Amid years of deadlock in Congress over comprehensive immigration reform, President Biden has opened a back door to allow hundreds of thousands of new immigrants to enter the country.
Last year, the government launched a humanitarian program to offer refuge to people fleeing Ukraine, Haiti, and Latin America, providing immigrants with the opportunity to quickly obtain a work permit, as long as they have a sponsor on American soil who will be financially responsible for them until they stabilize in the country.
By mid-April, around 300,000 Ukrainians had arrived in the United States through such programs – a number greater than all the people admitted worldwide by the U.S. official refugee program in the last five years.
By the end of 2023, it is expected that about 360,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians will be admitted through a similar private sponsorship initiative introduced in January this year to try to curb the entry of these immigrants across the border with Mexico.
The Biden administration has also expanded the number of people in the United States with what is called temporary protected status, a program that former President Donald J. Trump attempted to end. About 670,000 people from 16 countries have had their protections extended or have become eligible since Biden took office, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
Overall, these temporary humanitarian programs could become the largest expansion of legal immigration in the country in decades.
The main challenge of increasing legal immigration this way is that courts can be called upon at any moment to decide that the measure is an abuse of discretionary power and suspend everything – a situation similar to DACA, a program created by former President Barack Obama that guarantees temporary legal status to young students who entered the U.S. illegally brought by their parents.
Twenty states led by Republicans, including Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Arkansas, have filed a lawsuit in a federal court to suspend the parole program for residents of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, arguing that the plan will admit 360,000 new immigrants per year and burden the states with additional costs for health, education, and law enforcement.
On the other hand, employers, especially in industries suffering from labor shortages, are pleased with Biden’s policy.
A study released last week by FWD.us, a bipartisan pro-immigration group, estimated that about 450,000 immigrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Latin American countries who entered the United States through humanitarian programs were filling jobs in industries facing critical labor shortages, including construction, food services, healthcare, and manufacturing.
Source: The New York Times