Tag: Temporary Protected Status

Obama extends TEMPORARY “refugee” status to Hondurans and Nicaraguans

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Josh Gerstein writing at Politico nails it when discussing our ludicrously-named backdoor immigration program—Temporary Protected Status.

“Temporary refugees!”  They came to America illegally and  Hurricane Mitch (in 1998!) became the excuse for never leaving! Photo: History Files

Here is Gerstein’s most “undercovered” story of the week!  (Emphasis mine):

My candidate for undercovered news story of the week: the extension of TPS for immigrants potentially subject to deportation to Honduras or Nicaragua.

What’s TPS? Unheard of in many communities, it stands for Temporary Protected Status and is well known in places with substantial populations of immigrants from Central America.

[….]

The provision allows the federal government to defer deportations, nominally temporarily, to countries where a problem such as natural disaster or unrest could put added stress on a country or make it unsafe for those abroad to return. Perhaps more importantly than halting deportations, it allows immigrants in the U.S. illegally from those countries to receive authorization to work here. [They can work, but there is no path to citizenship (yet!)—ed]

On Wednesday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that she was extending the legal status of immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua for another 18 months. The action was purportedly taken to allow the countries more time to recover from a hurricane. If you’re having trouble remembering a huge hurricane that hit the region recently, it’s not you. The disaster which led to the deportation halt, Hurricane Mitch, took place in the fall of 1998—more than 14 years ago.

Napolitano’s designations for Honduras and Nicaragua are the eleventh extensions of the original grants of TPS. With the passage of time, the findings in the extensions become more and more implausible, as does the notion that there is anything temporary about the program and that the conditions in those countries today are fairly traceable to the 1998 hurricane.  [Technically to receive TPS status the illegal alien had to be in the US before the crisis occurred, but this is just more of the winking and nodding that surely goes on with this program.–ed]

The truth is it has become politically unthinkable to end the TPS designations, especially given how long they’ve been in place. The policies now stretch through three presidential administrations, two Democratic and one Republican [Bush of course!—ed]

In many ways, the extensions are a symptom of the nation’s broken immigration system. About 64,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are affected by the programs. Another TPS for El Salvador based on earthquakes in 2001 affects even more people: 212,000, making it a major source of remittances* for that country.

Read it all!

They are all waiting now for the big break—amnesty. Yippee! New Democrat voters!

*We told you about the role of remittances here at Potomac Tea Party Report.  The most recent group to receive TPS status are the Syrians—just in time for amnesty!

Menendez: ‘Temporary refugees’ should have a path to citizenship

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yes, that is from the beleaguered New Jersey Senator, Robert  Menendez now facing corruption charges.  Could that Gang of Eight soon become the Gang of Seven?

Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, member of the Gang of Eight, under fire in NJ. Photo: Star Ledger

The story about immigrants with Temporary Protected Status wanting to become citizens (because honestly they are already permanent!) needs some clarification before you read it.

A migrant with TPS status can do anything a legal American citizen can do except vote.

Those with TPS status (El Salvador leads the pack) first got into the US illegally—they were first illegal aliens!   Then as a result of something going on in their home country—a civil war, a big storm, an earthquake—the benevolent US crafted this program so that they wouldn’t be immediately returned to a country that was struggling to recover at that moment.

We understood that at some point they would go home!  That is not to be, every year one or or the other of the eight nationalities gets an extension and this has gone on for decades.   (You can see the eight favored groups, here).  We recently added Syrians to TPS, but heck, why is Somalia still on there when we are told it’s safe to go home?

Remittances are a driving force behind keeping this program going as we knew, but was brought home recently with comments from Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez here at my other blog.   American money sent abroad props up governments.

And, by the way, CASA de Maryland was born out of the so-called ‘sanctuary movement’ when Quakers (among other “religious” people) broke the law by bringing Salvadorans across the border in the early 1980’s here (scroll down to second half of the post, links to Betty “rainbow” Hoover no longer work).

