Biden’s immigration restrictions caps spots for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Ahead of his first trip to the US-Mexico border, and a meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this week, President Joe Biden’s administration announced tough new immigration rules last Thursday, capping humanitarian parole visas at 30,000 per month for eligible people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

The new rules do not replace Title 42, the controversial authority enacted by former President Donald Trump at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic that allows the US to quickly deport migrants, ostensibly to limit the spread of the disease. However, the new rules expand the powers granted under Title 42, allowing the administration to quickly deport some migrants who do not follow the correct procedure to apply for humanitarian parole.

Biden said the new rules aren’t a permanent solution to congressional immigration reform’s deadlock, but a stopgap measure to deal with the influx of people trying to enter the US. In fiscal year 2022, border crossings will reach 2.76 million, an increase of 1 million from the previous year.

The goal of the new program is to prevent people from crossing outside official ports of entry without visa status, as millions of migrants who enter the US through the southern border do. Since Biden’s new rule went into effect, entering without financial sponsorship and the background check required to obtain humanitarian parole is an automatic disqualification for the program, even if the migrant is from an eligible country of origin.

The new rules could complicate migrants’ efforts to seek asylum, as they have the right to do. It also has the potential for great risk in Mexico, where they will be sent if they fail to meet the new criteria, and which is ill-equipped to protect or provide for them.

Although the new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has promised to carry out immigration reform, the reality of a divided Congress and his own diminished power make it questionable whether he can do it. And that means these new rules, and whoever the Biden administration decides to put in place, could very well guide U.S. immigration policy for months — and even years — to come.

What are the new rules?

The new humanitarian parole program applies to people from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Under the new program, only 30,000 per month from these four countries will be eligible for humanitarian parole.

Under Biden’s new rules, people from the four countries seeking safety in the U.S. must have a sponsor – someone who is financially responsible – for two years, enter an authorized port of entry, apply for status online before arriving, graduate. strict vetting, and no irregular crossing attempts after January 5, 2023.

These four countries have been selected for the program because from the uptick in meeting – in some cases, as much as increased sixfold just in the year – at the border. Also the difficulty of deporting migrants back to their country of origin; Especially Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, because of the strained or non-existent diplomatic relations with the US, are not easy to accept deportation, and the deportation of the administration of Haitian migrants to the country in severe unrest has caused public condemnation and even caused Daniel Foote. , the former special envoy for Haiti, will step down in 2021.

Those who attempt to cross the land outside of a legal port of entry are quickly deported under Title 8 statutes or the more useful Title 42 authority, which is not an immigration law, but a public health authority — and a scientifically dubious one, at that. . Title 42 was originally intended to stop the spread of Covid-19; with about 70 percent of the U.S. now fully vaccinated, most public health experts believe that the authority is no longer useful.

The Biden administration tried several times last year, most recently in December, to end the program, fueling anxiety in border towns and cities about an uncontrollable flood of migrants. However, the Supreme Court struck down DHS’s plan to overturn the rule. Biden’s new rule relies on that stay, increasing deportations under Title 42 and continuing to use that rule as immigration policy.

Separately, the Justice Department and DHS proposed new rules on Jan. 5, not yet implemented, that would require migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to first apply for — and be deported from — asylum in other countries they pass through. his way to the border.

Jim Wilson/AFP via Getty Images

Frustrates both Republicans with the uptick in irregular border crossings and the questionable tactics the government has deployed to fight it is the fact that the immigration law has been stasis for decades, with some important updates to match the reality, especially on the southern border. .

The immigration system has not undergone major overhaul since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolish the policy of restricting immigration based on country of origin, a deeply xenophobic principle of the 1924 Immigration Act.

Bipartisan efforts in the Senate, including a push last year by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), have floundered. McCarthy has promised to tackle immigration in his new role, promising to “not ignore this security and sovereignty crisis,” although what he will do other than impeach DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas and hold hearings on the issue on the southern border is unclear.

What the new system means for migrants

In Cuba, increased poverty due to the impact of stricter US sanctions and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as political repression during anti-government protests in 2021, led to 220,908 crossings at the southern border in 2022, an increase of almost six times from the year previously according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS has been using the humanitarian parole program with Venezuelan migrants since October 2022, after a sharp increase – from 2,787 encounters in 2020 to 187,716 in 2022 – in encounters on the southern US border. In Venezuela, too, the economy has grown over the past decade and despite improvements last year, inflation hit 155 percent in October, according to Reuters, prompting some 7 million Venezuelans to leave the country. Since implementing a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans, DHS has reduced irregular border crossings by 76 percent, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing government data.

In 2022, DHS had 163,876 encounters with Nicaraguans, more than three years ago. Political repression in the country has intensified under President Daniel Ortega, with the government killing and detaining protesters and political opponents, holding what many consider fraudulent elections, and silencing civil society organizations and the free press, according to Human Rights Watch. And Haitians, who attempted 53,910 crossings on the southern border last year, have endured gang violence, disease, natural disasters, and political instability — most recently after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

All of this means that potential migrants who do not meet the qualifications for the new program and try to enter will be deported to Mexico or deported back to their countries of origin.

Despite the desperation in the country, migrants coming to the US from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti will not be able to claim asylum under the new program. Requesting asylum is a legal process by which a person, due to a serious threat to his life due to identity or political reasons, takes refuge in another country. This requires significant documentation and proof of danger to a person’s life due to factors beyond their control. The humanitarian parole program, however, is more restrictive and lasts only two years, after which they will be deported or have to leave (although parole is granted again in certain cases).

This is the main problem for critics of the new policy: Even if it identifies a legal path for people in crisis to come to the US, it will prevent more people who are extremely vulnerable – without financial sponsorship, a safe and legal route, or the ability to apply for programs online – from applying for asylum, shuttling to Mexico in unsafe and inadequate conditions, or stranded somewhere on the route from the country of origin to the US.

Mexico has agreed to take in an additional 30,000 people a month who try to cross the irregular border. Although the Biden administration also tried to end the so-called “Stay in Mexico” program, which requires migrants to wait for US asylum hearings in the country, and even stopped registering migrants in August, it technically still exists. It is unclear how many migrants awaiting asylum hearings are still detained in Mexico, but Human Rights Watch, as well as other human rights groups, have documented the dangers they face there, including rape, kidnapping, torture, assault, and murder.

Biden’s new policy is far from a long-term solution to the immigration crisis that has plagued the country for decades, but it also does not have an end point, and it is unclear what the long-term prospects are even for humanitarian recipients. Parole. Without immigration reform at the congressional level, there is no end to the slapdash policies that have become the norm over the past few years, under Trump and Biden.