Democrats added a provision to the reconciliation bill that would expand humanitarian parole to cover illegal immigrants already living in the U.S., according to the legislation.
Congressional Democrats previously tried to pass amnesty through the Build Back Better Act and by amending the registry date in the Immigration and Nationality Act so illegal immigrants can apply for green cards, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Expanding parole under the reconciliation package is the Democrats’ third attempt at passing an amnesty provision for millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S.
“Parole is normally a status given to aliens seeking entry into the United States,” CIS Resident Fellow in Law and Policy Andrew Arthur told the DCNF on Friday. “This parole, however, is for aliens who are currently in the United States.”
The parliamentarian blocked other efforts to pass a wider amnesty package in the Build Back Better Act that ultimately failed in the Senate, according to CIS. The latest attempt would extend “a temporary status, parole, to an unspecified number of illegals.”
“While the ‘Plan C’ provision in the Build Back Better Act does not include a pathway to citizenship for those eligible, it is still the largest amnesty in American history, providing protection from deportation and work authorization for around seven million illegal aliens,” Federation for American Immigration Reform Government Relations director RJ Hauman told the DCNF on Monday.
“This provision clearly checks the amnesty box, and even worse, it is not accompanied by a single enforcement tradeoff to address the border crisis,” Hauman added.
The House Rules Committee proposed expanding parole for all illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before January 1, 2011, moving the date up from January 1, 1972, set under the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to the bill.
The proposed parole expansion would allow illegal immigrants to live in the U.S. legally for 10 years and Department of Homeland Security officials discretion to grant parole to illegal immigrants as individuals or as a group of people, according to the bill.
“Many administrations have grossly abused parole and handed it out to large populations, so it is not on a case-by-case basis when they do that, they pick a large group of people and give it to them,” Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow for Homeland Security Lora Ries told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday. “It’s not for urgent humanitarian reasons, these people’s lives aren’t at stake otherwise if they were they would apply for asylum.”
Illegal immigrants with adult children and spouses who are U.S. citizens would also be immediately eligible for green cards under the proposal, according to the bill. Other spouses and children of illegal immigrants with lawful resident status would have time to naturalize during the 10-year parole period.
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