Brian Laird on WNYC, for all the controversy around immigration in the election campaign, little noticed

has been the ending of legal status by President Biden.

He made the announcement last Friday.

The ending of a certain legal status for a category of migrants from four countries.

Haitians, obviously very much in the news for the smear by Trump and Vance,

also Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans, who Biden had given temporary legal status to

under a system known as parole. And that's a weird word for it because it has nothing to do with,

you know, like having committed any crimes, the context in which we usually use the word parole.

And although this program specifically granted legal status to many thousands of migrants,

it was also intended to cut down on illegal border crossings, and reportedly that part of the program has largely worked.

So let's try to understand what Biden gave and why he's taking it away, and we'll invite calls from anyone who has had this legal status or knows anyone

who has from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua, 212, 433, WNYC, 433-9692.

Our guest for this is Washington Post Immigration Reporter Maria Cicetti.

Her article is called Biden administration

won't renew parole for immigrants from four countries. Maria, thanks for coming on. Welcome

back to WNYC. Thanks for having me. Can we start with a definition? What is this parole program? A lot of

our listeners probably never even heard of it.

Right. It's actually, I'm so glad you're doing this, Brian, because there's so much confusion about what this is and what this isn't. And so parole is a presidential in

50s, really. And it used to be used to be used a bit more sparingly.

This was an emergency.

But what parole does is give people power to admit immigrants, such as Haitians or Venezuelans, from outside of the country, if there's a significant humanitarian need and an emergency,

these folks would ordinarily not have any other ability to enter the country.

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