Biden restarts immigration program for 4 countries with more vetting for sponsors

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is restarting an immigration program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States, and it is including “additional vetting” of their U.S.-based financial sponsors following fraud concerns.

The Department of Homeland Security had suspended the program earlier this month to investigate the concerns but indicated that an internal review found no widespread fraud among sponsors.

“Together with our existing rigorous vetting of potential beneficiaries seeking to travel to the United States, these new procedures for supporters have strengthened the integrity of these processes and will help protect against exploitation of beneficiaries,” the agency said.

The program launched in January 2023 and is a major piece of the Biden administration’s immigration policies that create or expand pathways for legal entry while restricting asylum for those who cross the border illegally.

The policy is aimed at countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and generally refuse to accept those who are deported. It is paired with commitments from Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the U.S. border illegally.

Under the program, the U.S. accepts up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries for two years and offers eligibility for work authorization. To qualify, migrants must have a financial sponsor in the U.S. who vouches for them and fly into an American airport at their own expense, rather than crossing at the southern border. Those acting as sponsors and the migrants hoping to come to America undergo vetting by Homeland Security.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the program as an end-run around immigration laws. They immediately attacked the administration when the program was suspended early this month, pointing to it as further validation of their concerns about whether migrants were properly vetted. And they criticized the decision announced Thursday to restart.

“Instead of scrapping the clearly flawed program, the department is allowing it to continue without rooting out the fraud or putting adequate safeguards in place to prevent exploitation by sponsors here in the United States. But fundamentally, there would be no fraud to prevent if DHS simply stopped importing 30,000 inadmissible aliens every month in the first place,” said Republican Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that the additional vetting would include more scrutiny of the financial records that U.S.-based sponsors are required to submit as well as their criminal backgrounds. Sponsors will be required to submit fingerprints, and the agency will bolster steps to identify sponsors who are fraudulent and when one files numerous applications.

DHS said an internal review found some cases of fraud, such as sponsors using fake Social Security numbers, but that the majority of cases it investigated had a reasonable explanation, such as a typo when a sponsor was submitting information online.

“Since the inception of the process, a very small number of supporters were found to have fraud or criminal issues warranting referral to law enforcement for investigation and/or appropriate action,” the agency said.

Homeland Security also said it had not found issues in vetting the migrants themselves, saying those who come to the U.S. under the program “have been thoroughly screened and vetted.”

When it announced the program’s suspension, Homeland Security didn’t say when processing stopped. But the news broke after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors immigration restrictions, cited an internal agency report that raised questions about fraud.

Neither Homeland Security nor FAIR have provided that report. FAIR asserted that the report showed that 3,218 sponsors were responsible for more than 100,000 filings and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors corresponded to dead people.

Concerns about sponsors seeking a quick profit surfaced almost from the start. Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carried dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters.

Since the program was launched, more than 520,000 people from the four countries have arrived in the U.S.

Arrests for illegal crossings have plummeted among the four nationalities. Cubans were arrested 5,065 times during the first half of the year, compared with more than 42,000 arrests in November 2022 alone. Haitians were arrested 304 times during the first six months of the year, compared with a peak of nearly 18,000 in September 2021.