“TPS” stands for Temporary Protected Status, and it is routinely given to foreign nationals whose home countries are experiencing an extreme crisis of some kind, either a natural disaster or civil war or unrest.
Haitian activists in the United States have been trying to get the U.S. government to extend TPS to undocumented Haitian immigrants since 2008, when Haiti was ripped apart by four tropical cyclones one right after the other, which killed 800 people, with hundreds more unaccounted for, and devastated at least one Haitian city (Gonaives).
The Obama administration specified that the order was for immigrants already in the United States as of Tuesday, and does not include Haitian refugees trying to flee Haiti in the wake of the earthquake. Haitians who are currently living in the United States illegally — even those 30,000 or so who already have been scheduled for deportation — will now be allowed to stay here for 18 months. TPS can be extended beyond the 18 months depending on conditions in Haiti at that point.
Granting TPS is an important humanitarian move, not just for the immigrants themselves, but also for the three million (figure cited by MSNBC) Haitians who have been affected by the earthquake. For one thing, Haitians living and working in the United States send home an estimated $1.2 million a year. That’s about 20 percent of Haiti’s economy, according to the Washington Post.
Another obvious point is that deporting 200,000 Haitians back to Haiti at this moment would make the suffering there even worse than it already is. Haitian survivors desperately need the food, water, and medical supplies that are flooding into the country but not yet getting beyond the airport for various logistical reasons. Not to mention the fact that there is no place for 200,000 additional Haitians to live or stay, given that Port-au-Prince’s entire building stock has been flattened.
Unsurprisingly (and it’s extremely sad that it is unsurprising), some Republicans are complaining about today’s decision:
While several liberal groups and members of Congress had urged the administration to declare TPS for Haitians, conservative immigration groups, as well as a Republican congressman, had said such a move would amount to a slippery slope to “amnesty.”
“This sounds to me like open borders advocates exercising the Rahm Emanuel axiom: ‘Never let a crisis go to waste,'” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in an e-mail message to ABCNews. “Illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation, but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers, and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians.”
I guess he must realize how cold-hearted this sounds, since he tried to clothe it in faux humanitarianism.
Even Fred Hiatt urged Pres. Obama to grant TPS, sheesh.
Jesse Walker at Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog (libertarian, with conservative stances on most issues) even thinks that the Obama administration should extend the invitation.
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