Digging Deeper Into CHNV

I'm surprised that I hadn't even heard of the CHNV program before I learned just the other day that the Trump administration had discontinued it. According to Wikipedia, which appears to be the most complete account:

Humanitarian Parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans was a program under which citizens of these four countries, and their immediate family members, could be paroled into the United States for a period of up to two years if a person in the US agreed to financially support them. The program allowed a combined total of 30,000 people per month from the four countries to enter the US. The program was implemented in 2022 (Venezuela) to 2023 (Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua) in response to high numbers of migrants and asylum seekers from these countries crossing into the US at the southwest border with Mexico.

. . . The CHNV Program is credited with greatly reducing numbers of people of these nationalities crossing into the US at the southwest border. After the implementation of Humanitarian Parole for Venezuelans, the number of Venezuelans encountered each week by the US Department of Homeland Security fell by over 90%. The US government promised to deport any person from these four countries who arrived to the US not through the program.

It simply isn't clear whether the Haitians who've concentrated in localities like Springfield, OH or Charleroi, PA, or the Venezuelans who've concentrated in places like Aurora, CO or El Paso, TX came in via the CHNV program, although it's possible to infer that their concentrated housing arrangements arise from sponsorship organizations that place them in certain facilities. The entry continues,

. . . Beneficiaries of the CHNV program are typically not eligible for refugee benefits or services. Beneficiaries from Nicaragua and Venezuela are typically not eligible for any mainstream government benefits, such as healthcare (Medicaid), food assistance (SNAP), and cash assistance (TANF). Beneficiaries may apply for asylum, family-based immigration, or another immigration pathway if they are eligible. Some beneficiaries from Venezuela may be eligible for Temporary Protected Status if they arrived before July 31, 2023. . . However, for many migrants, there is no pathway to stay in the US after the two-year parole period.

So wait a moment. I thought the Springfield and Charleroi Haitians were in fact here under TPS, and the media seems to have thought it, too:

Springfield residents are bracing for a shift after the Trump administration announced it will end protected status for Haitian immigrants in August.

City leaders in Springfield, a central Ohio city of 60,000, said they've seen an influx of 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian residents in recent years. Many of the Haitian immigrants are in the city with temporary protected status, a federal designation for immigrants from countries with dangerous conditions, such as a natural disaster or armed conflict.

The Biden administration had previously extended the status for Haiti to February 2026 due to concerns about natural disasters and gang violence. The status has been in place for Haitians since the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

So it appears that Haitians have been coming in under more than one program, and CHNV is just one possibility. I get the impression that only a few people at Homeland Security understand the whole picture here, if anyone does at all. But this is just one part of the rabbit hole.

What about CHNV sponsors? Who in fact sre they? I tried doing a web search and found mostly government sites saying good things in general about CHNV sponsors, but only one NGO actually came out and identified itself as a sponsor, Church World Service (CWS). This is intriguing, because as we see, CHNV beneficiaries aren't eligible for ordinary government aid -- it appears that the sponsors are paying for their food, housing, medical care, and so forth. CWS says on its site,

The U.S. government established Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) and Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) to provide a safe, legal pathway for these populations to come to the United States. Program beneficiaries receive humanitarian parole status, which is a legal, temporary status for a duration of two years. Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans must have US-based sponsors in order to receive authorization to travel to the US.

Groups wishing to sponsor through U4U or CHNV can choose to partner with CWS as a CWS Private Sponsor Group (PSG). As a CWS PSG, a group will be able to utilize the expertise of resettlement agency staff via remote technical assistance and support. CWS recruits, trains, and supports sponsor groups throughout the first 3-6 months of the sponsorship period so that they can help these displaced populations achieve stability in the U.S.

So as best I can determine, CWS is an NGO that serves as an umbrella for local NGOs that actually sponsor, and apparently fund, the migrants, and as we'll see, this is over 75% of their budget. These particular migrants aren't eligible for most benefits, and they're here not on TPS, but something called humanitarian parole status, which lasts only two years. What then? Who knows?

Where does the money to support the CHNV migrants come from? The implication on the CWS site is that CWS provides only technical and training support to the local NGOs, although it says it "supports sponsor groups throughout the first 3-6 months of the sponsorship period". Is some of this support financial? It doesn't say.

Wikipedia says:

Church World Service (CWS) was founded in 1946 and is a cooperative ministry of 37 [Protestant and Orthodox] Christian denominations and communions, providing sustainable self-help, development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance around the world. The CWS mission is to eradicate hunger and poverty and to promote peace and justice at the national and international level through collaboration with partners abroad and in the US.

Although the Wikipedia entry stresses disaster relief, the CWS response to the 2024 Hurricane Helene devastation in North Carolina appears to have been minimal:

CWS is on the ground, working closely with partners to assist those in need. Already, we’ve distributed over 3,286 Emergency Cleanup Buckets and 4,360 Hygiene Kits to help families begin cleaning up the devastation. But with our inventory of CWS Buckets now critically low—down to just 833—the need for more is urgent.

Based on their website, their main focus is on refugee resettlement under the CHNV program, now canceled. Their most recent annual report indicates that their income was $220,437,580, of which $186,438,785, or 84.6%, came from the US government. Of this, $170,998,164, or 78.1%, went to "Services for Displaced People". Only $6,834,006, or 3.1% , went to "Emergency Response", including the cleanup buckets and hygiene kits for Hurricane Helene.

CWS appears actually to be more transparent over its funding than other faith-based NGOs, including Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities appears to have no national site equivalent to CWS that gives any sort of picture of its relationship to government-sponsored immigration funding, but the Catholic Charities Office of Maine Refugee Services has equivalent wording on its site:

The U.S Department of State's Bureau for Population Refugees and Migration has created several pathways to refugee resettlement into the United States. People coming into the United States through the following pathways qualify for refugee benefits through ORR refugee programs. The Office of Maine Refugee Services at Catholic Charities administers the federal refugee programs as the replacement designee for the State.

. . . Other current US sponsorship programs include Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) Program and the Uniting for Ukraine Program. Please contact OMRS to discuss these programs further or to find out if sponsored individuals are eligible for refugee services upon arrival.

So, at least up to very recently, Catholic Charities of Maine served as a government-authorized NGO that in fact administered government refugee resettlement programs. I think it can reasonably be assumed that other Catholic Charities activities in other states operate (or operated) on an equivalent basis. But as I pointed out yesterday, the CHNV program didn't actually "resettle refugees"; it recruited people from their home countries and flew them in to bypass border immigration procedures, in the process declaring them "legal".

The CHNV policy allows eligible Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with American sponsors to fly to the U.S., where they can apply for temporary work permits under the immigration parole law, which allows presidents to welcome foreigners on humanitarian or public interest grounds.

The Biden administration has argued the policy is justified on humanitarian grounds due to the economic crises and political turmoil in the four countries. It has also argued the program archives [sic] a public interest objective by reducing illegal immigration by migrants from these countries by offering them a legal alternative to come to the U.S.

But the actual operation of this program, supported by faith-based NGOs passing through government money (deducting a skim, of course), was to place the migrants in exploitive employment and housing conditions, while destabilizing the communities in which they were resettled. In addition, up to now, it's hard to avoid thinking the immigration and resettlement policies have been a thinly-disguised repopulation program intended basically to reconstruct US society on a racial basis.