After five years of saving money, Patri, from Havana, Cuba, was ready to make the trek to the United States. Cuba’s economic crisis has become so dire in the past few years, due to COVID-19. The cost of living has been steadily rising and there has been an increase in food shortages. In 2022, 2% of Cuba’s population left for the U.S. and Patri hoped to be one of them. She saved up the equivalent of 8,000 dollars. However, this was rendered impossible by the Supreme Court’s decision that extended Title 42’s immigration policy. Now if you are seeking asylum, as Patri is, from four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, you have to apply for a parole process. The process allows only 30,000 migrants to enter the U.S. per month and the qualifications are steep. You need to have a valid passport, pass a background check, afford the airfare, and have a sponsor with legal status who is already inside the U.S. that can help to support you financially. If you do not have a sponsor, as Patri doesn’t, you will be turned away at the border and forced to remain in Mexico for the time being. For many, this can be a death sentence, left vulnerable to theft, homelessness, and kidnapping for ransom. Despite these risks, many migrants make the trek anyway because they simply have no other alternative. The extension of the harmful Title 42 immigration policy by the Supreme Court and the Biden Administration leaves many Cuban asylum seekers in a crisis due to unreasonable restrictions. In response, the Biden Administration has put forth future policy changes to counteract the extension of Title 42 that will hopefully accomplish its goal of fixing the broken immigration system.
What is Title 42?
Title 42 is a U.S. law used in issues such as civil rights, public health, social welfare, and more. The government can use it to take emergency actions to keep contagious diseases out of the country. It was first used in 1929 during a meningitis outbreak to keep Chinese and Filipino ships from entering the U.S. and spreading the disease. The law was only enacted again in 2020 by then-president, Donald Trump, due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. However, Trump also used this law and its implications to turn away migrants from the border more quickly without having to consider their cases for asylum. Since this law has been put into effect in 2020, 2 million people have been barred from entering the U.S.
The Trump Administration’s impact on immigration policy
Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency are defined largely by his harsh views and policies on immigration and enforcement. There are 100 million displaced refugees in the world today, a number that only grew worse during Trump’s presidency. He reduced legal immigration into the United States by 49%. From 2016-2019, there was an increase in denials for military naturalizations by 54%. During his presidency, 5,460 children were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico Border. In 2017, he announced that he would dismantle DACA, Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals, which provides relief from deportation and work authorization for immigrants brought to America as children. He also tried to terminate TPS, Temporary Protected Status, a program that grants legal status – including work authorization and protection from deportation – to people from designated countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions preventing their safe return. Hate crimes against Latinos and Hispanics rose by 21% in 2018. By increasing his anti-immigrant rhetoric, he made the issue of immigration one of the top priorities in the 2020 election.
The Biden Campaign’s immigration policy promises
Since immigration played a powerful role in the 2020 election, the Biden campaign put out extensive information on how he was going to help fix the immigration crisis if he was elected to office. He starts by evoking emotion in his plan by saying, “It is a moral failing and a national shame when a father and his baby daughter drown seeking our shores. When children are locked away in overcrowded detention centers and the government seeks to keep them there indefinitely.” He ultimately, flat-out states, “Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants. It’s wrong, and it stops when Joe Biden is elected president.”
Biden states overall goals for immigration policy, such as modernizing the immigration system and welcoming immigrants into the community. However, since this election was about defeating Trump and reversing his policies, Biden created promises for his first 100 days in office. These include, “Immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border” and “End Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” He wants to end the separation of families at the border by ending the prosecution of parents for minor violations since these are mostly used as scare or intimidation tactics. He said that he wants to restore asylum laws so they can actively protect people fleeing persecution. The Trump Administration put restrictions on access to asylum for anyone traveling through Mexico or Guatemala and those fleeing from gang or domestic violence.
The economic crisis in Cuba
Why are there record numbers of migrants leaving Cuba for the United States? The number of migrants (200,000 in 2022) reflects percentages that haven’t been seen since the 1990s, and it's because Cuba is facing its worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are daily shortages of food and medicine. There are regular power outages and last year during a protest against the government, the internet was switched off. Shortages of resources have culminated since 1962 when the U.S. trade embargo was imposed. To survive, Cuba has become reliant on earnings from international tourism and Cuban nationals working abroad. Due to COVID-19, the island was mostly closed off to foreign tourists and reduced visitor numbers by 75% in 2020. When Trump was elected in 2016, he reinstated longstanding travel and business restrictions between Cuba and the U.S., further closing them off from U.S. resources. He also reinstated Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which obstructed the country’s access to international finance.
