A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked a Biden-Harris administration plan to grant legal status to non-citizens who are married to U.S. citizens, pausing the program for at least the next two weeks while the legal challenge moved through the courts.
U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker issued the administrative stay after the policy was enacted by the Biden administration earlier this year. 16 states challenged the policy proposal, with Texas (one of the 16) claiming “the state has had to pay tens of millions of dollars annually from health care to law enforcement because of immigrants living in the state without legal status.”
The federal program, announced in June, just opened up applications for citizenship status this week.
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If it is allowed to continue, it would give non-citizen spouses of U.S. citizens a quick pathway to citizenship by allowing them to apply for a green card and stay in the U.S. while the citizenship process proceeds. Prior to this policy, the citizenship process for these cases was for the spouse to return to their country of origin and wait for it to play out.
Here’s a bit more on the process:
To be eligible for the program, immigrants must have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years, not pose a security threat or have a disqualifying criminal history, and have been married to a citizen by June 17 — the day before the program was announced.
They must pay a $580 fee to apply and fill out a lengthy application, including an explanation of why they deserve humanitarian parole and a long list of supporting documents proving how long they have been in the country.
If approved, applicants have three years to seek permanent residency. During that period, they can get work authorization. The administration estimates about 500,000 people could be eligible, plus about 50,000 of their children.
The states challenging the new program argue that it is bypassing Congress, whose job is to legislate such issues, and accused the Biden-Harris administration of doing so for “blatant political purposes.”
