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President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered a sweeping election-year measure to offer the possibility of naturalization to hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the United States without legal status, seeking to balance his recently announced aggressive border restrictions that have angered activists as well as many Democratic lawmakers.
Biden announced that his administration will in the coming months allow some spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for permanent residence and eventually naturalization, a measure that administration officials said could affect nearly 500,000 immigrants.
“The Statue of Liberty is not a relic of American history. It continues to represent who we are,” Biden said in a packed East Room of the White House filled with activists, Democratic members of Congress and immigrants who could benefit from the plan. “But I also don’t believe that in order for us to continue to be an America that embraces immigrants, we have to give up on protecting our borders.”
The announced measure represents the broadest federal protections for immigrants in more than a decade and offers an important political contrast to the Republican de facto presidential nominee, Donald Trump, whose immigration stances have included proposals for mass deportations and criticism of immigrants as dangerous criminals who are “poisoning the blood of America.”
On Tuesday, Biden accused his predecessor of exploiting fears about immigrants and criticized the Trump administration’s actions, such as a zero-tolerance policy at the southern border that separated families.
“When he is re-elected, Joe Biden’s illegal amnesty program will be ripped up and repealed on Day 1 of his return to the presidency,” Trump declared at a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
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