With that background, here then is the story from ABC yesterday (emphasis mine):

 An immigration reform bill being drafted in the Senate may offer an expedited path to citizenship to nearly 300,000 people who are currently in the U.S. under a temporary program designed to protect people who face physical danger in their own country.   [Faced physical danger maybe in the past—ed]

The program in question is called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and it allows people to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation if they follow the law. But the status offers no formal pathway to citizenship, and some immigrants have been here for decades without being able to apply for a green card.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of a bipartisan group working on a Senate immigration bill, told the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión on Tuesday that the details still weren’t finalized, but that such a pathway should be considered as part of reform.

“I think that it’s expected that these people, that have been here under a legal avenue, should have some possibility to change their status in a quicker manner,” Menendez said. “[We] haven’t reach a final agreement in respect to that.”

The program, which was part of a large-scale immigration law passed in 1990, gives certain immigrants who are already in the U.S. a way to remain in the country if they face imminent dangers in their home country, such as a civil war or a natural disaster. Temporary Protected Status was born because existing refugee and asylum programs weren’t adequately addressing the needs of immigrants fleeing countries like El Salvador, which was enmeshed in civil war in the 1980s and early ’90s, according to Anwen Hughes, senior counsel at Human Rights First, a nonpartisan group that works on immigration issues. Two-thirds of people living in the country under TPS are Salvadorean.

[…..]

Some conservative critics have said that the program is problematic because it isn’t actually temporary. Salvadorans, for example, were re-authorized for TPS after a series of earthquakes in 2001, and have been eligible for the status ever since. At this point, many Salvadorans with TPS have established roots in the U.S., so if that status was suddenly revoked, it could mean expelling residents who have been living and working in the country for decades.

Type ‘temporary protected status’ into our search function to learn more about this racket.

Maryland Delegate: “…money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  I posted this yesterday at Potomac Tea Party Report but since we frequently write about “Temporary” Refugees here, I thought this might be of interest to RRW readers as well.

That quote would be from Del. Ana Sol GUTIERREZ  of  Montgomery County, Maryland when she was being interviewed by The Hill a week ago on why she wants her El Salvadoran countrymen, who are now here on Temporary Protected Status, included in “comprehensive immigration reform.”  In fact, she wants them first in line.

She is referring to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came here illegally decades ago, but were given “temporary” refugee status (because back home there was a long-ago civil war or more likely a big storm or earthquake) and can do everything any American can do except vote.  However, they do get drivers licenses and I’ll bet you a buck they vote!

So what’s this about money to foreign governments?  And, beyond humanitarian concern?

Gutierrez in front of Salvadoran Money transfer business. Photo credit: Greg Dohler/The Gazette

The Hill tells us it is all about “remittances” here (emphasis mine):

Foreign governments are working hard to shape the debate on immigration reform as momentum for a comprehensive bill builds in Congress.

[….]

A number of countries with significant immigration ties to the United States — notably Mexico, Ireland and several Central American nations — have been making their concerns known while doing their best to avoid meddling in domestic affairs.

For many countries, the issue goes beyond humanitarian concern: Remittances from foreign nationals living in the U.S. provide a significant boost to the economies of their home countries.

Mexicans are here illegally but many Central Americans have TPS:

An estimated 7 million Mexicans in the country illegally stand to benefit from reform.

While Mexico has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, other countries have specific changes they hope to see in the law. However, they’re happy to do so discreetly — letting American groups take the lead.

That’s the case with El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, three countries whose citizens have long been eligible for a temporary immigration status first offered in the wake of the civil wars of the 1980s.

The countries hope that immigration reform will include a path to permanent legal status, and eventually citizenship, for the estimated 300,000 or so Central Americans who are in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which is up for renewal periodically. [LOL! for Salvadorans it was renewed just in time for the November 2012 election!—ed]

Gutierrez:  We want the Salvadorans first in line

The Salvadoran embassy has requested updated data from U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services, said Maryland state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D), a Salvadoran-American immigration activist.

