What major changes in US immigration policy could mean

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is taking a more active role in Senate negotiations over changes to the immigration system that Republicans are demanding in exchange for providing money to Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Israel for its war with Hamas.

The Democratic president has said he is willing to make “significant compromises at the border” as Republicans block war aid in Congress. The White House is expected to become more involved in the talks this week as the standoff over border policy changes has deepened and remaining resources for Ukraine have dwindled.

“It's time to make a deal that both sides can agree to,” Biden's budget director, Shalanda Young, said Sunday on CBS' “Face the Nation.”

Republicans say the record number of migrants crossing the southern border poses a security threat because authorities cannot adequately screen all migrants and those entering the United States are straining the country's resources. Republican lawmakers also say they can't justify to their voters sending billions of dollars to other countries, even in times of war, while failing to tackle the border at home.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said “it's literally getting out of hand.”

“All we're trying to do is say what tools are needed to get this back under control so that we don't have chaos at our southern border,” Lankford told CBS.

But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the proposed changes would undermine protections for people in desperate need of help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the top Democratic negotiator, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also assessed Republican policy demands as “unreasonable.”

“We don't want to close off the United States of America to people who come here to be rescued from dangerous, miserable conditions where their lives are in danger. The best thing about America is that you can come here and be saved from terror and torture,” Murphy said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Much of the negotiations is taking place in private, but some of the issues under discussion are well-known: asylum standards, humanitarian parole and expedited deportation authorities, among others.

A look at what they are and what can happen when changes occur:

Humanitarian parole allows the U.S. government to allow people into the country by essentially bypassing the regular immigration process. This power should be used on a case-by-case basis for 'urgent humanitarian reasons' or 'significant public benefit'. Migrants are typically admitted for a predetermined period of time and there is no path to U.S. citizenship.

Over the years, both Democratic and Republican administrations have used humanitarian parole to admit people into the U.S. and help groups of people from around the world. According to research by the Cato Institute, it was used to admit people from Hungary in the 1950s, from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the second half of the 1970s, and Iraqi Kurds who had cooperated with the US in the mid-1990s.

Under Biden, the US relied heavily on humanitarian paroles. The US has airlifted nearly 80,000 Afghans from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, to the US following the Taliban's takeover. The US has admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fled after the Russian invasion.

In January, the Democratic administration announced a plan to admit 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela through humanitarian parole, provided those migrants had a financial sponsor and flew to the U.S. instead of to the border between the US and Mexico.

The latest figures from the US government show that almost 270,000 people entered the country under that program through October. In addition, 324,000 people have received appointments through a mobile app called CBP One, which is used to grant parole to people traveling overland into Mexico.

Republicans have described the programs as essentially circling Congress by admitting large numbers of people who would otherwise not have access. Texas sued the government to stop the program against Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

Asylum is a form of protection that allows a migrant to remain in the US. and have a path to American citizenship. To qualify for asylum, a person must demonstrate fear of persecution in the home country due to a fairly specific set of criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political views. Asylum seekers must be on U.S. soil when they request this protection.

They generally undergo an initial screening called a credible fear interview. If they are determined to have a chance at asylum, they can remain in the U.S. to present their case in immigration court. That process can take years. In the meantime, asylum seekers can go to work, get married, have children and build a life.

Critics say the problem is that most people don't end up getting asylum when their cases eventually end up in immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they seek asylum, they can essentially stay in America for years.

“People don't necessarily come to seek asylum to gain access to the asylum process,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the US.

Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants must meet during that first credible fear interview. Anyone who does not comply will be sent home.

But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants do the interview shortly after arriving at the border after an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an “initial screening” to exclude people with frivolous asylum claims.

Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants do not pass the final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges have overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it's difficult to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.

Expedited removal, created by Congress in 1996, essentially allows low-level immigration officials, unlike an immigration judge, to quickly deport certain immigrants. It did not become widely used until 2004 and is generally used to deport people apprehended within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian border and within two weeks of their arrival.

Defenders say it eases the burden on backlogged immigration courts. Immigration advocates say its use is prone to errors and does not provide migrants with adequate protections, such as having a lawyer to help them argue their case. As president, Republican Donald Trump pushed to expand this accelerated deportation policy nationwide and for longer periods of time. Opponents filed a lawsuit and that expansion never happened.

Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.

Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks so. He said changes to credible asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a “game changer.” He said it would be a “costly undertaking” as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than it does now. But, he argued, eventually the number of people arriving would decrease.

But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate that they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to avoid border patrol.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.