The Biden/Harris Administration has “strengthened” the “legal entry pathways” program, which has helped tens of thousands of people from Latin America enter the country.
The Safe Mobility Office initiative, which launched in May 2023 and expanded capacity this spring, has helped fly tens of thousands of people to the U.S. through the refugee resettlement process, but those people are from nationalities that rarely qualify for refugee status, one research organization said. Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
According to the report, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials and the United Nations have established offices in Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala and have granted refugee status to 21,000 people from seven Latin American countries in the program’s first year, half of whom had already arrived in the country as of May.
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President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Truman Balcony at the White House in Washington, DC on the 4th of July. (Tierney L. Cross)
The report said refugees were flown to the United States from Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia, but that many more may have been flown to the United States in June and July as the administration expanded the program to include migrants from Honduras and El Salvador.
While the U.S. has traditionally granted refugee status only to individuals who can credibly claim they cannot return to their home country due to a “well-founded fear” of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, the expansion of the program means that CIS analysis argues that many of the people coming to the U.S. are typically classified as economic migrants.
The report cited a 2024 survey of program participants conducted by the Center for Mixed Migration, which found that 90% said they wanted to travel to the U.S. for economic opportunity and a higher standard of living, not to escape potential persecution.
The administration also increased the quota for admitting refugees from Latin America to 50,000 in 2024, from fewer than 5,000 when Biden took office.
President Biden spoke at the United Auto Workers conference at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, DC on January 24th. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
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“On the refugee admissions front, we are seeking to resettle 35,000 to 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024 – a historic and ambitious goal that would represent a more than 450 percent increase in refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere over last year,” Marta Youss, principal assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, said in testimony before a congressional committee in March.
The administration has justified the expansion of the program by arguing that many of the migrants had taken dangerous migration routes before appearing illegally at the U.S. southern border, but some say this is an abuse of the U.S. refugee program.
“We have a visa process, and then they can safely go to an embassy, apply for a visa and cross safely into the United States,” Laura Reese, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Border Patrol and Immigration, told Fox News Digital. “This is a complete abuse and distortion of the asylum process. This is an abuse and it’s illegal.”
Reese also argued that the program doesn’t help immigrants’ countries of origin and could be dangerous to Americans, and said the speed at which applications are processed raises questions about how thoroughly immigrants are being vetted.
President Biden visits the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023, and speaks with Customs and Border Protection officials. (Jim Watson/AFP)
“Simply setting a high number and immediately adjudicating, admitting, processing and resettling means that refugees are not being fully vetted,” Rees said. “It used to take a year to a year and a half to complete the entire refugee application process.”
But a CIS analysis showed that for some migrants, the process could be completed in just a few days, which Rees called “absurd.”
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“That means there’s no vetting,” Reese said, “so they have no idea who they’re letting in.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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