Biden Administration to Restart Program for Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, amidst Fraud Investigation.
The Biden administration is considering resuming a program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) to apply for legal entry and temporary work authorization in the United States from their home countries. The program, which was paused due to concerns of mass fraud, is set to restart with thousands of applications still under review for potential fraud.
Backstory to the Program for Migrants from Cuba
In August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that the 18-month-old program, known as CHNV, was temporarily paused. DHS cited the need for a thorough review of the supporter applications submitted by U.S. based sponsors who pledge to support the migrants financially. These sponsors, also called “supporters,” play a crucial role by vouching for the migrants’ financial stability once they arrive in the U.S.
The pause was prompted by an internal DHS report that flagged 101,000 sponsor applications as potentially fraudulent. The report, produced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), revealed that 3,218 individuals, referred to as “serial sponsors,” were responsible for submitting most of these applications. The report highlighted repeated uses of the same addresses and Social Security numbers, and even instances of using information tied to deceased individuals.
The Role of U.S. Sponsors
In the CHNV program, U.S. sponsors are required to make initial applications for migrants seeking to enter the U.S. These sponsors must prove they have the financial resources to support the migrants and provide necessary information such as their Social Security numbers for verification.
However, concerns about fraud arose early in the program. Reports surfaced that some potential sponsors were advertising online, offering to sell their services as sponsors to migrants. DHS has not confirmed whether any sponsors have been prosecuted for selling their services, but investigations are ongoing.
Flagged Applications Under Investigation
The DHS report raised serious concerns about potential abuse of the program by sponsors who repeatedly filed applications for different migrants. Nearly 600 applications were flagged for using the same address – a commercial warehouse in Orlando, Florida. Other red flags included repeated uses of Social Security numbers, some of which belonged to deceased people, and suspicious patterns of phone numbers and IP addresses tied to specific locations like Tijuana, Mexico.
The findings prompted USCIS’s fraud detection unit to launch an investigation. Their review uncovered troubling fraud indicators, including duplicate phone numbers in over 110,000 applications and over 19,000 applications using the same residential address.
What Comes Next? |Program for Migrants from Cuba
According to DHS data, over 530,000 migrants had been authorized to travel to the U.S. under the CHNV program as of July 2023. However, it remains unclear how many of these applicants were brought into the country with the help of the flagged serial sponsors.
The Biden administration is expected to resume the program, but ongoing fraud investigations continue to raise questions and requests for further measures to ensure its honesty. In the meantime, applicants and their supporters await updates on when the program will restart and changes to be implemented to prevent further misuse.
While restarting the program is necessary to manage migration from these countries, the ongoing investigation shows the importance of putting strict controls in place to maintain the integrity of the immigration process.
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