Hues of Humanitarianism

In principle, the U.S. humanitarian parole system is well-positioned to expeditiously provide equal protection and assistance to vulnerable Afghans, Ukrainians, and others fleeing humanitarian emergencies. For example, in 2021 the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. military withdrawal from the country and just six months later, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Both events led to the type of massive displacement crises that humanitarian parole was theoretically created to address, with thousands of Afghans and Ukrainians seeking urgent refuge in the U.S. However, as evidenced by the robust Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program and the relatively fragile Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) initiative for Afghans, there are clear inequities in the accessibility and provision of U.S. humanitarian parole benefits. How do recently arrived migrants differentially experience the humanitarian parole program in the U.S., and what may explain some of the variations in their experiences with humanitarian parole? To answer these questions, this article draws on an analysis of humanitarian parole policies as well as data from structured interviews with 160 migrants who recently arrived in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area from a humanitarian crisis-affected country. From this sample, the authors focus on the experiences of 10 migrants in order to better understand the U.S. humanitarian parole program. Based on an analysis of all these data, we argue that one of the primary functions of the U.S. humanitarian parole system is to serve as an internal migration control that meets U.S. national security interests. This article adopts a critical security studies lens to uniquely highlight the disparate impacts this selective humanitarianism has on the experiences of different migrant groups living in the U.S., before concluding that the realization of true, uniformly applied, humanitarianism may be even further away as the second Trump administration takes aim at existing humanitarian parole programs.