President Biden announced yesterday that his administration “is announcing plans” to “welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing Russia’s aggression.” He doesn’t explain who the “others” are, but 100,000 would amount to less than 3 percent of the Ukrainian refugees outside of Ukraine and 1 percent of Ukraine’s displaced population including those inside Ukraine. It is welcome that the administration is finally showing interest in helping Ukrainians reach the United States, but this large-scale plan simply will not happen.

The agencies have not produced any logistical or operational plans to carry it out, and every indication is that the administration is still not serious about admitting many Ukrainians. Biden has repeatedly promised far more refugee resettlement than he has delivered, and all the signs indicate that this announcement is just an aspiration. 

The reasons for skepticism are plentiful. Biden did not immediately raise the refugee target to 125,000 as he promised during and after his campaign. When he finally did raise the cap to 62,500, he failed to actually increase admissions at all and resettled in 2021 the fewest refugees ever. Then, when he did raise the cap to 125,000 for FY 2022, he admitted just 8,000 through half the fiscal year. Separate from the formal refugee program, he promised to evacuate Afghan allies using “humanitarian parole,” but as soon as the initial evacuation ended, he abandoned nearly all of them.

There is every reason to believe that this latest target is just another in a list of immigration goals that Biden will fail to achieve. To begin with, there are zero operational details about this supposed effort. Officials are saying they are “developing” plans, but the immigration bureaucracy cannot even roll out the most basic immigration regulations quickly. By the time these plans are finalized, the war will either be over or at such a disastrous point that 100,000 will look pathetic. 

The historic backlogs at the State Department consulates and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will not suddenly disappear because Biden said he wants to let in 100,000 Ukrainians. The administration cannot even process its normal flow of immigrant visa applicants. USCIS processed just 1,000 of 40,000 Afghan humanitarian parole applicants in 7 months, and it denied more than 80 percent of them on spurious grounds.

The idea that these logistical problems will not affect the Ukrainian processing is a fantasy. Indeed, the administration is reportedly planning to select Ukrainians for any hypothetical special new programs using narrow criteria. This will only make processing large numbers more difficult because it will require agencies to analyze more evidence.

Moving toward the 100,000 goal, the administration plans to count “full range of legal pathways to the United States,” including the formal refugee admissions program, parole, and immigrant and non-immigrant visas. In other words, it is going to count the immigrants, refugees, and Ukrainian visa holders who would have come to the United States anyway—that is, people who would have come whether the war occurred or not. It may even count the 75,000 Ukrainians who will be granted Temporary Protected Status who were already in the United States at the time of the invasion.

There is actually a way for the United States to admit Ukrainians by automating travel authorization by using the Visa Waiver Program screening system known as ESTA, and then granting humanitarian parole at ports of entry. Several House members of Congress led by Rep. Jason Crow (D‑CO) included this idea in a letter to the administration this week. But so far the administration has said that it opposes any “major” evacuation effort, which makes the idea of admitting 100,000 refugees seem even less likely.

The administration needs to stop responding to crises after the fact and start developing proactive solutions that would allow the system to quickly respond to crises as they emerge. But the current paper-based immigration system that incorporates outdated, redundant, and unnecessary vetting is ultimately far from the system that can do that. The United States can do better than its current broken system, and it should use this moment as an opportunity to fix it.