US suspends humanitarian visas for citizens from Venezuela and 3 Latin American countries

The US government has temporarily suspended the issuance of humanitarian permits for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals to enter the country and stay for two years due to concerns that their sponsors are fraudulent.

The US has suspended issuing humanitarian visas to citizens from four Latin American countries but pledged to resume them soon. (Source: Havana Times)

As of June, nearly 500,000 people of the above nationalities had come to the United States under the humanitarian visa program after applying online for sponsorship and paying for their own airfare, AP news agency reported.

This is an important policy of the Democratic-led US government to create or expand legal entry pathways while limiting asylum rights for those who cross the border illegally.

However, on August 2, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it had “paused” the issuance of new licenses to review the sponsors’ backgrounds.

DHS stressed that the agency has not identified any security risks related to people from the four mentioned countries and is committed to “resuming application processing as soon as possible, with appropriate safeguards.”

The US Republican Party immediately criticized the humanitarian visa program. House Speaker Mike Johnson asserted that the program should not have been implemented in the first place because "this is how the Biden-Harris administration welcomes hundreds of thousands of foreigners into the US without any restrictions."

The humanitarian visa policy will begin to apply to Venezuelans from October 2022 and to the remaining three nationalities from January 2023. These are countries that send large numbers of migrants to the US and often refuse to take back their deported citizens.

The policy comes with a commitment from Mexico to take in people from countries that cross the US border illegally.

Under this policy, the US accepts up to 30,000 people per month from the above countries for two years with the ability to apply for work permits.

According to data from Customs and Border Protection, as of June, more than 194,000 Haitians, 110,000 Venezuelans, 104,000 Cubans and 86,000 Nicaraguans had benefited from the humanitarian visa program. Arrests of those four nationalities for illegal border crossings have declined.

In the first half of this year, the US arrested 5,065 Cubans, compared to 42,000 in November 2022. In the first six months of this year, 304 Haitians were arrested, compared to nearly 18,000 in September 2021.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/my-dinh-chi-cap-thi-thuc-nhan-dao-cho-cong-dan-tu-venezuela-cung-3-nuoc-my-latinh-281421.html