The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United States Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Friday expressed deep concern about plans by the Biden administration to limit migrants from the Caribbean.
On Thursday, the administration announced that it was limiting migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti who enter the country to 30,0000 each month under humanitarian parole, while expelling those who attempt to cross the south western border.
UNHCR decried Biden’s move as “not in line with refugee law standards.”
UNHCR spokesperson Boris Cheshirkov told journalists in Geneva that while the UN agency welcomed the expanded safe and regular pathways for entry to the US for some, the new measures “must not preclude people forced to flee from exercising their fundamental human right to seek safety”.
Due to the “multi-faceted” nature of the US administration’s announcement, UNHCR is seeking additional details and analyzing the likely impact of the measures, said Cheshirkov, who said this would enable an “unprecedented number of people” from the four nations to enter.
In addition to considering the well-being of thousands already on the move from Latin America and the Caribbean, UNCHR raised concern over the expansion of the controversial COVID pandemic emergency “Title 42” health restrictions order to expel Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans without weighing the dangers they were fleeing or the risks and hardships many of them will face in Mexico.
UNHCR said it had made continuous calls for it to be lifted, noting that the issue has provoked a major court battle in the US, with the Supreme Court ruling at the end of December that the policy allowing migrants to be turned away at the border on health grounds, should remain for now.
He said seeking asylum is “a fundamental human right,” adding that UNHCR will continue to engage with the US and other governments “to expand safe pathways, and develop protection and solutions for asylum seekers – in line with international standards.”
In a purported effort to improve legal pathways for migration and alleviate the conditions at the southwestern United States border, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will now remove up to 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to Mexico on a monthly basis, if they fail to comply with the new pathways put forth by the Biden administration.
In response to the announcement, the new CBC Chair Steven Horsford, whose mother hails from Trinidad and Tobago, noted that “America is a nation of immigrants,” adding that “access to asylum is, in many instances, a lifesaving right.”
“While the new parole program seeks to fast-track the processing of asylum cases, the reality is that the administration’s actions have the potential to threaten migrants’ safety and humanity,” said Horsford.
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