The Biden administration has launched a humanitarian parole program to temporarily admit certain Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans and discourage migrants from embarking on dangerous treks to the U.S. border.
Hopefully, this will curtail business for smugglers, or “coyotes,” making untold fortunes off of the suffering and desperation of tens of thousands of Latin Americans. But murky rules around the requirement that immigrants in the program have a financial sponsor has left people vulnerable to online scammers.
While the federal government should continue the parole program, it also needs to clean up sponsorship requirements to forbid potential sponsors from demanding payment from migrants.
