As President Joe Biden’s administration prepares to lift asylum restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is offering new legal options for people to enter the United States.
The government has said it will take in at least 100,000 Hispanics looking for their families in the US, but has given virtually no details. The plan was announced at a time when restrictions related to a public health law known as Title 42 are due to expire on Thursday.
HOW TO APPLY?
On a recent visit to the border town of Brownsville, Texas, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said people in regional processing centers must apply for family reunification permits in the United States. The government plans to open a hundred such centers in the western hemisphere, with the first to be in Guatemala and Colombia.
The centers will process requests for humanitarian parole for family reunification, Mayorkas said, but also requests for the U.S. refugee program and humanitarian parole for people deemed to be at high risk, which will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE?
The new family reunification program is aimed at immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia who are US citizens or lawful permanent residents and whose applications to bring immediate family members have been approved.
The US government said eligible individuals would receive an invitation to participate. The government issues travel permits to approved individuals, and individuals may apply for a work permit in the United States while awaiting their immigrant visa.
The government said it would release more information in mid-June.
Whether there will be age restrictions is unclear. In general, immigrants and refugees in the United States were only allowed to apply for immigration permits for immediate family members, such as spouses or children. To be considered a child, the individual must be unmarried and under the age of 21. All other relatives such as siblings, cousins and adult children are not eligible for family reunification.
Immigration lawyers say some immigrants have waited years to be reunited with their spouses and children.
WHY 100,000?
It is not clear why the government has said it intends to take in up to 100,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador under the humanitarian family reunification approval process.
Julia Gelatt of the Center for Migration Policy said at least 284,000 Latin Americans had submitted family sponsorship applications, according to the US State Department. Among them are 78,000 Salvadorans, up to 57,000 Hondurans, 58,000 Guatemalans and 56,000 Colombians.
However, it is not clear whether those waiting have already found other options, he added.
Immigration attorney Sarah Gavigan, who works at the Central America Resource Center (Carecen) in San Francisco, also wondered if the 100,000 reflected the actual number of backlogged family reunification applications from those countries.
Gavigan praised the creation of a new family reunification program but also criticized other rules in the Biden administration, which he says penalize people who flee danger and reach the border to seek asylum.
Will it be similar to other humanitarian programs that have recently been offered?
Immigration lawyers believe the new family reunification parole program is the latest effort of a model that began when the United States took in 100,000 Ukrainians after Russia invaded their country in 2022.
The program required Ukrainians to apply online, financially support someone and enter through an airport, while Ukrainians who arrived at the US border on foot were turned away.
Following the success of that program, in January the government extended humanitarian parole to other people fleeing their home countries, arriving in record numbers at the US border. In January, the government announced it would take in up to 30,000 people each month from four countries: Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti.
Mayorkas said that after implementing these legal options, the number of encounters between border guards and migrants from these four nationalities decreased by 95%.
Most parole programs allow people entry for a limited time, but attorneys say those who can come to the United States for family reunification can apply for permanent residency.
ARE THERE PLANS TO HELP MORE FAMILIES UNITE?
Yes. The Department of Homeland Security announced that it will resume and expand family reunification authorization programs for Haitians and Cubans to allow, on a case-by-case basis, entry of screened individuals with previously approved applications of this type into the United States. joined. The government indicated that the program is for immediate family members of Haitian and Cuban immigrants in the United States. The government will invite people to participate.
It is not clear whether the government plans to abolish the need for a consular interview. Allen Orr Jr., who has worked extensively with Haitians requesting humanitarian releases, said it was critical because most Haitians could not be interviewed at the US embassy due to widespread instability and violence in the country . Caribbean.
Orr called the new measures an important step in the right direction. But he added that ultimately, comprehensive immigration reform by Congress will be needed to solve the problem.
“It’s wonderful, but basically you’re using a bucket to empty the ocean,” he said. “It’s nothing radical that will change the number of people arriving at the border. It gives the government another leverage, but it won’t change anything about the immigration system in general.”
What are the critics saying?
Immigration attorney Curtis Morrison said time will tell if the government delivers on its promise.
His firm represents 3,000 people in the Middle East and Asia who have applied for similar humanitarian family reunification permits and have had to wait for years. The process should take six to nine months, he said.
Part of the problem, he added, is the lack of government personnel capable of processing the applications.
“I have a hard time taking the Biden administration seriously when they talk about expanding family reunification programs,” he said.
At the current waiting time, a parent who is a US citizen or permanent resident card holder and intends to bring his wife and child from a country like Pakistan is unlikely to get back together until the child starts preschool, he said.