The Biden administration has extended a program that allows Venezuelan immigrants to stay and work legally in the United States, offering a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people who have fled the country in crisis.
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The decision grants some 340,000 Venezuelans living in the United States access to so-called Temporary Protected Status until March 2024., according to an emailed statement from the Department of Homeland Security on Monday. It was due to expire in September.
However, the administration did not open the program to immigrants who arrived within the past year.
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President Joe Biden initially granted the protections last March, fulfilling a campaign promise in a twist on the Trump administration’s policy of routinely deporting Venezuelans while criticizing President Nicolás Maduro’s leftist government.
Around six million Venezuelans have fled their country, the vast majority to escape a severe economic crisis and start afresh in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, making it one of the biggest displacement crises in the world. 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 North America has skyrocketed over the past year as countries have imposed travel restrictions. visa, which makes it difficult for Venezuelans to travel by air 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, about double the number recorded by the agency a year earlier.
Trump authorized a program known as Deferred Forced Departure in his final days in office, which offered work permits and deportation protections to Venezuelans in the country illegally.
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*With information from Bloomberg
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