Summarized from Docketwise
USCIS is currently permitted to approve up to 30,000 applications per month from immigrants trying to enter the United States under the sponsorship program. Would-be immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti can apply on the basis of being sponsored by an American citizen, resident or someone with legal immigration status which means that the sponsor will agree to financially support the immigrant. The humanitarian parole authority grants migrants who arrive under the sponsorship program a two-year work permit.
It is currently estimated that applications are pouring in at a rate of about 12,000 per day and that volume has created a backlog of processing. The processing procedure is now being altered to put about 50% of the applications into a lottery process and the other 50% are being processed on a first come, first served basis.
There has been discussion about raising the monthly admission cap and there is concern, that with the long wait times, applicants will become impatient or desperate and attempt to take the risk of entering the United States illegally. Along with the concerns around long processing wait times, raising the cap also has further reaching implications. The Mexican government has agreed to accept the return of the same number of the current cap of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans by US border patrol. Increasing the cap may result in the need to renegotiate that agreement.
There is also pushback coming from a Republican based coalition of states who are in court challenging that the federal government cannot use parole to admit these immigrants thus bypassing the current visa system.