In the last few years, resistance to the government has risen, partly due to social media and the internet. There are increased demands for political and economic change and for government officials to be held accountable. In 2021, there were massive Cuban protests that were fuelled by COVID restrictions and food and medicine shortages. Due to limited resources provided by the government, many were forced to turn to the black market. Many preferred to work for and sell on the black market because they usually made more money than a salary at a typical job to cover basic needs. The Cuban's ability to be resourceful and stretch themselves thin is running out and unless there is significant economic change, many more are bound to follow the 2% of the population that have already left in 2022.
Impact of the continuation of Title 42 on Cuba and asylum seekers
The continuation of Title 42 could create an asylum crisis for many Cubans. An official from the Washington Office on Latin America, a human-rights nonprofit, estimates that people like Patri, without a sponsor, have no chance of crossing the border anytime soon. While she and many others wait in Mexico for their case to be heard, they would be risking dangerous conditions such as homelessness and kidnapping for ransom. Oftentimes, appointments for Title 42 expectations get booked as soon as they become available and people have to wait weeks to have their cases heard.
Since there are so many restrictions, many Cubans are turning to more creative ways to migrate to the U.S. In 1994 there was a Cuban rafter crisis or balseros crisis where 35,000 Cubans migrated to the U.S. on makeshift rafts. They spent all their money on the materials to make a raft and row across the Gulf of Mexico to Miami, Cuba. After five weeks of riots, Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba was welcome to do it without hindrance. However, President Clinton mandated that any rafters captured be detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. About 31,000 of those 33,000 were detained at the base while many others were lost at sea. Even though this process of immigration is risky and dangerous, many are worried that the balseros crisis will happen again.
The extension of Title 42
On December 27th, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to keep Title 42 in place, allowing asylum-seekers to be turned away at the border, even though it would have expired at the end of 2022. It is now in place indefinitely after 19 Republican state attorneys general filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to keep it in place. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that Title 42 should expire at the end of this year because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s implementation of this policy was “arbitrary and capricious.” While many, such as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued that the public-health justification of Title 42’s implementation has lapsed, they still voted for it to stay in place. Some Democrats, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, think that if Title 42 is ended, the asylum system would break. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that “Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure, and it should not be extended indefinitely.” Yet, the Biden Administration is complying with the Supreme Court’s Order and enforcing Title 42, offering no alternative to those trying to seek asylum on the border.
However, there are steps in the right direction being made. In January of 2023, Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum applications on the U.S.-Mexico border for four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the qualifications for asylum applications are steep, including needing a sponsor in the U.S. that can sponsor you financially. If one goes to the border without a sponsor, they will be turned away and the “Remain in Mexico” policy under Title 42 will be in effect. This Executive Order talks about expanding legal pathways for safe, orderly, humane, and legal migration. This includes increasing humanitarian assistance to Mexico and Central America, expanding the parole process, launching an online appointment portal to reduce overcrowding and wait times at the border, and tripling refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere. Biden has also reopened the U.S. embassy in Havana for visa applications allowing some an official route to emigration to the U.S.
Conclusion
After the extension of Title 42 by the Supreme Court, the NGO, The Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, gave a list of 5 reasons why Title 42 must end immediately. Title 42 was not designed to protect public health, it creates a discriminatory system because it targets four specific countries, it puts people in need of protection in danger, and it undermines the U.S. ability to promote a protection-centered response to regional migration. However, the foremost reason is that Title 42 is illegal. It denies refugees protection from life-or-death situations. The Biden administration expels around 2,500 migrants every day. Section 1158 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code does not allow for the blocking of fundamental protection and safety of migrants seeking asylum. Instead of perpetuating and prolonging a broken immigration system, it would be beneficial to invest time and resources in other areas. This would start with restoring the right of all refugees to seek asylum at the border. Using a COVID-era policy is not a justification anymore to keep implementing this law. Another is ensuring humanitarian support for the migrants that are arriving while also coordinating the response of federal, state, and local organizations to make sure everyone gets the same resources and treatment. Finally, there needs to be improvements to the adjudication capacity and resources, as the wait time could be anywhere from 2 months to 1 year. There is a shortage of lawyers at the border who have impossible caseloads. By increasing the number of public defenders at the border, due process can still be ensured in a timely manner. The US immigration system has been broken for decades. Every day we wait to fix or come up with a new policy, thousands of people fall through the cracks and succumb to the danger they are running from. The system needs to be fixed, for the sake of rebuilding our asylum process and the democratic values that the U.S. was founded on.