In latest testimony earlier than the Home Subcommittees on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and Border Safety and Enforcement, of the Committee on Homeland Safety, my Cato Institute colleague David Bier offered a robust protection of the legality, justice, and effectiveness of immigration “parole packages,” which permit broad classes of migrants fleeing battle and oppression to enter the US legally. As he describes, there’s a lengthy historical past of such packages, most just lately these created by President Biden for migrants from Ukraine fleeing Russian invasion (the Uniting for Ukraine program), and 4 Latin American nations beset by violence and socialist tyranny (the CHNV program).
David is likely one of the nation’s main immigration coverage consultants, and his testimony is must-reading for anybody on this concern. Here’s a abstract:
One authorized means for immigrants to enter and take part in US society is parole, an immigration class first created by Congress within the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. Over the a long time since then, tens of millions of people have entered this nation as parolees. Though parole is a brief standing, it permits immigrants to regulate to lawful everlasting residence if they’re eligible by one other pathway, which many hundreds of parolees have completed. Many former parolees are actually People and proceed to contribute to their new house. It’s an important and necessary function of America’s authorized immigration system.
Congress ought to:
- defend present parolees from the president’s mass deportation efforts;
- reinstitute the parole processes suspended by the president; and
- broaden these processes to present extra folks a viable authorized choice to immigrate legally to the USA.
David explains the benefits of these packages, and ably addresses a wide range of authorized and coverage objections.
I’ve defended the legality of CHNV in a Supreme Court docket amicus brief, and in an earlier amicus transient in Texas v. Division of Homeland Safety, a lawsuit filed by twenty GOP-controlled states (that case was ultimately dismissed by a conservative Trump-appointed federal choose for lack of standing). I additionally defended it in a 2023 article in The Hill, and criticized Trump’s makes an attempt to revoke it in a March 2025 put up.
See additionally my varied writings on the success of Uniting for Ukraine and what we are able to study from it.
