Biden weighs giving legal status to immigrant spouses of US citizens

Twenty years ago, Allyson Batista consulted her priest with a dilemma. She had fallen in love with a man living in the country illegally, who had no hope of fixing his status.

“I think if you love somebody, you marry them, and you figure it out from there," she recalls the priest telling her.

So she did. Two decades later, the couple has three children and a successful construction business in Philadelphia. But they still lack certainty—about whether Allyson’s husband will be allowed to stay in the U.S. long enough to see his children become adults, or if the government will ever do something to help.

Now, families such as Batista’s are looking to the Biden administration, where officials have been seriously discussing a plan to help hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally who are married to U.S. citizens.

The idea has gained currency inside the White House since last summer, despite the fraught nature of immigration politics heading into the 2024 presidential election. There is a growing recognition among Biden’s top political advisers that the president could benefit from taking a positive step on immigration to contrast with his tough talk on the issue, and with an expected executive order aiming to sharply curb illegal crossings at the southern border.

Officials inside the White House and at the Department of Homeland Security have been studying a range of proposals to provide work permits or deportation relief for millions of undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in the U.S. for a long time. They have zeroed in on the population of mixed-status families, where typically the children and one parent are U.S. citizens, because they believe that demographic is the most