The Biden regime has used a 1950s law to “parole” over half a million foreigners without visas into the United States, increasing legal immigration by hundreds of thousands in a way that effectively bypasses Congress – possibly unlawfully.
The scale of the parole schemes is “unprecedented,” according to Doris Meissner, who served as a senior immigration official under Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
They began with program for some 77,000 Afghans, but new programs were soon cooked up: one for 168,400 Latinos and Caribbeans with American sponsors, one for 141,200 Ukrainians with American sponsors, and one for another 22,000 people who presented themselves at the border claiming to be Ukrainians, for example.
A Ukraine-style sponsorship program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans has seen a further 168,403 migrants granted parole, with scope for 360,000 to be admitted under the program every year.
Another parole scheme for asylum seekers who wait in Mexico and lodge a request to cross the border through the CBP One app has seen 133,000 people admitted, with scope to admit 529,250 a year.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argues these parole schemes are not lawful: “Congress did grant the Executive Branch parole authority. But that authority is very limited… Section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that parole may be granted ‘temporarily… only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’ That is language that might apply to 541 foreign nationals, not 541,000.”
Some Republican lawmakers agree, and the parole scheme for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, at least, is being litigated against by several conservative-led states.
