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August 12, 2026
GWP IMMIGRATION LAW
The Sponsor’s Form Behind Humanitarian Parole — And Why It’s Frozen Right Now
What Form I-134A asks of a financial sponsor, and why USCIS isn’t accepting new filings in 2026.
USCIS has not accepted a new Form I-134A since January 2025, yet prospective sponsors keep asking us how to file one.
Updated August 12, 2026 · GWP Law · Las Vegas, NVTHE CONTEXT
Why This Matters Now
Form I-134A, “Online Request to be a Supporter and Declaration of Financial Support,” lets a person in the United States pledge the financial resources to sponsor someone seeking humanitarian parole.
It is filed online, through a myUSCIS account, and it carries no filing fee.
Here is the part most online guides leave out: as of this writing, USCIS is not accepting any new I-134A filings, under any program.
The form’s own status page has been repurposed into a standing notice about that suspension, not a set of filing instructions.
The authority behind parole comes from INA § 212(d)(5), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5), which lets the Secretary of Homeland Security parole a noncitizen into the country case by case.
The statute allows this only for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or a “significant public benefit,” and Congress left both phrases undefined, which is why parole decisions carry so much agency discretion.
Parole is not an admission to the United States and does not confer any immigration status.
It is a temporary, discretionary measure, and it was never meant to substitute for the ordinary visa process.
Who Could Sponsor, and What It Required
When USCIS was still accepting filings, a sponsor had to be a U.S. citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or hold a valid status such as asylee, refugee, TPS, DACA, or another lawful nonimmigrant category.
The sponsor also had to be physically present in the United States, since the form is a personal declaration, not something a beneficiary could file for themselves.
Financially, USCIS looked for household income at or above 100% of the HHS poverty guidelines for the sponsor’s household size — for 2026, that threshold is $27,320 for a household of three and $33,000 for a household of four in the contiguous United States.
Sponsors documented that income with tax returns, pay stubs, or an employer letter.
USCIS also ran every sponsor through a background and security check, cross-referencing the applicant against federal law enforcement databases and, in some cases, collecting biometric data.
A serious criminal history, an invalid immigration status, insufficient income, or evidence that the sponsorship was offered in exchange for payment could all disqualify a sponsor.
Once approved, a sponsor’s commitment ran for the length of the beneficiary’s parole, typically up to two years, and covered helping with reception, safe housing, basic support, and integration into the community.
That commitment is a moral undertaking, not an enforceable one — unlike Form I-864, the Affidavit of Support used in family-based green card cases, which is a legally binding contract that can be enforced in court and typically requires income at 125% of the poverty guidelines.
Three Programs, Now Paused or Closed
Three parole initiatives relied on Form I-134A for sponsor vetting: the process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), Uniting for Ukraine (U4U), and the Family Reunification Parole (FRP) processes.
All three are now paused or terminated, which is the reason the form itself sits idle.
A Texas-led coalition of states first challenged CHNV in Texas v. DHS, arguing the program rewrote immigration law without Congress, but a federal district court let the program continue, finding the states hadn’t shown the economic injury they claimed.
That ruling did not save the program. Executive Order 14165, “Securing Our Borders,” signed January 20, 2025, directed a review of every categorical parole program, CHNV included.
Litigation over the wind-down reached the Supreme Court as Noem v. Doe; in May 2025 the Court stayed a lower-court order that had paused the terminations, clearing DHS to proceed.
DHS began sending CHNV parolees notices of termination on June 12, 2025, and the program is now closed to new applicants.
U4U’s new sponsor filings and re-parole requests have been paused since the same January 2025 review, with no resumption date announced.
FRP, which covered sponsors petitioning for relatives from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and El Salvador, was formally terminated in a notice published December 15, 2025.
Source: USCIS, Update on Form I-134A.
A REAL CASE
A Sponsorship That Never Got Filed
A client called our office in early 2026 wanting to sponsor his cousin, a Venezuelan national, under a parole process he’d read about the year before.
He had his tax returns and pay stubs ready, and he assumed filing an I-134A was simply a matter of creating a myUSCIS account.
I reviewed the current status of CHNV with him and explained that DHS had already terminated the program and that USCIS was not accepting any I-134A filings for it.
Instead of filing a form that would go nowhere, we looked at whether his cousin qualified for asylum or a family-based petition once a visa category became current.
We also flagged that if his cousin were later paroled into the U.S. under some future program, the same income documentation would still be useful, so nothing he’d gathered was wasted.
What to Do If You’re Considering Sponsorship
THE PATH FORWARD
What Comes Next
None of this means humanitarian parole is gone for good; discretionary programs like this have opened, closed, and reopened before under different names.
It does mean that anyone weighing a sponsor commitment right now needs a clear picture of which programs are actually live, not just which ones existed a year ago.
Beneficiaries who already hold parole under a program that’s since closed should also look at travel and status questions carefully — our guide to advance parole for a pending asylum case and our overview of parole in place cover related paths worth ruling in or out.
We track these program changes as they happen and can tell you, case by case, whether sponsorship is realistic today or whether a different filing gets your family member here faster.
References
- USCIS, Update on Form I-134A
- 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5) (INA § 212(d)(5)), Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute
- Exec. Order No. 14165, “Securing Our Borders,” 90 Fed. Reg. 8467 (Jan. 30, 2025)
- USCIS, Litigation-Related Update: Supreme Court Stay of CHNV Preliminary Injunction
- DHS, DHS Issues Notices of Termination for the CHNV Parole Program (June 12, 2025)
- Federal Register, Termination of Family Reunification Parole Processes (Dec. 15, 2025)
- USCIS, I-864P, HHS Poverty Guidelines for Affidavit of Support
- American Immigration Council, District Court in Texas Allows CHNV Parole Program to Continue
- USCIS, Form I-864, Affidavit of Support Under Section 213A of the INA
Considering Sponsorship, or Already Holding Parole?
We’ll tell you plainly whether your case is realistic today, and what to file instead if it isn’t.
Book a Consultation →This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified immigration attorney before taking any action. · Last verified: August 4, 2026 · Reviewed by: Kathia Quirós, Immigration Attorney · GWP Immigration Law
