Trump Administration set to announce TPS no longer justified
According to Nick Miroff and Karen DeYoung's reporting in the Washington Post, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Trump Administration have concluded that conditions in Central America, specifically, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and Haiti no longer justify Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for their citizens who had been living in the US since natural disasters struck their countries years ago.
We haven't seen the letter that Tillerson sent to acting Department of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, but I imagine that it says that the direct effects of Hurricane Mitch for Nicaragua and Honduras and earthquakes for El Salvador and Haiti have dissipated. It would be hard to argue with a straight face that overall conditions in those countries have improved since those disasters, except perhaps Nicaragua, or that the return of thousands of their citizens, some who have been gone for over twenty years, will not place undue hardship on the receiving countries.
As Tim speculates, we do not know exactly what the US government is going to recommend policy wise after stating that conditions in Central America and the Caribbean no longer justify TPS.
Terminating TPS will most likely negatively effect these countries unprepared for receiving tens of or hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Their work forces and societies are not prepared for such numbers especially if their returns are carried out in such rushed and haphazard ways, as one would expect from this administration. By most reporting, ending TPS will not only adversely affect El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti, but it will adversely affect the US at the macro- and micro-levels. These people make valuable economic contributions to the US as consumers and as business and home owners. They are husbands and wives and parents of US citizens. They are integral members of our society. Now is not the time to remove TPS and to deport these 300,000 individuals. Provide them with a path to citizenship or permanent legal status.
If the Trump Administration seeks to end TPS and begin removal of the roughly 300,000 people who are protected by it, it will continue to take us down the road of becoming an international pariah. What else would you say about a country so intent on ramping up its immigration enforcement efforts to forcibly expel over ten million people from its borders?
The Administration has dehumanized entire immigrant communities by characterizing them as rapists and criminal gang members. That seems to be how they wrongfully see immigrants, given their moves against legal immigration as well.
We haven't seen the letter that Tillerson sent to acting Department of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, but I imagine that it says that the direct effects of Hurricane Mitch for Nicaragua and Honduras and earthquakes for El Salvador and Haiti have dissipated. It would be hard to argue with a straight face that overall conditions in those countries have improved since those disasters, except perhaps Nicaragua, or that the return of thousands of their citizens, some who have been gone for over twenty years, will not place undue hardship on the receiving countries.
As Tim speculates, we do not know exactly what the US government is going to recommend policy wise after stating that conditions in Central America and the Caribbean no longer justify TPS.
So what does the end of TPS mean? For each person who enjoyed that protection, they revert to their status in 2001 at the time of the earthquakes. For someone who was undocumented and unknown to the US government, they return to being undocumented but now they are known to the government. The government would need to commence removal proceedings against that person, a process which can take years in immigration court. For someone who had a final order of removal already entered, that order will be effective again and they could be immediately picked up and placed on a plane to El Salvador. For someone who was in the midst of deportation proceedings, their case presumably resumes where it left off, if the government wants to pursue it.
People with lawyers will find ways to challenge and delay removal. People without lawyers will find little a system which cares little for the fact that they have lived as law abiding residents of the US for 16 or more years.
This will not be a situation where suddenly one day 195,000 Salvadorans arrive at Oscar Arunlfo Romero International Airport. Instead, one can anticipate a growing volume of deportations, as the Trump administration adds TPS recipients to the queue, along with asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors, refugees and others.It is possible that the Administration, like it did with DACA, is going send this to Congress. President Trump might say that we are going to let TPS expire, but we will leave it up to Congress to find a permanent fix for the problem that we did not have to create. Oh, and by the way, we are going to ask for very punitive measures in return for assisting the people we just put in jeopardy.
Terminating TPS will most likely negatively effect these countries unprepared for receiving tens of or hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Their work forces and societies are not prepared for such numbers especially if their returns are carried out in such rushed and haphazard ways, as one would expect from this administration. By most reporting, ending TPS will not only adversely affect El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti, but it will adversely affect the US at the macro- and micro-levels. These people make valuable economic contributions to the US as consumers and as business and home owners. They are husbands and wives and parents of US citizens. They are integral members of our society. Now is not the time to remove TPS and to deport these 300,000 individuals. Provide them with a path to citizenship or permanent legal status.
If the Trump Administration seeks to end TPS and begin removal of the roughly 300,000 people who are protected by it, it will continue to take us down the road of becoming an international pariah. What else would you say about a country so intent on ramping up its immigration enforcement efforts to forcibly expel over ten million people from its borders?
The Administration has dehumanized entire immigrant communities by characterizing them as rapists and criminal gang members. That seems to be how they wrongfully see immigrants, given their moves against legal immigration as well.
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