Washington, United States.
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered the restoration of a reception program for minors El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Which aims to be an alternative that avoids the dangerous journey which some children perform for meeting his parents in the United States.
Through this program, the US Government will gather to those minors to follow in Central America and that they comply a number of requirements with his pares, provided these reside legally a American territory.
This program had been created by the former president barack Obama (2009-2017) and managed to gather almost 5,000 minors with their families hThis was removed four years ago, the State Department said in a statement.
The Central American Minors Program (CAM) will be restored in two phases: first, the applications which remained pending when the former president Donald Trump (2017-2021) ended the program in 2017 and will later begin in accept new requests.
According to the State Department, the US authorities already have a list of cases that were pending in 2017 and could be reopened, so now the process of contacting the pairs what they asked for asylum for their children in order to check that they still live legally in the US and that they want to go ahead with the application.
These first contacts with the pairs they could to start as soon as this March 15th.
Once these controls are in place, a center to process refugees that the U.S. has in the Savior will start contacting minors who could benefit and who live in this country, Guatemala and Honduras, detail the Foreign portfolio in the note.
When Obama created the program, it was established that minors arriving in the U.S. were entitled to a status of legal permanent residence and, after five years, they could apply for the American citizenship.
The Government of Biden it has not yet given details on how long the minors could stay in the US and under what conditions.
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Biden’s announcement comes at a time when the arrival on the border of Central American migrants trying to enter the U.S. of irregularly and that they are fleeing violence and lacking opportunities in theirs countries of origin, in addition to the disaster caused by recent hurricanes.
The number of minors trying to enter the US has shot up and, according to figures accessed by The New York Times, 3,250 migrant children they were arrested in the last two weeks.
These 3,250 minors are detained in centers for migrants located near the border. EFE