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The U.S. government will resume an updated version of the immigrant sponsorship program that was suspended earlier this summer due to fraud concerns, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday. Reuters.
“With these updated procedures, DHS will resume issuing new advance travel authorizations and will closely monitor how this new process operates going forward,” the department said.
The program is part of an effort by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to increase legal pathways to the United States and discourage illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border but has been criticized by Republicans as too lenient.
The program allows up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the United States each month as long as they have a sponsor and meet other conditions. The sponsor must be legally present in the United States and have sufficient financial resources to support their sponsor during their stay in the United States.
The department said Thursday that revised investigative measures include closer examinations of followers’ financial records and criminal histories, additional investigations to identify fraudulent follower profiles, and enhanced screening methods to identify serial submission trends. He added that the department will now also require followers living in the United States to provide fingerprints.
As of June 30, about 495,000 people from the four countries had entered the United States under the program, which began targeting Venezuelans in 2022 and other nationalities in 2023, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics.
Migrants coming across the U.S.-Mexico border are a key issue in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, where Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris faces Republican former President Donald Trump.
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