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. 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. ___ 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. “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. “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.