How To Immigrate To America Legally: Senior Officials Defend Biden Strategy, Raise Concern Over Disinformation

Senior Biden Administration officials overseeing various parts of the immigration process on Thursday expressed their concern about disinformation regarding migration, and called for 'counting on official sources' to find out how to immigrate to America legally, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"We’re absolutely concerned about disinformation regarding migration," Eric Jacobstein, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State covering regional migration, told TURAN's Washington correspondent during a briefing at the Washington Foreign Press Center.

Last year, the Biden administration announced the expansion of lawful pathways to the U.S. for refugees and migrants by opening Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) in several countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador, as new vehicles to access refugee resettlement to America and elsewhere.

"I would encourage individuals to go to movilidadsegura.org to find out information about where to go. This is a process that you can actually do – the bulk of this process can be carried out online, so that – rely on official sources of information rather than the information that’s being circulated by smugglers and others, because there are consequences for those who come irregularly and don’t take advantage of lawful pathways," Jacobstein said, calling SMOs' operations "successful than imagined."  

"This is a process that’s done in close cooperation with international organizations, with UNHCR, with the International Organization for Migration," he added.

Since the launch of SMOs last June, more than 28,500 individuals have been referred to the U.S refugee admission processing program and more than 19,300 individuals have been approved to come to the U.S. Jacobstein said.  More than 7,500 individuals have already arrived in the U.S.

"So this is a close partnership with governments in the region, with international organizations, and the message out of this to us is clear.  The message is:  Take advantage of these lawful pathways rather than making irregular journeys," he concluded.

Marcela Escobari, Special Assistant to President Biden, also added that SMOs were "part of a whole ecosystem to advance and increase the number of legal pathways to the U.S. and to other countries."

"Our studies and our recent study that just came out showed that the availability of these legal pathways, which the SMOs are an engine to help provide access to, have reduced by a third – in communities where these legal pathways are available, people migrate at a third of the rate that in communities that don’t have them," she said in response to TURAN's questions.

"So we see this expansion to be not only the – a better way to migrate, but also reducing the numbers of irregular migration," she added.

When asked whether the Biden administration, by involving international partners into SMO's operations, had "outsourced" the migration process, Luis Miranda, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, disagreed, explaining: "There is nothing outsourced about the screening and vetting that we conduct on anyone coming to the U.S. up to and including on their arrival." 

"We do have a multilayered screening and vetting.  And if we detect public safety or national security threats, obviously, we screen for those.  So, nothing of that nature is outsourced," he concluded.