By Ted Hesson and Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government will resume an updated version of its migrant sponsorship program that was halted earlier this summer over concerns about fraud, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Thursday.
“Now that these updated procedures are in place, DHS will resume issuance of new Advance Travel Authorizations and will closely monitor how this new process functions going forward,” the department said.
The program is part of an effort by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to expand legal routes into the United States and discourage illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Republicans have criticized the program as too permissive.
The program brings up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the United States each month if they have sponsors and meet other requirements. Sponsors must be legal residents of the United States and have sufficient financial resources to support the person they are sponsoring during their stay.
The enhanced screening measures include further scrutiny of supporters’ financial records and criminal histories, additional screening to identify fraudulent supporter profiles and enhanced assessment methods to identify trends in serial submissions, the department said on Thursday. It added that the department will now also require fingerprints from supporters living in the US.
According to DHS statistics, as of June 30, approximately 495,000 people from these four countries had entered the United States through the program, which began in 2022 for Venezuelans and in 2023 for other nationalities.
Immigration across the US-Mexico border is a key issue in the US election on November 5, which will pit Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against Republican former President Donald Trump.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
