The U.S. government will expand humanitarian passage monthly for as many as 30,000 people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela. That’s under a broad measure designed to grapple with historic migration from the Western Hemisphere, President Joe Biden’s administration announced Thursday.
But people from those four countries who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally will be turned away under a pandemic-era policy, the Biden administration said, in a major expansion of an existing effort to stop Venezuelans trying to enter the U.S.
Under the humanitarian program, the immigrants must have an eligible sponsor and pass a vetting process to come to the U.S. for up to two years and receive work authorization, senior administration officials said.
These four affected nations are among those for whom migrant border crossings have risen most sharply, with no easy way to quickly return migrants to their home countries.
“Do not, do not just show up at the border,” Biden said Thursday. “Stay where you are and apply legally from there.”
Biden will make his first U.S.-Mexico border visit on Sunday with a stop in El Paso.
The new humanitarian policy could result in 360,000 people from these four nations lawfully entering the U.S. in a year, a huge number. But currently, far more people from those countries are trying to cross into the U.S. on foot, by boat or swimming. Migrants from those four countries were stopped 82,286 times in November alone.
“This new process is orderly,” Biden said. “It’s safe and humane, and it works.”
Similar to Venezuela initiative
The measure is similar to an earlier smaller initiative announced in mid-October for Venezuelans, with a key requirement that Venezuelans apply from their homeland. Administration officials emphasized that the result was a decrease in migration from that country.
Overall, unlawful migration continues to swell at record levels at the border with Mexico.
In a press conference Thursday afternoon, Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. secretary of homeland security, emphasized the challenges of unprecedented and diverse migration. “The longevity of these programs depends on what we are experiencing at the border and the dynamism of the migration challenge that is gripping this hemisphere, and quite frankly the entire world,” said Mayorkas, who plans to join Biden on the El Paso visit.
In fiscal year 2022, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 2.2 million arrests, a record number. In December, immigration authorities encountered about 7,000 to 9,000 individuals daily.
That indicated that migration didn’t slow down from monthly levels that recently hovered around 205,000 monthly for the Border Patrol at the southern border.
The El Paso area is now the busiest region for immigration authorities. Administration officials said they would expand resources to border cities and counties, but they gave no funding specifics.
The new measures for Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti also come with stiffer enforcement for those who try to cross through Panama or Mexico after today, senior officials said.
Key to the measures is the growing involvement of Mexico in international migration initiatives. Administration officials said Mexico will accept the return every month of up to 30,000 people who are expelled, a reference to the use of the pandemic-era measure known as Title 42.
The measures also include tougher enforcement of expedited removal at the border for those who “do not have a legal basis to remain” and can’t be expelled quickly under Title 42. The lifting of Title 42 is under litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Expedited removal comes with stiff legal consequences for repeat attempts, including five-year bans to entry. It can lead to eventual criminal prosecution, as well. Title 42 has none of those harsh penalties.
Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at University of Texas at El Paso, applauded Biden’s move, but cautioned that the “root causes of violent crime, political repression, economic insecurity and natural disasters will remain in place and will continue to challenge federal policymakers. President Biden recognizes this but may not be able to bridge the gaps between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, or between the [U.S.] and populist governments in the source countries of many of the migrants in 2023.”
Immigrant advocates critical of measures
The latest measures come as immigrant advocates call for the return of asylum processing at the border, under U.S. and international law, for those who face certain types of persecution.
“President Biden correctly recognized today that seeking asylum is a legal right and spoke sympathetically about people fleeing persecution,” said Jonathan Blazer, the ACLU director of border strategies, in a statement. “But the plan he announced further ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum protections.”
Blazer added, ”Let’s be clear: Nothing requires the administration to expand Title 42 while it claims to be preparing for its ending. There is simply no reason why the benefits of a new parole program for Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians must be conditioned on the expansion of dangerous expulsions.”
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of immigrant rights group America’s Voice, tempered her praise with criticism too. “[Slamming] the door to more asylum seekers while cracking open a few windows isn’t the answer or an appropriate balance,” she said. The asylum system needs to be fully resourced, she said.
Under the new Biden announcement, two government agencies are “surging” asylum officers and immigration judges to the border so that they can more quickly process such applications. An asylum claim can take more than four years to process, according to the Syracuse University research nonprofit TRAC.
In Dallas, Almas Muscatwalla, who works with Dallas Responds, a collective of nonprofits, said she was grateful that Biden acknowledged the role of churches and faith groups in settling migrants.
Dallas Responds operates a migrant respite center at the Oak Lawn United Methodist Church. In recent months, migrants have come from a federal immigration detention center in Central Texas, but the group is prepared to receive migrants from El Paso. “Right now,” she said, “we will continue serving.”
In El Paso, Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, called on Biden to fulfill his promises of a “humane border policy. We’re still suffering the struggle of anti-immigrant strategies such as Title 42. He’s saying he’s against Title 42, but today he’s announcing this pandemic rule to other nations. Where is the consistency?
“I believe the president and the administration don’t have a sensible human strategy,” Garcia said. “The only thing they have is a reactive strategy with the remains of Trump’s strategy at the border. We’re in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, and his only solution is expelling and deporting people?”
Biden’s action will “overwhelm our shelters,” said pastor Rosalio “Chalio” Sosa, who runs the Tierra de Oro Baptist Church in El Paso and five migrant shelters across the border in Ciudad Juárez. “I’m glad he’s trying to find a humane way to treat migrants, but where is the infrastructure to accommodate so many headed our way? We need shelters, food, clothing, funds.”
He said he hasn’t been told how the Mexican government will handle some 30,000 migrants who will be returned to Mexico monthly.
In Mexico City, Roberto Velasco, chief of the North America bureau at the Mexican Foreign Ministry, said via tweet that the Mexican government is “pleased with the new actions.” The Mexican diplomat framed the measures as an expansion of a “legal labor movement.”
In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Velasco stressed the need to safeguard migrants traveling through Mexico. “You close a window,” Velasco said, “and you open a door,” in a safe, orderly way. The goal is to keep migrants away from smugglers and the costly and perilous journeys through Mexico, he said.
Enrique Valenzuela, a Chihuahua state government official who oversees migration issues, applauded the move by both governments to “find a humanitarian way around a complicated situation. But no doubt this will challenge the border, here in Ciudad Juárez, and El Paso, too.
“Just because you declare a change in policy doesn’t mean Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians will suddenly stop coming,” he said. “Long after October, we’re still seeing new waves of Venezuelans coming. We will cope with the new challenge as best we can.”
Dianne Solis reported from Dallas, and Alfredo Corchado reported from El Paso. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
