The United States recently paused immigration applications for certain migrants. Who were the applications paused for, and what does this mean?
The U.S. paused applications for immigration benefits such as Temporary Protected Status and asylum for people admitted during the Biden administration’s parole programs, including Uniting for Ukraine and the CHNV program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Cubans admitted under these programs have the option to apply for a green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act. This pause stops people legally admitted to the United States under these programs from accessing existing legal pathways to remain in the United States for longer than their parole term would allow.
While these immigrants still qualify for these legal pathways, the processing pause will create longer delays than already exist for those immigrating to the United States.
The pause on applications applies to programs that allow migrants to come to the United States legally through an immigration policy known as parole. What is parole?
Parole is a power Congress granted to the executive branch to allow people to enter the United States temporarily, often for humanitarian reasons. Parole under Uniting for Ukraine was precisely this — temporary humanitarian entry to the United States for Ukrainians, whose country is an active war zone due to the egregious invasion by Russia. Parole for CHNV applicants provided a vetted legal option for migrants who wanted to request protection in the United States while still in their home country rather than paying a smuggler to bring them to the U.S.-Mexico border to request asylum.
While new migrants can’t come to the United States through parole programs, what does this pause mean for migrants currently in the U.S. under this law?
This pause means that these individuals, who are seeking to use lawful immigration pathways that exist in current U.S. law, are not currently able to access those pathways. Parole is temporary. If that parole expires without an extension, which must be granted by the executive branch, those individuals must leave or face removal. The pause means that the parole may expire before the applications for these other lawful pathways are approved.
How will this pause in applications and parole programs affect the U.S. immigration system?
The U.S. legal immigration system, in a typical year, admits 1 million immigrants. This is fewer than the number we need to maintain our labor force and population growth. Some lawful pathways are horrendously backlogged. Some green card categories make applicants wait decades before their green card is granted because of per-country caps that limit the number of green cards awarded annually. Pausing lawful programs like these exacerbates backlogs.
While these parole programs were politically controversial, they admitted migrants via legal pathways, boosting our labor force at a time when the United States has millions of open jobs and not enough native-born people to fill them. Parole programs, asylum and Temporary Protected Status are not perfect immigration vehicles — better policy would be to expand green cards to include more people with skills to fill open jobs.
Only Congress can make that change to the law. Until Congress acts, these other legal migration channels do benefit the U.S. economy by providing willing workers.