He parole humanitarian program for immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua has come to its feared end after two years. The Government of Joe Biden announced this Friday that it will not extend the program for these four nationalities when it expires at the end of this month for Venezuelans and for the rest in January of next year. The Democrat’s decision will force half a million people to seek other methods to remain in the country or face deportation in the coming months.
The Biden Administration launched the program in October 2022 to offer a legal path for the thousands of Venezuelan immigrants who were arriving in the United States irregularly. Since then, some 117,000 Venezuelans have received the protection of the parole humanitarian and have entered the country with a two-year authorization to live and work legally.
Three months later, in January 2023, the Government expanded the program to include Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba, whose citizens were also crossing the southern border in record numbers at the time. Two years later, in total, some 530,000 immigrants currently reside in the country thanks to this program, according to the latest figures from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the end of August. Of that total, some 210,000 are Haitians, 117,000 Venezuelans, 110,000 Cubans and 93,000 Nicaraguans.
Now, all of them could face deportation in the coming months in the middle of the electoral cycle. “His parole will automatically end at the end of your probation period (up to two years from the day you received parole in the United States). If you have not applied for legal status or a period of authorized stay, you will need to leave the United States before your period of stay expires. paroleor you may be subject to removal proceedings,” reads an update on the DHS website for this program (officially known as CHNV). “If you have not been granted legal status or a period of authorized stay, you may begin to accrue unlawful presence in the United States.”
Although the program was conceived as a temporary measure and did not guarantee permanent legal residency or mean a path to citizenship for beneficiaries, immigrant advocacy organizations hoped that the president would expand protections beyond the first two years. Especially since he already did it with programs re-parole for thousands of Ukrainians and Afghans and because since the implementation of the measure, border authorities have reported a 99% drop in encounters with immigrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.
However, the parole has been the subject of criticism, especially in the final months of the presidential campaign. Donald Trump and his allies have attacked Biden and Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for launching a program that the former president says is illegal because it is an abuse of presidential executive authority. Before the Biden Administration’s decision, the Republican candidate had already promised on several occasions that he would get rid of the program if he is re-elected in November. “Prepare to leave,” he said in an interview with Fox News a week ago.
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