U.S. Denial of Safe Harbor Compounds Venezuela’s Crisis

Venezuelans rank first in the number of U.S. asylum applicants by nationality, and a disproportionately high 45 percent of those cases were denied in U.S. immigration courts last year. Meanwhile, according to State Department records, the United States has not resettled a single Venezuelan refugee in years. If the United States is serious about supporting the Venezuelan people, Congress has several initial pathways to provide urgent protections for Venezuelans seeking refuge, and to help ensure that Venezuela’s mass displacement crisis is not compounded. First, Congress must immediately pass recently–introduced and widely-supported bipartisan legislation directing the administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuela. For decades, the TPS program has served as life-saving immigration relief, protecting people from forcible return to countries where their lives or freedoms would be at risk. More…