In 2021, Colorado had 19,000 undocumented people who were married to U.S. citizens, most who have lived in the country for an average 18 years, according to the bipartisan political organization, FWD.us’s analysis of American Community survey data.
On March 27, the organizations American Families United and American Business Immigration Coalition Action visited Sen. Michael Bennet’s Denver office to discuss expanding work authorization for Colorado families. They also offered suggestions to what employers can do to support federal solutions to address challenges that undocumented people face in the workforce and emphasized the importance of keeping families together.
If those 19,000 Coloradans were to become citizens, $293 million would be added to the economy and an additional $88 million in taxes would be collected in Colorado, according to a FWD.us survey.
Ed Markowitz, U.S. citizen and AFU board member, shared his story of being married to his wife, Rocio, who is a dual citizen of Canada and Mexico, and the challenges they have faced in trying to reunite their family after they were separated due to immigration policies.
“After meeting, falling in love, and marrying, we faced an unknown and uncertain future dictated by the hurtful and ineffective immigration law,” Markowitz said to the participants at the live-streamed discussion outside of the Cesar E. Chávez Memorial Building where Bennet’s office is located. Markowitz, who is the stepfather of Rocio’s two sons, Ben and Armando, explained that he petitioned for his wife to become a U.S. citizen but was deemed “inadmissible due to unlawful presence and fraction” permanently due to having entrances without inspection into the country.
This is known as an immigration bar, a policy created as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Immigration bars refer to penalties due to violating immigration law. Similar to Rocio’s case, immigration bars can lead to being denied re-entry to the United States and ineligible to receive a visa.
Instead of acting as an extra layer of precaution to entering the United States illegally, the number of undocumented immigrants remaining permanently in the U.S. has grown substantially since 1996. Even if undocumented immigrants were to apply for a waiver there is currently a backlog of more than 138,000 applications with a wait time of almost 3.5 years.
“We lived under the same shadow, all too familiar to 1.1 million other American families living in a mixed immigration status with no avenue to cure the block,” Markowitz said. “American families are broken, terrified, discarded only for a bad ineffective law.”
Judy, who did not want to give her last name to protect someone in her life, is a teacher who has worked with the immigrant community for 37 years. She has witnessed the separation of families of mixed status and of her own family. Judy attended the rally to support the organizations and to ask Bennet and his staff to urge President Joe Biden to give parole and work permits to undocumented spouses of American citizens.
“This is the tip of a huge iceberg. A long time ago we realized that there aren’t just one or three U.S. citizens that have spouses that are immigrants, but there’s a million and many of the spouses have inadmissibility bars that prevent them for a lifetime to seek legal status and that can be changed by executive order by President Biden,” she said.
A day before the discussion, Bennet, along with other members of the Senate, wrote a letter asking President Biden to take “all available actions to streamline pathways to lawful status for undocumented immigrants, providing certainty to the American businesses, communities, and families who rely on them.”
The letter laid out several recommendations on what Biden could do to help protect families of mixed status, such as permitting spouses of Americans to work while their green card cases are pending, streamlining the process to change to a “nonimmigrant” status, and modernizing cancellation of removal rules so family caregivers can stay together.
“I have to Facetime my mom. I don’t get to just go around the corner and have her over for dinner on a Sunday,” said Armando, who is the stepson of Markowitz. “Out of nowhere my family just disappeared. Right now there are thousands of American citizens missing a part of their love, and a hole has been forced in their families and communities. It doesn’t have to be this way.”