For people fleeing war, America's immigration struggle has real-life consequences

Artem Marchuk had to flee Ukraine or he would die. He saw no other options.

He and his wife and children lived in Bakhmut, the site of the deadliest battle of the war. Even when they left the city, nothing in Ukraine felt safe.

“My children were very hungry,” Artem's wife, Yana, said in an interview from the family's home in Baltimore, where the U.S. government resettled them in 2022. “There was darkness everywhere.”

The Marchuks are among more than a million people the Biden administration has allowed into the United States over the past three years under an authority called humanitarian parole, which allows people without visas to live and work temporarily in the United States. Parole has been expanded to include Ukrainians, Afghans and thousands of people south of the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and war.

Now the program is at the heart of a battle in Congress over legislation that would release billions of dollars in military aid to some of President Biden's top foreign policy priorities, such as Ukraine and Israel.

Republicans want a tough crackdown on immigration in exchange for their vote to approve military aid — and limiting the number of people granted parole is one of their demands.

To Mr. Marchuk, it feels wrong that a program that saved his family has become a bargaining chip on Capitol Hill. While the latest version of the deal would mostly spare Ukrainians seeking parole, he feels a deep sense of solidarity with other people — regardless of nationality — who may be left behind if Congress imposes restrictions on the program.

Americans, he said, should welcome people like his family. Mr. Marchuk, a former technology executive in Ukraine, said he has found work as a driver for DoorDash, UPS and Amazon since arriving in Baltimore.

“Refugees deliver these packages,” says 36-year-old Marchuk. “American citizens who have an education,” he said, often don't want to work as drivers.

What is Humanitarian Parole?

Humanitarian parole has been around since the 1950s to help vulnerable people fleeing failing states and conflicts, but Mr. Biden has made greater use of it than his predecessors, immigration experts say. Under the law, the United States can grant parole if there are “urgent humanitarian” needs or “significant public benefit.”

People who want to enter the country conditionally must first have a sponsor in the United States and then undergo vetting by U.S. immigration authorities.

There are important differences between parole and the U.S. refugee program, which is the most typical path for people seeking refuge in the United States.

People on parole are not put on a path to a green card or permanent residency, as refugees are. Instead, they are only allowed to stay for a limited time, usually about two years, although the government can extend this.

Once status expires, people must leave the United States, apply for another immigration program, or risk staying in the country illegally.

A political negotiating chip.

The Biden administration has made parole a key part of its immigration policy, using it to help people from Ukraine and Afghanistan, as well as people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, whose economies have all but collapsed.

More than 176,000 Ukrainians and 77,000 Afghans have come to the United States under the program. And last year, the Biden administration began granting parole to 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have financial sponsors in the United States. The White House argued that its strategy was intended to discourage migrants from crossing the border illegally by creating a more orderly, legal route.

Republicans have tried to restrict almost all of these programs, saying Biden is abusing an authority that should only be used in extraordinary circumstances.

“They abused the statute,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said this month. “I am not confident that we would have accomplished much if we had not limited the use of parole.”

Some Republicans say parole often amounts to a loophole that fuels illegal immigration. They want to crack down on a practice known as “catch and release,” in which migrants are briefly detained when they arrive in the United States but then quickly paroled and released pending immigration court hearings.

The details of the deal are still being negotiated in Congress. A deal being discussed in the Senate aims to reduce the number of parolees by tightening immigration enforcement at the southern border.

That would not have a direct impact on the route that many Ukrainians took to America, as they generally do not arrive via the southern border. (Some Ukrainians but come to the United States that way.)

But there is still significant uncertainty about whether the program will survive without changes.

Even some Democrats in Congress who oppose substantive changes to the parole program have acknowledged that they may have to give in to some Republican demands to limit the program if they have any chance of passing the military aid package.

House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have threatened to block any deal that does not impose a hard limit on the number of migrants who can be released on parole, as well as the elimination of group-based paroles such as the Ukrainians that the Marchuks used to enter the United States.

Mr. Marchuk has been closely watching the negotiations in Congress and said he finds himself being pulled in two directions. He sees the parole program as a lifeline for desperate families. But he desperately wants Congress to provide military aid to Ukraine as well.

He said this may be the only hope for his sister, who is on the front lines in Ukraine, to survive the war.

“They're talking about lives.”

As lawmakers debate the merits of the parole program, some immigrants in the United States say all the political talk glosses over the disasters in their home countries.

“People are dying left and right, being kidnapped and it's just impossible,” said Valerie Laveus, who came to America from Haiti nearly 20 years ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008. “I worry because I feel like a lot of people. Sometimes these people have these conversations and they forget about the human factor. They forget that they are talking about lives.”

Ms. Laveus said her brother, Reginald Daniel, had waited years for a U.S. visa but became caught up in the growing backlog. She knew she had to help him escape, especially after he started having seizures due to swelling of the brain from a gunshot wound to the head.

When Mr. Biden announced early last year that Haitians would be eligible for parole, Ms. Laveus immediately filed paperwork to prove she could financially support her brother and his son for two years.

“When my brother came, he was skin and bones,” Mrs. Laveus said. “If I took a picture of what he looked like and I gave you a picture of what he looks like now, you would see the striking difference.”

Mr. Daniel is now training to work in security, and his son has attended a military academy in Florida. While Ms. Laveus is optimistic about her brother and cousin, she is also “very suspicious and concerned” about what the congressional talks could mean for their chances of applying for future immigration status.

Mr. Biden's allies say limiting the use of parole would most likely backfire.

“It means that people in desperate circumstances, who need protection, who have to leave, who have to flee, their options will be more limited, which increases the likelihood that they will choose the dangerous option of coming to the border,” says Cecilia Muñoz , one of Mr. Biden's top immigration officials during the transition and co-chairman of Welcome.US, an organization that helps Americans sponsor refugee resettlement to the United States.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting from Washington.