Will Work Authorization Draw More Venezuelan Migrants to the U.S.?

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Is it a case of a wish come true or “be careful what you wish for”?

The news that the Biden administration would grant work permits to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who had already entered the United States was welcomed by Democratic leaders from cities overwhelmed with a large influx of migrants unable to work legally.

The hope is that the move will let many Venezuelans make enough money to move out of shelters, where the cost of housing them is straining big cities, especially New York. But could it end up backfiring by attracting even more Venezuelan migrants to cross the border?

The work authorization extends temporary protected status, known as T.P.S., to more than 400,000 Venezuelans who have entered the country since March 2021 and were on American soil by July 31 of this year. Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, warned that anyone who arrived after that would be “removed when they are found to not have a legal basis to stay.”

Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research center, said that research has not established a clear link between temporary protected status and increased migration.

She said of Venezuelans, “They know that in the U.S. there is safety and economic opportunity, and whether they are a parolee” — someone who has been granted humanitarian parole — “a T.P.S. recipient, or an asylum seeker may not be as important as the difference in opportunities overall available in the U.S., compared to where they’re living now.”

Ms. Gelatt noted that the route that most Venezuelans take to reach the United States — crossing the treacherous stretch of jungle known as the Darién Gap and up through Central America and Mexico — requires a journey of months and that any possible effect from the extension of the temporary work authorization would not be apparent for a while.

But several Venezuelans in New York said they thought that word of the work authorization extension would bring more of their countrymen here.

“For sure, people will come to the U.S.,” said Ely Johanna Carrascal, 32, who owned a small business in San Cristobal, Venezuela, and who now works in a restaurant.

US offers work permits to 500,000 Venezuelans already in country