Biden’s decision to grant work permits to millions of migrants raises legal concerns
The Biden administration is bypassing the nation’s immigration laws by issuing work permits to migrants in record numbers.
Since President Biden took office, over 3.3 million migrants have received an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), also known as a federal work permit, even though many did not legally have the right to be in America.
As of February of this year, there were approximately 1.4 million pending EAD applications.
In many cases, migrants are granted the right to work before they even receive asylum, a green card, or any other legal documentation allowing them to stay.
Not long ago, the work permit was considered an undesirable immigration “pull factor” and a crucial element in managing immigration flows.
In 1996, the Immigration and Naturalization Service implemented a new rule requiring asylum seekers to wait 180 days before applying for work.
Asylum is meant for individuals fleeing legitimate persecution claims, not just those seeking better job opportunities.
Reviewing the previous year’s immigration statistics, then Immigration Commissioner Doris Meissner noted that new rules eliminating this “primary incentive” resulted in a significant decrease in asylum claims from 122,589 in 1994 to 53,255 in 1995.
“With this crackdown on fraud, we have closed a loophole for illegal immigration,” she stated.
But Biden has gradually weakened that six-month waiting period rule.
Through a flurry of rules and over 530 immigration-related executive actions – surpassing the previous record set by Trump over four years – the Biden administration has expanded admissions or established new admission pathways under eight distinct and significant programs.
These include population transfers from Afghanistan and Ukraine, “family reunification” programs with direct flights to the U.S. for qualifying individuals from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, as well as a separate direct-to-U.S. flight program for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, with or without “family reunification” ties in the U.S.
For all others, there’s the CPBOne app, allowing foreign nationals to schedule appointments online with U.S. border authorities. By fall 2023, approximately 2.3 million individuals had entered through these various programs, with minimal health and background screening.
None of these programs confer lawful immigration status on the newcomers, whose “twilight” status does not lead to a green card or legal permanent residency. Most are entering under the administration’s “parole authority.”
To illustrate the impact of this policy, consider that between 2013 and 2020, immigration authorities granted parole to only 479 individuals crossing the border illegally, reflecting the case-by-case, emergency nature of the administrative tool.
In contrast, under the Biden administration, immigration authorities paroled nearly 700,000 illegal border-crossers in 2022-23.
Most of them are immediately eligible for a work permit and a Social Security card.
In some cases, parolees apply for asylum later after already receiving a work permit, bypassing the 180-day waiting rule.
In 2022, 1.279 million work permits were issued. By 2023, that number had climbed to 2.139 million, and 2024 is projected to surpass 3.3 million.
The government does not keep specific numbers for parolees, but potentially up to half of those work permits went to parolees.
Without congressional intervention, most of these parolees will remain in a legal limbo, relying on executive actions to continue renewing their temporary presence in the country.
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