David J. Bier
This testimony was delivered July 15, 2025, at a joint hearing of the Homeland Security Committee subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement entitled, “Case by Case: Returning Parole to Its Proper Purpose.”
Here is my oral testimony:
Here is the opening of my written testimony:
Chairmen Brecheen and Guest, Ranking Members Thanedar and Correa, and distinguished members of the subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
My name is David Bier. I am the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research organization in Washington, DC. For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced original immigration research showing that a freer, more orderly, and more lawful immigration system benefits Americans. People are the ultimate resource. In a free country, immigrants can contribute to their new homes, making the United States a better, more powerful, and more prosperous place.
One legal way for immigrants to enter and participate in US society is parole, an immigration category first created by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. Over the decades since then, millions of individuals have entered this country as parolees. Although parole is a temporary status, it allows immigrants to adjust to lawful permanent residence if they are eligible through another pathway, which many thousands of parolees have done. Many former parolees are now Americans and continue to contribute to their new home. It is an essential and important feature of America’s legal immigration system.
Congress should:
protect current parolees from the president’s mass deportation efforts;
reinstitute the parole processes suspended by the president; and
expand those processes to give more people a viable legal option to immigrate legally to the United States.
Read the entire written testimony here.