TPS eliminated for Salvadorans (Jan. 9, 2018)

The U.S. government confirmed the elimination of a program granting Salvadoran migrants provisional residency in the U.S. The decision to end  Temporary Protection Status for migrants from El Salvador affects approximately 200,000 people, who have been living in the country since at least 2001, reports the Washington Post. (See yesterday's briefs.) 

The Intercept phrases it more strongly: "Once implemented, the cancellation could see waves of people who have lived in the U.S. for generations deposited in one of the most dangerous places on Earth." Deportees will be returning to a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. Salvadoran officials have appealed to the U.S., saying that the decision will wreak havoc on the country's economy. El Salvador  receives billions of dollars in remittances from the U.S. Returnees will also destabilize the job market there, potentially displacing other people who will in turn be forced to seek alternatives such as migration to the U.S.

In fact,Trump's elimination of TPS for Salvadorans runs counter to the U.S. goal of improving stability and prosperity in Central America, and will likely worsen the factors pushing people to immigrate to the U.S. in the first place, argues Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post's Monkey Cage. "... Under Trump, the tacit understandings that governed federal policy on immigration and foreign policy are being shaken. His politics are built on an image of the United States as a passive victim of foreign menace, exploited, hoodwinked and infiltrated by all sorts of dangerous outside actors. "America first" demands that he ignore the pleas of Salvadoran officials ... As was the case with Trump's series of attempted bans on arrivals from certain Muslim-majority countries, the move here seems anchored less in any substantive policy than mere mean-spirited ideology."

But though the potential impact of the policy change is grave Salvadoran officials say the 18 month grace period accorded to TPS recipients is an opportunity to find a permanent protection against deportation, according to the WP.

El Salvador is the fourth country in four months to lose protection under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which since 1990 has offered deportation relief to people from regions experiencing armed conflict and natural disasters, notes the Guardian.

A report last year found 51 percent of Salvadorans with TPS have lived in the US for more than 20 years and 34 percent have homes with mortgages. They live mostly in California, Texas, New York and Washington DC.

News Briefs

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