As regular readers know, there has been nothing temporary about this LEGAL immigration program called Temporary Protected Status (until now!).
In a long overdue process, President Trump’s Homeland Security Department has been ending TPS for nationals of many countries who have been here for over a decade in some cases.
However, TPS for Syrians will be continued for another 18 months and is only available for those Syrians who got in to the US (somehow?) before August 2016. (See my recent accounting of who was behind the push for Syrian TPS, here.)
Here is the snippy Trump-bashing news from HuffPo reporter Elise Foley:
WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration will leave some Syrians in the U.S. at risk of being deported while their country is still mired in war, but extend temporary protections for several thousand others, the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday.
The agency will extend temporary protected status, or TPS, for Syrians for another 18 months, which will allow an estimated 5,800 Syrians to legally continue living and working in the U.S. But Syrians who came to the U.S. after August 2016 will be shut out of the TPS program — despite the ongoing war in Syria and against the urging of human rights organizations, faith leaders and national security experts.
“After carefully considering conditions on the ground, I have determined that it is necessary to extend the Temporary Protected Status designation for Syria, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. “It is clear that the conditions upon which Syria’s designation was based continue to exist, therefore an extension is warranted under the statute. We will continue to determine each country’s TPS status on a country-by-country basis.”
[….]
The president has also resisted extending TPS, which is granted to immigrants from countries hit by armed conflict, natural disasters or other urgent problems. Under Trump, DHS already ended TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan and gave at least 250,000 nationals of those countries notice they needed to leave the United States. Trump also rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which puts 700,000 young undocumented immigrants who came as children at risk of deportation. All told, that’s nearly a million people who are set to lose work permits and protections under Trump.
[….]
Deportations to Syria are relatively uncommon, but they do happen. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported two Syrian nationals in the 2017 fiscal year and nine the year before, according to the agency.
LOL! That last line made me laugh. So intent are reporters like Foley to show Trump as the evil one, she can’t even mention the inconvenient fact that the nine Syrians deported in FY16 were deported under their Dear Leader—Barack Hussein Obama!
Don’t miss my posts this past week about Church World Service’s political agitation activities against the President, here and here. Mr. President, Cut them loose from the federal teat!