The “Temporary Protected Status” classification so abused by Joe Biden in his efforts to pack the country as full as possible with illegal migrants is going to be up for reconsideration during the next administration. The program, begun in 1990, theoretically offers temporary protection from removal to citizens of specific countries deemed to have undergone natural or manmade disasters that endanger their citizens’ safety. Currently, natives of 17 different countries around the world, including El Salvador, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine, and Venezuela, are entitled to the designation. Venezuelans, Haitians, and Salvadorans make up the majority of TPS designates currently in the US.
One of the problems with TPS is the “temporary” in its name. Once a country is added, it tends to stay there a while, often a long while. Although, officially, TPS designation is limited to 18 months, it can be extended almost indefinitely. Somalia, for example, has been on the books — and renewed automatically year after year — since 1991.
As the years have piled up, so have the TPS migrants, who have no pathway to citizenship but cannot be deported, to the point where there are more than a million living here now. President-elect Trump indicated in his campaign that he would seek to eliminate the programs like TPS that make possible mass entries of otherwise illegal migrants. His running mate, JD Vance, said recently:
What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole. We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.
This, of course, has the immigration lawyers scurrying, applying pressure to outgoing president Biden to extend TPS for many or most of the countries on the list. You can be sure that that pressure will not end when Trump takes office.
For more, see Breitbart News.