Republican-led States Attempt to Halt Program Aiding Undocumented Spouses
New Federal Directive Faces Backlash
President Biden’s recent mandate, designed to potentially grant a path to citizenship for undocumented spouses of American citizens, is under fire. Texas, along with 15 other Republican-led states have come together to file a lawsuit against the Biden administration, expressing their demands to put a hold on this initiative.
Program Overview
The program, which was announced on June 18, has been reported as one of the most extensive actions to assist undocumented immigrants since the inception of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) about 12 years ago. The applications for this program began to be accepted this week.
The main focus was to provide legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. This program could have consequentially put many undocumented spouses of Americans on a path to attain U.S. citizenship.
Lawsuit Details
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The petitioners seek both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to immediately suspend the program. The states have asserted in their legal filings that the initiative is illegal as it exceeds the executive branch’s discretion to set policy.
According to their claim, “The Biden-Harris Administration — dissatisfied with the legislative system in place by Congress, and for overtly political motivations — has yet again attempted to create its own immigration system.”
Arguments
The 67-page court filing continues, “This administrative action is tantamount to mass amnesty masked within purported executive discretion — a comprehensive, last-minute gambit by an administration set on rewriting immigration laws devoid of Congressional approval.” Thus, presenting their argument against the new immigration initiative announcing it as an attempt to bypass the existing immigration laws.
The federal court will now have to decide whether the program infringes upon the executive’s power to set immigration policy. It is expected that the defenses will argue about the necessity and legality of the executive action. The importance of such decisions in shaping immigration policy and impacting lives of immigrants and their families cannot be overstated.
Conclusion
The contentious discussion over immigration reform and the executive’s role in enacting changes continues unabated in the U.S. Across various U.S. sectors, the wait is on to see how this legal challenge unfolds and how it could shape the nation’s immigration policies.
