According to administration officials, a program launched by the Biden administration earlier this month has approved the arrival of more than 7,500 migrants to the United States from countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti which has contributed to a decrease in border crossings. When President Joe Biden announced the new program, he described how it was implemented as a method for migrants who are escaping dangerous situations in their home countries to immigrate to the United States from where they are rather than making the perilous trek north. Contrary to prior practice, anyone who attempts to cross the United States-Mexico border without having applied for the program may be deported back to Mexico, and denied future entry among several other consequences, some less severe and some more.
Although data has started to present that migrants are utilizing this new program to move to the U.S. rather than entering through the United States-Mexico border unalwfully, numbers continue to remain low. The reason that the numbers are so low is due to the fact that hundreds of thousands of migrants are migrating throughout the Western Hemisphere instead. According to specific data recorded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), more than 800 Nicaraguans, over 2,000 Haitians, and more than 4,500 Cubans have had their travel requests accepted so far. Overall, in January, there were 97 percent fewer encounters with migrants from the four nationalities involved in this program than there were in December therefore we can infer it has had a beneficial impact thus far.
