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Temporary Protected Status Has Saved Hundreds of Thousands - Trump Wants to End it
In recent weeks, Trump's new "leadership" in the Department of Homeland Security has announced the end of Temporary Protected Status ("TPS") for Haitians and Nicaraguans.
In reality, Trump and his xenophobic friends want to end TPS entirely, deporting as many non-Americans as possible back to war-torn, impoverished nations despite most living here for decades and contributing greatly to this nation.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) shields more than 300,000 immigrants from deportation. Since 1990, TPS has provided a haven for people already residing in the United States who are fleeing or reluctant to return to 10 specific countries affected by dangerous situations, including ongoing armed conflict and environmental disaster. While TPS does not offer a path to citizenship, it does allow people to live and work in the United States....
The largest population residing in the U.S. under TPS is from El Salvador as noted in the chart above.
During the 1980s, a brutal civil war in El Salvador forced several hundred thousand people to search for safety outside the country’s borders. The conflict killed 75,000 people, and thousands more were subject to torture, mutilation and rape at the hands of right-wing death squads. The war displaced more than a million people, a quarter of the small country’s population, and half of them turned to the United States for help.
These refugees undertook the perilous journey to the United States, with no guarantee of safety.
TPS is the shining example of what the United States, as the self-proclaimed "greatest nation in the world," is capable of to make this world a better place. It is a program that was passed in 1990 after nearly a decade of fighting with Reagan and Republicans. It is a program that should be expanded and enhanced, showing the U.S. is a beacon of light shining on corners of the world where people are otherwise forgotten and doomed.
In the 27 years since its passage, TPS has protected hundreds of thousands of people from designated countries from being deported, not only to countries experiencing violence from war but those affected by other forms of instability including famine, natural disasters and epidemics. Although it does not provide a path to permanent residency and citizenship, the policy remains one of the country’s most essential humanitarian protections. Ending TPS would harm communities across the country.
As detailed in the Washington Posrt article cited below, Smart Dissent made this program a reality in 1990. More of the same must be done by each of us right now.
....remember the hard work and compassion of activists that brought it into existence in 1990 when they, too, took on a hostile and reluctant White House, and won.
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