The embassy reached out to other embassies to do the same in order to get a better sense of how many Central Americans currently benefit from the program. El Salvador is believed to have about 210,000 of its citizens currently in the U.S. under the program.

“We just need to be able to say, ‘These are the people we want to be first in line because they’ve already been here,’ ” Gutierrez said. “First of all, they have to pass background checks every 18 months, they have to pay taxes, they’ve been here with a legal status.

So far! (So far!) “Temporary” refugees are not included in Obama’s amnesty plan.  Let the squabbling begin!

TPS reform is not included in the principles of the White House immigration reform proposal, Gutierrez said.

So readers, the next time someone puts you on an emotional guilt-trip about the poor and downtrodden seeking a “better future,” remember! as I said yesterday, this is all being driven by money for big businesses in need of cheap labor and by foreign governments  propping up their economies as Gutierrez makes clear!

The Hill story continues:

Gutierrez said money is a principal driver of the foreign governments’ interest in immigration reform.

[….]

Total remittances to El Salvador in 2010 were $3.6 billion in 2010.

For Mexico, the figure was $22.7 billion, or 2.1 percent of GDP.

That says it all, fewer jobs for Americans because we need to prop-up the third world.

Read the entire Hill story, there is much more.

For more on the TPS racket, see all of our previous posts at Potomac Tea Party Report .  And here are the posts at RRW on the topic.

Temporary Protected Status protects criminals from deportation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But will Temporary Protected Status be rendered moot if Obama-Rubio-Ryan get their way?  The answer is Yes!  Everyone will be able to stay! (but they can now anyway!)

Just two days ago I told you that the push was on to give Temporary Protected Status to Malians in the US.  Most recently we granted TPS to Syrians.   Haitians, as we reported here, aren’t signing up in large numbers because they see the Obama-Rubio-Ryan Amnesty coming (more on that below).   And, those Guatemalans and their Leftwing open borders advocates are trying to get the designation as well (although they seem to have slacked off, waiting for amnesty perhaps?).  “Temporary” refugees, can get drivers licenses and jobs and every couple of years their “temporary” status is renewed.

The Center for Immigration Studies tells us here how hard it is to get rid of even the criminals who have TPS status.

Roberto Galo has been in the US since the 1990’s!

Last week ICE arrested Roberto Galo, the unlicensed Honduran who killed a young man named Drew Rosenberg in a traffic crash in November 2010, and is detaining him without bond. Galo’s arrest is appropriate but, incredibly, despite the fact that Galo repeatedly violated California driving laws and killed someone, ICE had to make an exception to its policies in order to take him into custody and seek his removal.

Galo is an illegal immigrant who has been living here legally since the late 1990s under a grant of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Beneficiaries of TPS may apply for driver’s licenses; but Galo could not get one because he failed the driving test three times. Under immigration law, Galo no longer qualifies for TPS after having been convicted of two misdemeanors (vehicular manslaughter and unlicensed driving) stemming from his responsibility for the crash that took Drew Rosenberg’s life.

But under current policies, offenders like Galo are not supposed to be put on the path to removal. USCIS, which administers the TPS program, has directed its officers to try to reclassify some misdemeanors as “infractions” in order to allow these offenders to stay.

Read it all!

The Obama-Rubio-Ryan Amnesty of 2013

Appropriately, Mark Krikorian the Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, with USCIS cases like Galo’s in mind, asks Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, so are you planning to trust Obama to keep his end of the bargain as you pander to the ‘Hispanic’ voter.

Krikorian:

Sen. Marco Rubio has effectively endorsed President Obama’s approach to immigration, and that endorsement was in turn endorsed by Rep. Paul Ryan. Or, as Julia Preston put it in the New York Times yesterday, “Strikingly, Mr. Rubio’s principles did not sound that different from proposals for an immigration overhaul by Mr. Obama, Democratic leaders and a handful of other Republicans.”

