A Biden administration migrant welfare program could provide more than $1 billion in benefits to people crossing the southern border.
The CHNV program has enabled hundreds of thousands of citizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to travel to the United States.
This allows 30,000 migrants a month to apply for asylum and be flown to the US using taxpayer money, provided they have a sponsor who passes a background check.
The undocumented migrants will be given a two-year extension to obtain status and will be allowed to live and work legally in the country in the meantime on the basis of “humanitarian release.”
More than 520,000 migrants from the four countries were released on probation in the U.S. between January 2023 and June of this year, according to Border Protection figures.
The Biden administration’s CHNV program has allowed hundreds of thousands of nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S.
It allows 30,000 migrants a month to apply for asylum and be flown to the US using taxpayer money, provided they have a sponsor who passes a background check.
This was split into 109,000 Cubans, 205,000 Haitians, 90,000 Nicaraguans and 115,000 Venezuelans.
Haitians and Cubans who participate in the program are immediately eligible for taxpayer-funded federal benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and Social Security.
An analysis by DailyMail.com found that Medicaid costs, which are about $9,175 per insured person, would amount to $1.8 billion if every Cuban and Haitian entering the country received it.
SNAP benefits, better known as food stamps, would cost the country $451 million, while general welfare benefits would cost as much as $1.2 billion.
These three figures bring total benefit spending to a staggering $3.4 billion.
Even if just a quarter of Haitians received all the benefits they were entitled to, that figure would still be $850 million.
Average costs were obtained from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Department of Health & Human Services, and a Medicaid Commission.
Court documents show the selection process is not rigorous. From January through June of last year, the approval rate for Haitian applicants was 98.3 percent.
Haitians and Cubans who participate in the program are immediately eligible for taxpayer-funded federal benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and Social Security.
During that period, 78,838 Haitians applied for the program, with the Department of Homeland Security handling 64,285 cases, of which 63,214 applications were approved.
That figure was revealed in a lawsuit filed this year by Texas and other Republican-led states, which sued the Biden administration to block the program.
Other states, including Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas, argued that the program had left them with additional costs for health care, education and law enforcement.
They also alleged that the Biden administration was inviting people who would otherwise have entered the country illegally.
A federal judge ruled that the government could continue the program, a decision welcomed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas.
Last month, the Biden administration was forced to shut down the program after widespread fraud came to light.
The freeze followed an internal DHS report that found fraud by sponsors who paid for migrants to come to the country, sources told Fox News.
The ongoing border crisis has become a key talking point in the current race for the White House between Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump
According to the report, a total of 3,200 individual sponsors signed up to support approximately 101,000 migrants, raising concerns at DHS that the system was being abused.
The report alleging fraud also shockingly noted that some of the names used to fill out sponsorship forms belonged to deceased individuals.
Furthermore, in some sponsorship applications, the storage units turned out to be the residential address, while in thousands of applications, certain telephone numbers were used.
Nearly 3,000 sponsorship applications were filled out using false ZIP codes, according to an investigation by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a conservative immigration nonprofit that was first to obtain the report.
Late last month, it was announced that the program would continue after DHS conducted “additional screening.”
The ongoing border crisis has become a key talking point in the current race for the White House between Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on September 13, 2024
During their debate this week, Trump accused Haitian migrants of “eating pets” in Springfield, Ohio. The unsubstantiated claim first appeared on social media.
“In Springfield, they eat the dogs. The people who came here eat the cats,” the former president said. “They eat the pets of the people who live there.”
Harris muttered, “What? This is unbelievable,” before adding, “what an extreme,” and laughing.
On Friday, Trump continued to smear Haitian migrants in the Ohio city, only fueling the false claims.
At a press conference in California, he said: “We are going to do massive deportations from Springfield, Ohio,” adding that migrants are “destroying the way of life.”
On Friday, President Joe Biden said the Haitian community is currently “under siege” and called for an end to the Republicans’ comments.
“It’s just wrong. There’s no place for it in America,” Biden said at a White House luncheon. “This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”