Trump Cruelly Terminates Program for Legal Migrants Fleeing Communist Tyranny, and Seeks to Deport them
Yesterday, the Trump Administration terminated legal “parole” status for some 530,000 legal migrants who entered the United States under the CHNV program, which allowed residents of four Latin American countries – Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – to live and work in the US for up to two years if they passed a background check and had a US-resident sponsor willing to provide financial support. These people will be subject to deportation, as of April 24.
The termination of CHNV parole is a further expansion of Trump’s cruel campaign against legal immigration. In this case, it targets for deportation hundreds of thousands of people who fled horrific communist tyranny in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and now risk being deported back to it. There was a time when American conservatives saw themselves as opponents of socialism and welcomed those fleeing it. No longer.
The revocation of parole will also needlessly deprive the US economy of tens of thousands valuable workers and entrepreneurs. Hispanic immigrants, like those from other countries, disproportionately contribute to various types of innovations and businesses startups. Given the horrors that await them in their countries of origin, I expect many of the CHNV migrants will try to remain in the US illegally rather than “self-deport.” If so, they will be less productive than before (as they could only work black market jobs). And the administration’s policy will actually increase the number of illegal migrants, rather than reducing it.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims “[t]hese are the 530,000 illegal immigrants that Joe Biden flew to the United States on the taxpayers dime.” Every word of this is false. There were no flights “on the taxpayers dime.” The migrants either paid for their own transportation or did so with the help of their sponsors.
And the CHNV program was entirely legal. I summarized the reasons why in a 2023 article criticizing a lawsuit filed against it by a group of GOP-led state governments:
The legal basis for these private sponsorship programs is the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which, as later modified, gives the Department
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