White House Agrees to Accept More Foreign Nationals Living in Mexico as Refugees

The White House on Friday announced that it has agreed to accept Cuban, Nicaraguan, Haitian and Venezuelan nationals who are living in Mexico as refugee resettlement referrals, the latest in the administration’s strategy of allowing more migrants in through more legal “pathways” to reduce chaos at the southern border.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced that after a meeting between Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a U.S. delegation, the U.S. has committed to expanding “access to safe, orderly, legal migration pathways”

Mexico will be establishing an “international multipurpose space” to offer “new refugee and labor options for the most vulnerable people who are currently in Mexico.”

“We also commit to accept refugee resettlement referrals from qualified individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who are already in Mexico,” Sullivan said.

Those in refugee resettlement are put on a path to permanent residency and eventual U.S. citizenship. The Biden administration has dramatically increased the refugee cap to 125,000 — significantly higher than the 18,000 in the final fiscal year of the Trump administration.

It marks the latest move to provide additional pathways for migrants to get into the U.S. beyond the regular visa system. The administration announced in January a humanitarian parole program that allows up to 30,000 migrants from those four countries to fly directly into the U.S.

Separately, the U.S. is allowing up to 1,450 migrants each day into the U.S. via parole if they have set up an appointment at a port of entry at the southern border using the CBP One app.

Republicans have strongly criticized the expansion, accusing the administration of abusing parole — which Congress has determined should be used on a “case-by-case” basis for urgent humanitarian reasons and significant public benefit — to allow otherwise-illegal migrants into the U.S.

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Sullivan, in his statement on Friday, noted that the administration “has significantly expanded legal pathways to the United States” and that it is part of the administration’s border control strategy {snip}