WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to make it easier for illegal aliens who are family members of American citizens to apply for legal permanent residency.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security will post for public comment an administrative change intended to reduce the time illegal aliens would have to spend away from their families while applying for legal status, officials said. The current system requires the applicant to first leave the United States to seek a legal visa, but under the proposed change illegal aliens could claim the time apart from a spouse, child or parent would create “extreme hardship” and allow them to remain in the U.S. as they begin the process.
Once approved, the person would be required to briefly leave the country to pick up the legal visa abroad.
Currently, families are often separated for several months as they await resolution of their applications. The change could reduce that time apart to one week in some cases, officials said. The White House hopes the new procedures could be in place by the end of the year.
David Leopold, a Cleveland attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the change a “minor processing tweak, but it has great value to families.”
Unable to pass comprehensive immigration laws through a polarized Congress, the proposal is the latest in a series of changes the White House is making to immigration procedures that are designed to focus the efforts of prosecutors and immigration judges on the removal of illegal aliens who pose a threat to public safety or are repeat immigration law violators.
Republicans say President Barack Obama is making an end run around Congress.
“President Obama and his administration are bending long-established rules to put illegal immigrants ahead of the interests of American citizens,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in response to the proposal. “It seems President Obama plays by his own rules.”
U.S. immigration officials responded that the change affects only how the applications are processed, not whether the legal status ultimately is granted.
“I don’t think that criticism is warranted at all,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “What we are doing is reducing the time of separation, not changing the standard of obtaining a waiver.”
Without a “hardship waiver,” an alien who has overstayed a visa for more than six months is barred from re-entering the U.S. for three years. A person who overstayed his visa for more than a year is barred from the country for 10 years. The penalties deter many illegal aliens from seeking legal status.
Immigration officials do not know how many of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would qualify for a waiver, Mayorkas said. Experts said more than 1 million people could benefit from the changes.
In the past year, the White House has given new discretion to prosecutors to ignore immigration violators who have strong ties to the U.S. and no criminal record. A program intended to cull “low-priority” cases from immigration courts began in Denver and Baltimore early this year and is being expanded to six other cities across the U.S. over the next four months, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.
After the new proposal is posted in the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to critique the change.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/31/2012