Biden’s ‘Parole in Place’ Plan Is a Solution in Search of a Problem
The lack of a ‘limiting principle’ would allow parole to swallow all the other immigration rules
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 30, 2024
As I recently explained, the Biden administration appears to be planning to expand on its other “parole” programs to grant de facto amnesty to approximately 1.1 million illegal aliens who are married to U.S. citizens. If that happens, those sympathetic couples in “mixed status” families will be just the beginning, but it should be noted that nearly all of those alien spouses already have a remedy to their plight. In other words, this plan is a solution in search of a problem, albeit one that will make future enforcement efforts next to impossible, but more importantly, it would expand DHS’s limited parole authority so wide that it will quickly swallow all the other rules governing aliens in the INA.
Parole, and Ice Cream. Under section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), aliens seeking admission to the United States (including illegal entrants) must prove they have a visa or other document that permit their admission, and that they are otherwise admissible.
In section 212(d)(5)(A) of the INA, however, Congress gave the executive branch (originally the attorney general, now the DHS secretary) the authority to allow inadmissible aliens to enter the United States for given reasons (like emergency medical treatment) or for specific periods of time.
Parole doesn’t make those aliens any less removable, and in fact the parole statute requires DHS to take parolees back into custody and treat them like all other aliens seeking admission at ports of entry once their periods of parole have expired.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Bidens-Parole-Place-Plan-Solution-Search-Problem
