This article was prepared with the assistance of ABIL, the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers, of which Loan Huynh is an active member.
According to reports, the Biden administration plans to resume a program that allows would-be migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply from their home countries for entry into the United States. The 18-month-old program was paused due to fraud concerns. Reportedly, "thousands of suspect applications" from sponsors of the migrants will still need to be reviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate.
According to NBC News, an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report "found that almost 101,000 sponsor applications for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ukraine were filed by 3,218 so-called serial sponsors." DHS found "thousands of instances of would-be sponsors' using the same street addresses, internet protocol addresses or phone numbers. Almost 600 applications were flagged, for example, because they all appeared to use the address of the same commercial warehouse in Orlando, Florida. The authors also found repeated uses of the same Social Security numbers, including numbers belonging to dead people."
Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is assisting in investigating any potential instances of criminal fraud.
