Rep. Moran calls Biden immigration policy a distraction

TYLER — President Joe Biden issued new protections for undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens on Tuesday that protects them from deportation. The new policy would be eligible for people who have been in the country for at least 10 years. Biden’s policy would allow nearly 500,000 spouses to stay in the country allowing non-citizens to stay in the U.S. while filing for permanent residency instead of returning to their home country.

According to our news partner KETK, Republican U.S. Rep. Nathaniel Moran said this action taken by Biden is “unfortunate” and that the president is trying to act on border policy five months away from the election. Biden’s executive action is expected to be challenged in court, however if Biden’s policy does go into effect, it would be the most significant action on immigration, since former president Obama’s DACA policy.

“I think this is not incentivizing anything, other than people who fall in love with a U.S. citizen and they marry and make their lives together. Why are we making it so hard for them to be together and be a family if we’re for families,” immigration attorney Belinda Arroyo said.

“We’re really, really behind on processing a lot of this stuff. In a process that most of these people could have done in one to three years is now taking like four to six years,” Arroyo said.

“These recent executive orders pushing to have amnesty for folks that have not gone through the legal process,” Moran said. “This is a rabbit trail. It’s really a trick to have us look at one hand when he’s doing sleight of hand, on the other side is to keep the American people distracted by executive orders, that on their face seem to be border security,” Moran said.

Earlier in June, Biden also announced a new executive order that would shut down asylum requests once daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry in the U.S.-Mexico border. The border will only then reopen when encounters declines to 1,500.