventually even citizenship, helping them overcome hurdles in U.S. law.

The sources, two current U.S. officials, two former officials and a congressional staffer, all spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely about domestic plans. They said the final details of the Biden administration’s proposal have not been approved or finalized.

The plan, sources said, would likely benefit longtime undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years, if not decades — rather than newcomers.

In a statement to CBS News, White House spokesman Angelo Hernandez Fernandez said officials “continue to explore a range of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”

The proposal under consideration by the administration, which was first reported published by The Wall Street Journal in late April, would be Biden’s latest ambitious move to act unilaterally on immigration amid decades of congressional impasse on the issue. Last week, in the toughest policy enacted by a Democratic president, Biden invoked his executive authority to ban asylum for most migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But the current parole plan could benefit a significant number of the country’s undocumented population. There are an estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S., according to estimates by the federal government and research groups. The advocacy group Fwd.USA estimates that 1.1 million of them have US citizen spouses.

Progressive lawmakers and advocates also argue that the proposal would also help Biden politically by energizing some voters, including Latinos, ahead of the November elections. Polls over the years have shown that Latino voters broadly support border security measures and programs to legalize unauthorized immigrants who have been living in the US for years.

If approved, the plan would likely face legal challenges. The Biden administration has previously faced lawsuits from Republican state officials over its use of parole authority and, in 2016, the Supreme Court, in a 4-4 stalemateprevented the Obama administration from granting work permits and deportation protections to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and green card holders.

The Biden administration has used immigration parole authority on an unprecedented scale, invoking it to resettle hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Latin America, Haiti and Ukraine. The plan being discussed within the administration would use that same authority to provide immigration assistance to some people already in the US.

Granting parole would allow unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens to obtain temporary work permits and legal status. But perhaps more importantly, it would also allow some of them to bypass a rule in U.S. immigration law that prohibits immigrants from obtaining permanent legal status if they are not officially admitted or paroled into the U.S.

Immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, for example, generally must leave the country and re-enter legally to qualify for a green card based on an application filed by a U.S. citizen spouse. These immigrants, however, can face bans on re-entering the US for years, leading some to not travel abroad and pursue that option instead.

The current parole would give undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens the opportunity to become U.S. permanent residents, if they meet other requirements, without having to leave the country. Unlike other categories, green cards for spouses of US citizens are unlimited. After several years, green card holders can apply for U.S. citizenship.

Since the Bush administration, the U.S. government has operated parole on a smaller scale program for unauthorized immigrants who are immediate relatives of U.S. military personnel. In 2020, Congress affirmed this policy.