Immigration ‘parole’ is a well-worn tool for US presidents. It faces a big test in 2024 elections

Joe Biden has made more use of immigration “parole” than any American president to bypass an uncooperative Congress, but he’s hardly the first. The presidential power has been a centerpiece of Biden’s strategy to channel immigrants through new and expanded legal pathways and discourage illegal crossings, a radical difference from his rival Donald Trump. Biden granted at least 1 million temporary visits, which generally include eligibility to work. Trump has said during his campaign to return to the White House that he would end the “outrageous abuse of parole.” Parole, which was created under a 1952 law, allows the president to admit people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” It has been ordered 126 times by every president since then except for Trump, according to David Bier of the pro-immigration Cato Institute. ADVERTISEMENT The Associated Press spoke with immigrants who arrived during four major parole waves over the past 72 years. ___ HUNGARY, 1956 Edith Lauer was a 14-year-old student when she left Budapest with her parents and older sister Nora in November 1956. Her parents felt unsafe after Soviet tanks invaded, crushing a short-lived revolt against the Moscow-controlled government. Many fled, including about 32,000 who were paroled in the United States. Edith Lauer poses outside the Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, in October 2022 at the unveiling of the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter Statue. Lauer, 81, was a 14-year-old student when she left Budapest, Hungary, with her parents in 1956 . They were paroled in the United States. (Kriszta Lauer Nagy via AP) Edith Lauer poses outside the Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, in October 2022 at the unveiling of the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter Statue. (Kriszta Lauer Nagy via AP) READ MORE FILE - The Treasury Department is seen near sunset in Washington, Jan. 18, 2023. The U.S. sanctioned a deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps., a Houthi militant member, firms registered in Hong Kong and the Marshall Islands and two ships, including one that transported $100 million in Iranian commodities to China. The sanctions block access to U.S. property and bank accounts and prevent the targeted people and companies from doing business with Americans. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File) Small business reporting requirement found unconstitutional by Alabama federal judge FILE - Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa attends a session at the Africa Pavilion at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 7, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has agreed to back a move in Parliament to abolish the death penalty, a punishment that was last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago. Mnangagwa, who won reelection for a second term in Aug, 2023, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the death penalty, citing his own personal experience when he was sentenced to death in the 1960s for blowing up a train during Zimbabwe's independence war, when the country was called Rhodesia and under white minority rule. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File) US sanctions Zimbabwe president Emmerson Mnangagwa over human rights abuses The Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim inspects a guard of honor during a ceremonial welcome at Government House ahead of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, March 4, 2024. An increasingly assertive China and a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia for a rare summit March 4-6. (AP Photo/Hamish Blair) Malaysia’s prime minister resists US pressure and says Malaysians don’t have a problem with China “They knew that if they waited around, they would be arrested, (possibly) tried in a communist trial … and or executed,” Lauer, 81, recalled from her home in Cleveland. The four went to a military base in Munich, where they stayed for weeks until her mother’s cousin sponsored them and offered his house in Silver Spring, Maryland. Edith Lauer arrived by military plane at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, a former army camp converted to Hungarian refugee housing. “My God, this is freedom, democracy, it was just a totally different world,” she remembers thinking. “I recognize that very, very soon, and … everybody was so welcoming and so wonderful.” ADVERTISEMENT Her father, a lawyer and the only one in the family who spoke English, became a librarian at the Library of Congress. Her mother started as a dishwasher and went on to work at a laboratory producing serum from monkeys. FILE - Dozens of tanks guard the intersection that leads on to the Danube Bridge during the Hungarian Insurrection on Nov. 2, 1956 in Budapest. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 lets the president grant entry for humanitarian reasons and matters of public interest. Previous administrations have admitted large numbers of Hungarians, Vietnamese and Cubans. (AP Photo, File) FILE - Dozens of tanks guard the intersection that leads on to the Danube Bridge during the Hungarian Insurrection on Nov. 2, 1956 in Budapest. (AP Photo, File) In 1963, Lauer married an American student she met at the University of Maryland who later became a corporate executive. She graduated from Texas A&M University and became a teacher. She has two daughters and two grandchildren, and founded a nonprofit organization to promote understanding of her people. ___ VIETNAM, 1975 The Vietnam War era produced an exodus from Southeast Asia that brought parole to about 340,000 people. Kim-Trang Dang was a 25-year-old law student working as teacher when she left Saigon with her then-husband, two siblings and five other family members. Her father and two sisters had left days earlier. It was April 1975, just before the capital of South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces. They drove a half-hour in the middle of the night to a river port where a boat was waiting. There were bombs, and fire in the streets, but they were told a U.S. military ship was going to pick them up at sea. FILE - South Vietnamese Marines leap in panic aboard a cutter from an LST in Danang Harbor in Da Nang, Vietnam, April 1, 1975 as they are evacuated from the city, shortly before its fall to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Cutters in turn hauled them south to Cam Ranh Bay. