President Biden has said that the US will turn away asylum seekers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela under a new scheme to admit 30,000 people a month from those countries.
The change builds on a plan for Venezuelans that started in October. Biden is trying to gain control of the increase in migrants crossing the southern US border, which critics say he has done too little to address.
His announcement, made alongside Kamala Harris, the vice-president, whom he has put in charge of tackling immigration, precedes his first visit as president to the border on Sunday.
Last year, for the first time, more than two million people were stopped crossing the border from Mexico. The numbers are expected to increase when a pandemic measure allowing some nationalities to be turned away as a health precaution ends this year.
“Do not just show up at the border,” Biden said. “Stay where you are and apply legally from there.”
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He said 30,000 people a month could come from the four nations and be able to work, as long as they arrived legally, had sponsors in the US and passed background checks. More than 80,000 people from the four countries arrived in November to claim asylum.
The new move was criticised by asylum advocates. “President Biden correctly recognised today that seeking asylum is a legal right,” said Jonathan Blazer of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But his plan further ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum.”