So, in considering what can now accurately be referred to as the Obama-Rubio-Ryan amnesty plan of 2013, there’s one central question that Rubio and Ryan need to be asked: Do they trust President Obama to enforce the immigration laws in the future, after today’s illegals have been legalized?

If they answer “yes”, then they need to explain why they think he’d suddenly become committed to enforcement after four years of downgrading immigration law enforcement, and more generally acting as though the U.S. Code were a body of suggestions rather than laws.

[…..]

This isn’t some nit I’m picking — it’s central to the whole concept of “comprehensive immigration reform”. If you trust Obama to do the right thing, then, by all means, endorse his plan for amnesty, as Rubio and Ryan have done. But if you don’t trust him to keep his word, if you think all his statements come with an expiration date, then there’s no honest way you can back his approach.

For more on what Rubio’s (and no doubt Grover Norquist’s too!) “comprehensive” plan would do, visit VDARE and see what “Washington Watcher” says about it.  Here is one snippet:

In reality, because, as I mentioned earlier, there is no way to find out when an illegal alien first came to this country, an amnesty will certainly lead to more illegals crossing the border to take advantage of the new program.

It is safe to say that Rubio’s proposal appears to be virtually indistinguishable from what the Democrats want—except the delay in granting citizenship to the amnestied illegals.

Usually, Republican amnesty proposals at least pretend that they are focused even more on enforcement than legalization—but Rubio has pretty much given up even that pretense.

My theory: Rubio is willing to give the Democrats whatever they want—so long as the illegals don’t get (immediate) citizenship.

Back to TPS

I don’t see any other conclusion, if Obama-Rubio-Ryan get their way, everyone gets to stay and Temporary Protected Status is permanent (no more fig leaf), but for certain classes of illegal immigants it already is—Salvadorans, Somalis, Haitians etc.

Liberians had TPS for years and note that they are off the list, but no one deported them!

To be truly “comprehensive,” Rubio’s bill should include a repeal of TPS.  And, the diversity visa lottery too!  How about a moratorium on refugee resettlement as well until that 1980 Kennedy-Biden-Carter law has been back to Congress for reauthorization (something that has never happened).

Oh no! Call for Temporary Protected Status for Malians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was only kidding the other day (only 4 days ago!) when I asked how long it would be before the push would begin for refugees from Mali.  I didn’t expect it to happen this fast—a call for temporary “refugee” status for any Malians in the US already whether here legally or illegally.

Got a hurricane, an earthquake or Al-Qaeda and the clamor begins, and once granted “temporary” refugee status they never go home!  Just ask the Salvadorans or the Liberians or the Somalis or the Haitians.  And, no matter what administration is running Washington the temporary refuge becomes permanent.

Here is the “call to action” from the United African Organization (LOL! from Africa, no from Illinois!):

Dear concerned global citizens, get involved and support TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS for Mali! Over the last ten months, the situation in northern Mali has escalated, with the resignation of the Prime Minister and the inability of the government to respond appropriately to the destructive armed insurgency. Over 350,000 people have been displaced and many are unable to meet their basic needs as they struggle to recover from forced evacuations as well as the remnants of a severe drought earlier in 2012. Given the current situation, deporting hundreds of Malians from the United States would only exacerbate this volatile climate and needlessly place people perilous in situations.

Temporary protected status (TPS) designation for Mali would protect those Malians in the US that need stability until the violence and conflict in their home country subside. TPS would allow those who are eligible to live, work, and study in the United States until it is safe for them to return home. In addition, TPS would enable Malians to provide support and aid to their families and communities, offering relief to those affected.

You can make a difference by calling the Secretary of DHS, Janet Napolitano, at 202-282-8000 or find your local representative by clicking here: find your local representative. You can also send the White House a letter here.

They are so predictable!