Tomorrow, the Trump
administration will announce whether it will renew visas for nearly 200,000 Salvadorans
who have been living in the United States under temporary legal immigration
status for nearly two decades. Likely, they will end TPS status for these immigrants.
In 1990, Sen. Ted
Kennedy and President George H.W. Bush agreed on an important change to
American immigration laws. They believed that there should be a legal process
for people to come to the U.S. when foreign nations are rocked by earthquakes
(example: Haiti, 2010), hurricanes (Hurricane Mitch, 1998) and civil wars
(Serbians and Bosnians, 1990s). This program is known as TPS— Temporary
Protected Status. Sen. Kennedy sponsored the 1990 law; President Bush signed it.
Critics say that “temporary”
really means permanent, and they are right.
But critics leave out
a lot more about TPS. For one, Congress has tried unsuccessfully to allow TPS
immigrants to qualify for green cards (creating permanent residency). But more importantly,
TPS immigrants have a great track record of being productive members of American
society.
An interview in the Miami
Herald summarizes the past 20 years of a Nicaraguan man who came to the
U.S. under TPS. He started out by cleaning homes. Twenty years later, he owns a
cleaning business and employs six people. By 2019, he will face deportation if
he doesn’t return to Nicaragua. The story is here (
Since 1990, Republican
and Democratic administrations have admitted 437,000 people from 10 countries
who were caught in the middle of civil wars or were homeless after severe
earthquakes and hurricanes.
A spokesman for the National
TPS Alliance says, “Congress should consider the humanity, the dignity, of
these families and give them some kind of a solution. There are children who
have been born in this country. These are families who have given their best to
this country.”
The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce opposes the Trump administration’s plan to phase out TPS. They noted,
in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and Irma that large numbers of TPS
recipients work in the construction industries in portions of Texas and Florida
hit hard by hurricanes in 2017.
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