Martha’s Vineyard migrants’ U visa certification highlights issues with the visa process—10-24-22
Immigration news, in context
This is the 142nd edition of BORDER/LINES, a weekly newsletter by Felipe De La Hoz and Gaby Del Valle designed to get you up to speed on the big developments in immigration policy. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and ideas at BorderLines.News@protonmail.ch.
If you find what we do useful, you can help us keep it going and keep improving by becoming a backer.
This week’s edition:
In The Big Picture, we analyze the recent news that the asylum seekers sent to Martha’s Vineyard have applied for U visas.
In Under the Radar, we discuss the early effects of the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 to Venezuelan nationals.
In Next Destination, we look at the Biden administration’s designation of TPS for Ethiopians.
The Big Picture
The news: Many casual observers rejoiced earlier this month upon hearing that close to fifty largely Venezuelan asylum seekers flown to Martha’s Vineyard as part of a bit of cruel political theater by the governors of Texas and Florida had been certified to receive special victims for crime visas.
The sheriff for Texas’ Bexar County, who had announced that he was launching a criminal investigation into the states’ allegedly fraudulent representations to the migrants, including that they would be given work permits and were being flown to Boston, confirmed that he had issued the certifications. Attorney Rachel Self, who had been working with the arrivals, is presumably now filing U visa petitions on their behalf.
The general tenor of the coverage was that these migrants had been inadvertently put on a path to citizenship by the GOP governors who were trying to use them as political pawns, a definite feel-good story for the people horrified by the operation. However, the situation isn’t as clear-cut as some of the coverage would seem to suggest.
It is almost certain that the visa petitions won’t actually be processed anytime soon, if they’re processed at all, and the migrants will remain at some deportation risk despite the certifications, particularly if their asylum cases aren’t successful. Even if the migrants eventually receive the U visas, it is not a guarantee that they will actually get residency and eventual citizenship.
Instead, the issue highlights just one of the many humanitarian immigration programs that have been hamstrung by bureaucracy, overlapping rules and regulations, changing circumstances, and a strained and overburdened adjudicative system across the border.
Under the Radar
DHS says Venezuelan encounters at the border dropped after Title 42 expansion
The Biden administration recently announced that it would be implementing a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelan nationals—while simultaneously expanding Title 42 to include Venezuelans apprehended at the border. On a call with reporters last week, DHS claims the Title 42 expansion is already having a deterrent effect, noting that border officers’ encounters of Venezuelans dropped by 86 percent in the week since the program was announced.
This announcement makes Title 42’s role as a migration deterrent, rather than a public health policy, explicit. Although the Biden administration attempted to end Title 42 earlier this year (its effort to do so was blocked by a federal judge), it has recently sought to expand the expulsion program to include more nationalities, particularly as border officers encounter more migrants from South America.
A Mexican official told the Associated Press that Mexico has requested that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan via humanitarian parole for every Venezuelan expelled to Mexico. However, the humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans has a cap of just 24,000. There have been more than 2.3 million Title 42 expulsions since the policy was implemented in March 2020, though that figure involves many people who have been expelled numerous times.
Next Destination
Biden administration designates TPS for Ethiopians
For the first time ever, the U.S. has granted Temporary Protected Status to Ethiopian nationals. In an announcement, DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged the “ongoing armed conflict and the extraordinary and temporary conditions engulfing Ethiopia,” namely the war in Tigray that began in November 2020.
Per Reuters, the TPS designation will affect an estimated 27,000 Ethiopians already living in the United States. This will not have any effect on Ethiopians who attempt to migrate to the U.S. after the TPS announcement, as the status only applies to those who were present in the country before October 20, 2022. The TPS designation will last 18 months but may be renewed at DHS’s discretion.