Illegal immigrants who qualify for President Biden’s new deportation amnesty by dint of their marriage to U.S. citizens will be able to apply for the program on Aug. 19, the government said Wednesday.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services warned people not to send in applications yet, and said it will reject any that are submitted beforehand.
Under the plan, illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years and who are married to an American citizen can apply to have their status changed to lawful permanent resident without having to leave the U.S. and return to their home countries.
Mr. Biden announced the plan nearly a month ago but the government has yet to publish the regulation laying out eligibility and spelling out the exact process illegal immigrants will have to go through.
USCIS said that’s still in the works.
“You cannot apply for this process yet,” the agency said. “We will publish a Federal Register notice that will further explain eligibility and the application process, including the form to use, and the associated filing fees. If you apply before the implementation date in the Federal Register notice, we will reject your application.”
Mr. Biden is expected to announce the Aug. 19 date for the start of applications in an address to UnidosUS, a major Hispanic and immigrant-rights group, at its convention in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
The amnesty relies on what’s known as “parole in place,” a legal status that can be granted by the government to defer a deportation and allow someone to claim a legal work permit.
The administration says it can extend parole to the spouses because their marriages give them a clear path to citizenship, so the parole is a way of easing the route.
But some legal experts say the administration was thrown for a loop by a Supreme Court decision last month on U.S. citizens’ marriage rights to immigrants.
In her opinion dissenting from the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to undercut Mr. Biden’s logic for the new parole program.
“Marriage is not an automatic ticket to a green card,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “A married citizen-noncitizen couple must jump through a series of administrative hoops to apply for the lawful permanent residency that marriage can confer.”
She said that includes “the risk” that when the noncitizen spouse departs, he or she may not be able to reenter the U.S.
“Ironically, the longer the noncitizen spouse has lived in the United States, the more difficult and uncertain the process to adjust to lawful status can become,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.