What’s Next for TPS?
Administration’s Inaction on Sudan and Ukraine
Adds to Cruelty and Confusion
Nationwide, Oct. 19 — Today we learned that the Trump Administration has decided not to decide on the fate of Temporary Protected Status for people from Sudan and Ukraine. Their TPS status was set to expire today, but for the more than 100,000 Sudanese and Ukrainian TPS beneficiaries, there is no certainty whether their protection will be canceled or renewed – they have been told only that they can keep their status “for now.”
So now these families join about 200,000 Salvadoran TPS holders and their families who have been living in a state of limbo, uncertainty and anxiety since their TPS deadline came and went on September 9 of this year.
The following is a statement from José Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance and a TPS holder from El Salvador:
“TPS holders deserve equal rights. Whether we are from El Salvador, Ukraine, Sudan – or from any of the other countries where TPS has already been canceled – it is scandalous that we would have our lives, and those of our families, upended and possibly destroyed by a bureaucracy that can’t decide from one day to the next how heartless it wants to be.
“Ukraine and Sudan are being torn – right now – by deadly armed conflict. As with the other countries in the TPS program, stripping away humanitarian protections and making innocent families vulnerable to deportation is the height of cruelty and insanity.
“But uncertainty at home in the United States is distressing also. TPS recipients from El Salvador have had to refresh a government website every morning to know if their TPS protections are still available to them, while many more are also losing their jobs and their ability to drive. Some could begin losing their homes. Adding an additional 100,000 people to the current limbo of 200,000 workers, families and their employers will continue to wreak havoc on communities and workplaces.
“Minimally we deserve to know what comes next for us. We deserve freedom from arbitrary and odious application of outdated immigration laws. We know that we are just the latest in a long line of immigrants who may have come to the US for one reason, but stayed for another. Our purpose in staying now is to defend our families, our communities, and constitutional values which are under attack.
Throughout American history, most of the country’s most unjust immigration laws were temporary. But immigrant contributions have been indelible, and eventually laws that discriminated against non-white immigrants were reformed. Now is no different. We are part of the fabric of this country, and the federal government must recognize this.
“As we at the National TPS Alliance have said for months, revoking TPS has been a disaster, first, for hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants from Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries. And, second, attempted termination of our status has been devastating for the USA, disrupting jobs and communities. It is putting the country’s most bedrock shared national values in jeopardy.
“We will not give up hope. We will not give up the struggle. We will keep fighting for the rights and humane treatment that people from all TPS countries deserve.”
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