The Biden administration’s use of humanitarian parole has become a sticking point for Senate negotiations, reports Ellen M. Gilmer of Bloomberg Government.

Parole is "really at the heart of the administration’s strategy to create legal pathways as a way of encouraging people to come lawfully, with permission, as opposed to with a smuggler," said Angela Kelley of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Republican negotiators have said they would want to focus on "limiting the use of parole for migrant releases at the border," but others in the party are pressuring negotiators to gut the program.

"Constraining [parole] authority could tie the hands of a future administration of either party when they really need to use it," said Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center, also a Council on National Security and Immigration (CNSI) leader.

The CNSI on Friday recommended procedural guardrails and more oversight for the program, "while maintaining traditional executive branch discretion for case-specific parole authority." (This morning the CNSI also reiterated opposition to impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, on which a House hearing is under way this morning.)

On the reasonable solutions front, Steven Rattner and Maureen White put forward suggestions in a guest essay in The New York Times, with graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo. Lots of good ideas here — we’d just emphasize the need for a reasonable, not excessively restrictive standard for initial screenings of people legitimately fleeing persecution, and the need to maintain existing legal pathways such as parole to reduce irregular migration at the border.  

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Isabella Miller and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

THE RHETORIC — Immigrants and advocates in Iowa are disturbed by the political rhetoric in election ads, report Danielle Paquette and Sabrina Rodriguez of The Washington Post. Gloria Henriquez, a restaurant owner born in El Salvador, worries that words from candidates like Donald Trump will fuel a suspicion of outsiders. "I will use Trump’s own words: He will poison Americans’ mindsets," she said.

MICROCOSM — A Venezuelan family received a letter saying they’d been granted asylum — and one saying they’d been denied. It’s one example of an overwhelmed immigration system, including almost 2 million backlogged asylum cases, Nina Agrawal of The New York Times reports. Grisy Oropeza, who came here from Venezuela with her husband and children, said of the experience, "One goes through so much to get here. To get here and not know your destiny, to be still on that journey — it’s depressing."

FINDING BALANCE — In Forbes, NYU professor Michael Posner reminds us of the foundations for offering protection to people fleeing persecution. Amid the increase of migration around the globe, countries instituting tough new policies risk breaching international agreements. "The way forward is not to curtail everyone’s right to seek asylum, but to make the system both fairer and more efficient," he writes. Polling we conducted last year demonstrates that Americans still value the U.S. being a refuge for the persecuted.

‘BLESSED’ — Ethan Bauer of Commonweal zooms in on the work of faith organizations that have welcomed migrants flown from Texas to Sacramento, California, last year. Yoel and Wilkendry were among Venezuelan migrants who were enticed onto planes by promises of work in California and later found themselves helpless on the streets in Sacramento. "I have no words. They offered true support, substantial support," said Yoel about the city’s faith community. "I feel very lucky, very blessed. I thank God for putting these people in my path."

Thanks for reading,

Dan