The Biden administration can maintain a program that allows migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds after a federal judge dismissed a challenge from Republican-led states. U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton said Texas and 20 other states had not shown they had suffered financial harm because of the humanitarian parole program that allows up to 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined. That was something the states must prove to have legal standing to bring the lawsuit, reports the Associated Press. Eliminating the program would undercut a policy that seeks to encourage migrants to use the Biden administration's preferred pathways into the U.S. or face stiff consequences.
States led by Texas had argued the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education, and public safety for migrants. An attorney working with the Texas attorney general's office said the program "created a shadow immigration system." Advocates for the federal government argued that migrants admitted through the policy helped with a farm labor shortage. Since the program started in fall 2022, more than 357,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been granted parole and allowed to enter the U.S., through January. Haitians have been the biggest group to use the program with 138,000 people from that country arriving, followed by 86,000 Venezuelans, 74,000 Cubans and 58,000 Nicaraguans. President Biden has made unprecedented use of parole authority, which has been in effect since 1952 and allows presidents to let people in for "urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit."
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