Trump Ends Program for Legal Migrants From Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
Over 500,000 migrants used the program to enter and work in the U.S.
The Trump administration announced Friday that it would end a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to live and work in the United States. Established under President Joe Biden, the initiative offered legal status and work authorization to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) who passed security screenings and secured U.S.-based financial sponsors.
Over 500,000 migrants used the program to come to the U.S. legally—suggesting that many people will choose an accessible legal pathway over illegal entry. Getting rid of the CHNV program eliminates that choice for future migrants and penalizes those who came to the country "the right way."
The Biden administration launched the CHNV program in January 2023, building on an October 2022 program open only to Venezuelans. It allowed sponsored and vetted migrants to stay and work in the U.S. for two years under an immigration authority known as "parole." The president may extend that status to migrants for humanitarian or public benefit purposes. Republican and Democratic presidents have leaned on parole over the years, granting it to Hungarian refugees in the 1950s, Chinese immigrants in the 1960s, Soviets in the 1980s, and many others.
The CHNV program was one of several private sponsorship schemes created by the Biden administration. They allowed groups of private citizens to join together to sponsor migrants, reducing the government's financial and logistical burdens. Private sponsorship models encourage integration since sponsor groups act as a built-in network for migrants. They also incentivize sponsors to help migrants become employed and self-sufficient more quickly since they're financially responsible for them.
The CHNV program came as migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in record numbers, many fleeing authoritarian regimes, economic ruin, and persecution. The program hit several obstacles, including a 2023 lawsuit brought by 20 GOP-led states seeking to end it. In a somewhat surprising move, the Biden administration declined to extend the legal status of CHNV beneficiaries last fall, advising them to seek other immigration benefits.
It's not clear how many CHNV beneficiaries have managed "to secure another status that will allow them to stay in the country legally," CBS News reported. Those statuses are narrow (and narrowing). One possible avenue, asylum, is limited to people who can prove that they faced or may face specific kinds of persecution in their home country. The Trump administration has rolled back temporary protected status designations for Haitians and Venezuelans, which shielded them from deportation. With CHNV benefits set to expire on March 25, many of the program's half-million beneficiaries could soon find themselves living and working in the U.S. illegally.
The CHNV program's end doesn't come as much of a surprise. In February, the Trump administration halted all applications to the program over "fraud and security concerns," CBS News reported. That followed a move to allow "federal immigration agents to seek the deportation—including in an expedited fashion in some cases—of those permitted to enter the U.S. under the CHNV program and other Biden administration policies."
Writing for Reason in August, Cato Institute immigration policy analysts Alex Nowrasteh and David Bier argued that "oddities and errors" among CHNV applications were "not evidence of fraud," but rather "part and parcel of large administrative datasets, especially those compiled by the government."
While "there is likely some fraud in CHNV," they wrote, "to undermine" the program would be to "undermine American border security, reduce the economic gains from immigration, and impose huge humanitarian burdens on migrants fleeing totalitarian socialism in Latin America and the Caribbean." That's the choice the Trump administration is making now.
