Federal officials who are responsible for tracking down and deporting undocumented immigrants will likely have new marching orders from the White House as early as next week that will be far more lenient.
According to a New York Times report, President Barack Obama is putting the final touches on a “memorandum” that will allow millions of undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in this country for years and had children in the U.S. to stay and obtain the paperwork they need to work legally in this country.
The New York Times report is describing it as “a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration-enforcement system that will protect up to 5 million unauthorized immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide many of them with work permits.”
Nothing is official yet, but White House officials described the overall gist of the memorandum.
“One key piece of the order, officials said, will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away,” the report explains.
Some of the details are still murky, like whether the order will apply toward undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for a minimum of five or 10 years, but either way, analysts predict it’ll likely affect 2 million to 3 million individuals.
The order will also protect immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and grew up here, possibly farm workers who have worked for years, as well as undocumented immigrants with “high-tech skills,” the Times reported.
Read more at the New York Times.