Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has turned into a joke. Maybe there were good intentions behind the idea of giving “temporary” refuge to people in the US (legally or ILLEGALLY) when their home country was embroiled in war or had been recently hit by a natural disaster, but now it has become one more backdoor amnesty.
I’ve written several posts recently at Potomac Tea Party Report and here at RRW about TPS for Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Syrians.
So what is the problem? They never go home! As I have oft repeated, ‘there is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary refugee’ (Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies). And, by the way, “temporary” refugees are given work permits and can do anything a US citizen can do except vote (and they are probably doing that too!).
Now here is Fox News telling us that six US Senators are pushing Obama to grant TPS to Syrians (they estimate around 10,000 are in the US legally at this moment, but they don’t know how many illegal Syrians are here).
Several Democratic senators are calling on the Obama administration to allow Syrians who are already in the United States to stay, at least temporarily, out of concern it would be “too dangerous” for them to return home.
The senators want President Obama to invoke what’s known as “temporary protected status” for thousands of Syrians in the U.S. The designation typically is given to foreign nationals whose home countries are beset by war or natural disaster and who could face harm should they return.
The senators argued that Syrians in the U.S. are in just that kind of predicament, as Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s regime sustains its bloody crackdown on protesters across the country.
“It is obviously too dangerous for Syrian nationals to return to Syria,” the senators wrote in a letter to President Obama.
Arab advocacy groups have been calling for the federal government to grant the status for Syrians in the U.S.
The designation, however, is controversial as Washington tends to repeatedly extend “temporary” status. Critics claim the status can become semi-permanent. The government currently grants “TPS” to people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.
Here are the six Senators pushing this latest backdoor amnesty program (no surprise!):
The letter was signed by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Robert Menendez, D-N.J.; Ben Cardin, D-Md.; and Bob Casey, D-Pa.
And, just a reminder of the Arab activist agitators and refugee contractors pushing the Senators:
United for a Free Syria (UFS), in close coordination with a broad coalition including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Syrian Expatriates Organization (SEO), Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), Syrian Americans for Democracy (SAD), South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI),* and Refugee Council USA (RCUSA)
So, where does this all end? Will we have TPS for every political hot spot, every hurricane, every earthquake in the world. And, why are the Syrians more important than say the Libyans, the Yemenis, the Egyptians, the Nigerians and so forth—all experiencing upheaval of one sort or another.
Remember TPS isn’t just for those who are here legally on some visa or another; the TPS given to Salvadorans and other Central Americans went largely to ILLEGAL aliens.
* HIAS and USCRI are federal refugee contractors whose bankroll comes mostly from you—the taxpayer.