US government resumes humanitarian entry program for citizens of 4 countries

By Ted Hesson and Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States government will resume an updated version of a migrant sponsorship program that it had paused earlier this summer over concerns of fraud, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Thursday.

"With these updated procedures in place, DHS is resuming the issuance of new Advance Travel Authorizations and will closely monitor how this new process is operating moving forward," the department said.

The program is part of an effort by the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden to increase legal pathways to the United States and discourage illegal border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border but has been criticized by Republicans as overly permissive.

The program allows up to 30,000 people into the United States each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they have sponsors and meet other conditions. Sponsors must be in the United States legally and have sufficient financial resources to support the person they are sponsoring for the duration of their stay.

The modified vetting measures include further scrutiny of supporters' financial records and criminal background, additional vetting to identify fraudulent supporter profiles, and bolstered review methods to identify serial filing trends, the department said on Thursday. It added that the department will also now require fingerprints from U.S.-based supporters.

As of June 30, some 495,000 people from those four nations had entered the United States under the program, which began for Venezuelans in 2022 and the other nationalities in 2023, according to DHS statistics.

Immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border is a key issue in the Nov. 5 U.S. elections in which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris faces Republican former President Donald Trump.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)