Biden’s Parole in Place Scheme Will Create a Mayorkas Marriage Fraud Mill

By George Fishman

Summary

President Biden’s and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ parole in place (PIP) scheme is designed to launder the immigration status of over half a million illegal aliens who, as of June 17, have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years and have married U.S. citizens.

The PIP scheme represents an extravagant wedding of marriage fraud and indifference to such fraud by Secretary Mayorkas’ DHS. Of course, the American public will be paying for the reception. The progeny of such a wedding will be immigration fraud on a massive scale, damaging the rule of law and inevitably leading to more chain migration, as illegal alien spouses will be able to petition for green cards for numerous other family members.

According to the 9/11 Commission’s staff report, an interrogated al Qaeda associate stated “that some al Qaeda operatives married American women to obtain U.S. visas” and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, believed marriage fraud to be “a fantastic mechanism for operatives to acquire valid documents”. Future terrorist wedding planners will certainly take advantage of this “fantastic mechanism”.

DHS claims that it “has strong processes in place to identify and address potential fraud, which will be applied … to ensure the integrity” of the program. But the PIP scheme will be run by people answering to Secretary Mayorkas, who as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration apparently considered anyone at the agency concerned about immigration fraud to have “black spots on their heart[]”, and who oversaw an agency where faithful civil servants were allegedly retaliated against for resisting pressure to approve fraudulent petitions.

Marriage fraud for immigration purposes was already endemic before Mayorkas. As a consular officer once put it, “there is no stronger incentive to fall in love than when you get a deportation notice in the mail”. Consular officers have estimated that between 5 to 30 percent of marriages between aliens and U.S. citizens are fraudulent.

The nuptials will occur regardless of whether President Biden is reelected. If Biden loses, he will likely act quickly to expand the scheme to encompass future weddings before the Trump administration takes over. If Biden wins, he will likewise act to expand the scheme during his second term.
The Biden/Mayorkas Parole in Place Scheme

President Biden’s and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ parole in place (PIP) scheme is designed to launder the immigration status of over half a million illegal aliens who “[h]ave been continuously present in the United States for at least 10 years as of June 17, 2024” and “[h]ave a legally valid marriage to a U.S. citizen as of June 17, 2024”. The scheme will enable them “to apply for lawful permanent residence without having to leave the United States”.

My colleague Andrew Arthur thoroughly analyzed the scheme when it was just a rumor. Suffice it to say that once impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas uses “his discretion [to] parole into the United States [though in this case they are already here — hence “in place”] temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States”, their U.S. citizen spouses can then petition for them for (a numerically unlimited number of) green cards, and the erstwhile illegal alien spouses can then adjust status to permanent residence while in the U.S.

Without parole, the illegal alien spouses would not have been able to adjust status (unless they were “visa overstayers” who had actually been admitted to the U.S.), but would have had to apply for green cards overseas. However, if they were to do so and had been “unlawfully present in the United States for a period of more than 180 days” when 18 or older, they would have been inadmissible to the U.S. for three years from the date of their departure (if their unlawful presence had been for less than one year) or for 10 years (if it had been for one year or more). Secretary Mayorkas can waive this ground of inadmissibility for an alien “who is the spouse or son or daughter of a U.S. citizen or of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, if it is established to [his] satisfaction … that the refusal of admission to such immigrant alien would result in extreme hardship to the citizen or lawfully resident spouse or parent of such alien”, and an alien can even apply for such a waiver before leaving the U.S. under an Obama administration innovation. But, as Arthur has noted, “Alien spouses who don’t go through the [waiver] process generally skip it because they’re concerned they won’t be allowed back in and/or because they don’t want to spend the handful of months outside the United States consular processing requires.”

Michelle Hackman has described the 3/10 year bars in the Wall Street Journal as “administrative cobwebs preventing spouses from being granted green cards”, but as Arthur has noted, “what the Journal describes as ‘administrative cobwebs[’] … is instead federal statute, passed by Congress”. Specifically, it was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) that established the bars. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee from 1995 to 2000 and author of H.R. 2202, the House foundation for IIRIRA, explained in 1997 (along with my then subcommittee co-counsel Edward Grant) that “[f]orty percent of illegal immigrants … originally entered the United States with [temporary] legal status” and simply never left. “By strengthening the penalties for violations, th[is] provision[] aim[ed] to provide a much greater incentive in the future for compliance with our immigration laws.”

I have long complained about the executive branch’s abuse of the statutory parole power going back to the Eisenhower administration. One of my first pieces for the Center for Immigration Studies was titled “The Pernicious Perversion of Parole” , and I have since penned “Biden’s Perversion of Immigration Parole Has Reached a New Low” and that “Biden’s Perversion of Parole Is a Constitutional Crisis in the Making”

https://cis.org/Fishman/Bidens-Parole-Place-Scheme-Will-Create-Mayorkas-Marriage-Fraud-Mill

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