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 lets the president grant entry for humanitarian reasons and matters of public interest. Previous administrations have admitted large numbers of Hungarians, Vietnamese and Cubans. (AP Photo, File) FILE - South Vietnamese Marines leap in panic aboard a cutter from an LST in Danang Harbor in Da Nang, Vietnam, April 1, 1975 as they are evacuated from the city, shortly before its fall to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. (AP Photo, File) ADVERTISEMENT They went to Subic Bay, the Philippines, and then Guam, before being transferred to a camp at Fort Chaffee, a military installation in western Arkansas where they stayed for about a month waiting for a sponsor who could take them out to live in the U.S. Kim-Trang Dang, 73, poses for a portrait at her home in San Diego, on Jan. 24, 2024. She was a 25-year-old law student working as a teacher when she left Vietnam with her then-husband, two siblings and five other family members in April 1975. They were paroled in the United States. (Kiem Dang via AP) Kim-Trang Dang, 73, poses for a portrait at her home in San Diego, on Jan. 24, 2024. (Kiem Dang via AP) The sponsor offered them his house in Tampa, Florida. Kim-Trang got a job at a shrimp factory, where she spent eight hours a day pulling off shrimp skin and had English classes at night. She moved to San Diego in the 1980s and got a job as a social worker at a Catholic organization, where she retired after 23 years. Kim-Trang, 73, has three U.S.-born children and five grandchildren. “I’m happy that I have a freedom here, and I don’t live under the communism,” she said. “When I met them, the Americans were really nice ... They opened their arms to us. If they don’t open their arms, we don’t know where to go.” She had her own business taking care of the elderly. Now, she volunteers as president of a Vietnamese service organization. She became a U.S. citizen in 1980. ADVERTISEMENT ___ CUBA, 1980 Mabel Junco, who arrived at Key West, Florida in a fishing boat rented by her uncle, was one of about 125,000 Cubans who got parole in 1980. They were processed at refugee camps in South Florida. Junco’s family disapproved of the Cuban government and in April 1980 leader Fidel Castro unexpectedly announced that any Cuban who wanted could leave the island from the port city of Mariel. FILE - A Cuban soldier stands by a refugee ship at the small port of Mariel, Cuba on April 23, 1980, as the refugees aboard wait to sail for U.S., where they hope to start new lives. Cuban President Fidel Castro agreed to let the Cubans leave the communist island aboard boats that would take them to Florida. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 lets the president grant entry for humanitarian reasons and matters of public interest. Previous administrations have admitted large numbers of Hungarians, Vietnamese and Cubans. (AP Photo/Jaques Langevin, File) FILE - A Cuban soldier stands by a refugee ship at the small port of Mariel, Cuba on April 23, 1980, as the refugees aboard wait to sail for U.S., where they hope to start new lives. (AP Photo/Jaques Langevin, File) Mabel, then 11, relied on an uncle who had lived in Miami for almost 10 years. He rented a fishing boat for her, her parents, and older sister, who was 16. They left their home in Havana for the port city of Mariel and found the boat was in bad shape, and full of people. Mabel Junco poses for a selfie at Jacksonville Airport, in Florida, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. Junco, 55, is one of the 125,000 Cubans who arrived in South Florida on a boat in 1980 and got parole. (Mabel Junco via AP) Mabel Junco poses for a selfie at Jacksonville Airport, in Florida, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. (Mabel Junco via AP) Mabel, her mother and her sister boarded another boat carrying women and children. Her father and uncle stayed in the damaged boat, which was towed by another until a U.S. Coast Guard vessel rescued them. After a night of sailing, they reunited in Key West as part of what became known as the Mariel boat lift. ADVERTISEMENT After about three months at the uncle’s house, the family moved into a rented one-bedroom apartment. The parents obtained work permits and would leave early in the morning and return at night. The two girls walked to and from school alone, cooked and did housework. The mother, who was a seamstress in Cuba, worked in a clothing factory in Miami. The father drove trucks, like he did in Cuba, until a few years later he opened a transportation company for the elderly. Four years later the family had their own house, with a room for each person. “In Cuba things were very difficult, very bad,” said Junco, now 55 and a teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. “Here life has given us many opportunities, we have fought forward … my parents always taught us that you come to work, and you do not get anything free from the government.” Junco married a Cuban who left the island when he was three years old. They have two daughters, 30 and 26. ___ VENEZUELA, 2023 Berioskha Guevara has no words to describe her happiness living in the United States. After decades of fear as a political opponent in Venezuela and struggles to buy staples like milk and bread, the 53-year-old chemist feels she is dreaming. Guevara and her 86-year-old father came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of her brother, a pharmacist who left after Hugo Chavez took power in 1999. FILE - Standing next to a portrait of late President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers his annual address to the nation before lawmakers at the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 lets the president grant entry for humanitarian reasons and matters of public interest. Previous administrations have admitted large numbers of Hungarians, Vietnamese and Cubans. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File) FILE - Standing next to a portrait of late President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers his annual address to the nation before lawmakers at the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File) “Now we are like in paradise,” said Guevara, who arrived in July 2023. “I can’t stop smiling, making plans, thanking God because without parole I would never have been able to live my dreams as I am living them now.” More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country as it went into an economic tailspin over the last decade. They are increasingly headed to the United States, which prompted the Biden administration to offer parole to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Berioskha Guevara, 53, poses for a selfie in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. Guevara, an opponent of the Venezuelan government who was struggling to buy food, arrived in the U.S. in July 2023 under the sponsorship of her brother as part of a humanitarian parole program created by the Biden administration. (Berioskha Guevara via AP) Berioskha Guevara, 53, poses for a selfie in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. (Berioskha Guevara via AP) Texas and 20 other states sued, saying the administration “effectively created a new visa program —without the formalities of legislation from Congress” but does not challenge large-scale parole for Afghans and Ukrainians. A judge has yet to rule after an August trial. In Venezuela, Guevara graduated in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and for the last decade worked at a foreign private oil company earning $200 a month. It was a relatively good salary for Venezuelans, but inflation was very high, and food scarce. She worried about being arrested for being an opponent of the government. In the U.S., four months after filing for work authorization, she got a job at a supermarket. She is looking for work that would use her chemistry background while living with her father in her brother’s one-bedroom apartment in Orlando, Florida. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.