Biden Administration Makes Two Big Changes to Help Illegal Immigrants

President Joe Biden’s administration has made two major changes to immigration policies by re-interpreting federal law.

Immigrants, many illegal, from certain countries are shielded from deportation and allowed to be legally employed if the secretary of homeland security decides their home country meets certain conditions.

The designation is known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Fifteen countries are currently designated, including Afghanistan, El Salvador, Somalia, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of immigrants from those countries are protected.

Up until July, those protected by TPS had to remain in the country unless they received approval to travel.

If TPS beneficiaries did leave the country and returned, they’d have the same status—illegal or legal—when they returned, based on language from Miscellaneous and Technical Immigration and Naturalization Amendments, even though they could remain temporarily protected by TPS.

But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles the nation’s legal immigration system, has changed that policy.

Now, all beneficiaries that return will be “inspected and admitted,” a bureaucratic term that means one has entered the country legally. “This is true even if the TPS beneficiary was present without admission or parole when initially granted TPS,” USCIS said in an alert (pdf).

“That basically launders the fact that they came here illegally and that will put them on the path to a green card,” Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times.

“This is an end run on U.S. immigration law, and Congress,” added Emilio Gonzalez, who directed USCIS during the George W. Bush administration. “It really is a left-handed way of legalizing people.”

USCIS said in its alert that the change stemmed from a court decision, guidance from the lawyers at its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and an evaluation of current and past policy. The

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