Washington, D.C. (August 8, 2024) – The Biden/Harris administration has recently paused the fraud-prone program which allows up to 30,000 inadmissible nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to fly to the United States each month. The suspension of this “CHNV parole program” is the focus of this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, featuring Andrew Arthur, the Center’s Fellow in Law and Policy, and Mark Krikorian, the Center’s Executive Director.
While the grants of parole (and work authorization) to these migrants – who have no legal right to enter the U.S. – are supposed to last only two years, Arthur notes that “the administration never had a plan to remove these migrants after these two years were over.” Overall, nearly 400,000 unauthorized migrants have entered the U.S. under the CHNV program, likely permanently.
Arthur also points out the fraud and other abuses in the CHNV program. For instance, many of these migrants are flying to the U.S. from safe third countries such as Iceland and Fiji. Arthur also points out various problems with the program’s sponsor requirement – “sponsors” are not actually required to provide food or housing for CHNV beneficiaries, and there are many cases of sponsors turning out to be deceased or possessing fake Social Security numbers, raising concern about trafficking.
Arthur and Krikorian surmise that the administration is likely pausing the program because they see it as a political liability for the upcoming election, as the widespread examples of fraud became too difficult to hide. Ultimately, the flaws in this program reveal the importance of ensuring that Congress, not the president, has the sole power to make laws pertaining to immigration.
Highlights:
- The Biden-Harris administration’s legal rationale for the CHNV program comes from Congress’s authorization of a narrow “parole” authority, which allows the executive to let in inadmissible aliens under certain narrow circumstances. This administration has abused this small loophole to let in 2.2 million people who have no right to be here.
- The CHNV program is one of two legally dubious parole programs implemented by the Biden-Harris administration. The other, the CBP One app interview scheme, allows migrants of any nationality to schedule their illegal entry at one of eight ports of entry on the Mexican border.
- There are currently two ongoing legal challenges to the CHNV program, one in Texas and one in North Dakota.
- Sponsors of CHNV applicants need not be individuals; non-profit groups or companies can also be sponsors, creating the potential for labor exploitation where employers hold migrants in debt bondage.
- If the next administration were to terminate the CHNV program, the INA would require all 400,000 CHNV parolees to be detained, making a complete shutdown potentially difficult to implement.
In his closing commentary, Krikorian discusses the ongoing riots in the United Kingdom, sparked by the murder of three British girls by the son of Rwandan immigrants. He describes the riots as symbolic of the broader consequences of Western leadership acting as a “cartel” to prevent changes to immigration policy favored by the majority, leading to societal unrest.
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