Mayorkas Opens the Border Again, Now to Ecuadorians

Congress continues to do nothing to restrict the main tool enabling Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s unlawful overreach: his abuse of the “humanitarian parole” authority to admit foreigners under a narrow exception in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The INA allows the president to admit selected foreigners who cannot obtain a visa but have a pressing need to enter the U.S., such as to receive medical treatment or take part in a court matter. Mayorkas has seized this authority as dynamite to blast open our national borders.

Earlier this year, Mayorkas used humanitarian parole as the pretext to invent immigration programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (called “CHNV”) that permit 30,000 “legal” monthly admissions from those countries. Under the sketchy CHNV rules that Mayorkas created by diktat, the parolees from these four countries can self-select themselves; basically the sole requirements are having a sponsor and not being on a U.S. watchlist.  

Mayorkas’s sleight of hand has also invented something he calls “Family Reunification Parole” (FRP), yet another scheme for speeding up the entry of those favored nationals he wants to let in now. 

Under FRP, foreigners on the processing list for family-reunification immigrant visas (commonly called “chain migrants”) are no longer required to await their legal turn to be interviewed, medically examined, and vetted in their home countries. FRP will now permit Ecuadorians, who will join the special club of Colombians, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans (plus Haitians and Cubans, who are covered by both programs) to simply ignore the waiting times required by American law and come directly into the U.S. as “parolees.” 

[Read the rest at The American Conservative.]