The Biden Administration extended a program that allows Venezuelan immigrants to stay and work legally in the United States, providing a lifeline to hundreds of thousands who have fled the country in crisis.
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The decision grants some 340,000 Venezuelans living in the US access to the so-called temporary protected status until March 2024, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security emailed Monday. It was scheduled to expire in September.
However, the Administration failed to open the program to immigrants who arrived during the last year.
President Joe Biden initially granted the protections last March, fulfilling a campaign promise in a turn from the Trump administration’s policy of routinely deporting Venezuelans while criticizing the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Approximately six million Venezuelans have fled their country, the vast majority to escape a severe economic crisis and start over in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries, making it one of the largest displacement crises in the world. , according to data from the UN Refugee Agency.
The number of Venezuelans crossing the dense and dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama, known as the Darien Gap, and into North America has skyrocketed over the past year as countries have imposed visa restrictions, making it difficult for Venezuelans to travel by plane to Mexico and Central America, Human Rights Watch reported last week.
Nearly 100,000 encounters with Venezuelan migrants have been recorded by US immigration agencies since Octoberaccording to the most recent data from US Customs and Border Protection. That’s about double the number recorded by the agency a year earlier.
Trump authorized a program known as Deferred Enforced Departure in his last days in office, which offered work permits and deportation protections to Venezuelans in the country illegally.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With data from Bloomberg
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