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.
The federal program, announced in June, just opened up applications for citizenship status this week.
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."
Biden Admin Pushing Path to Citizenship for Half a Million Immigrants With US Citizen Spouses 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.
U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker issued the administrative stay after the policy was enacted by the Biden administration earlier this year.
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.”
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.
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