Policy Under Trump Bars Obama-Era Path to US for Central American Youths – New York Times
The Obama administration expanded the program beyond children last year to include more categories of migrants.
By this summer, of the approximately 10,000 people who had applied for entry, 2,193 had been approved as refugees, said R. Carter Langston, a spokesman for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
An additional 1,465 did not meet the legal criteria to become refugees, but were allowed to come to the United States and work legally as parolees, a kind of halfway status that does not offer a pathway to citizenship as refugees have, but protects them from deportation for two years.
Those who have already received parole will not see any immediate changes when the parole program ends on Wednesday. But, as before, they will have to reapply for parole when the two-year period is up, Mr. Langston said.
Once they do, they will be petitioning an agency that Mr. Trump has ordered to be less lenient than it was under President Barack Obama. The parole program was one of several moves that Mr. Obama made to protect young immigrants from deportation and that conservatives protested as stretching the limits of presidential power.
Though the parole program is ending, children and their families can still apply for refugee status as before.
Lisa Frydman, the vice president for regional policy and initiatives for Kids in Need of Defense, a group in Washington that provides legal assistance to unaccompanied immigrant children, said the decision to shut down the parole option would drum up more business for the smuggling networks that Mr. Trump has vowed to dismantle.
It is not a surprise, but it is a disgrace, she said. This is the Trump administration completely turning its back on Central American children, slamming the door on them.
For the 2,714 people in the process of applying to the program, gaining what is known as conditional parole status, the future is hazier. Their conditional approvals will be revoked. Some, after being interviewed by refugee officers, may qualify as full-blown refugees. The rest may ask for parole individually, according to the announcement, but the agency will no longer automatically consider them for parole.
No one has entered the United States through the program since February, when the Department of Homeland Security suspended it while officials reviewed what Mr. Trumps executive order would mean for it, Mr. Langston said.
Ms. Frydmans organization has three cases in which the child began the application process but has not been able to travel to the United States. In one case, two siblings applied; one was granted refugee status and the other conditional parole. The refugee is free to come; the parolee is not.
In another case, the mother had already bought the plane ticket for her child, who had received conditional parole.
Its so cruel, Ms. Frydman said.
A version of this article appears in print on August 16, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Policy Blocks Obama-Era Path to U.S. for Central Americans.
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Policy Under Trump Bars Obama-Era Path to US for Central American Youths - New York Times