Only a few weeks remain before the Trump administration must decide whether to extend the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) currently preventing around 50,000 Haitian immigrants from deportation back to a nation that has yet to recover from several natural disasters.
The program, which is up for renewal later in May, is scheduled to expire on 22 July. Immigration advocates and experts fear that President Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration policies mean that he will try to undo temporary protected legal status for tens of thousands of immigrant refugees who have started to build new lives in the US since Haiti was roiled by a devastating earthquake in 2010.
The TPS program was created in 1990 by Congress and was intended to provide a temporary immigration status for foreign nationals in the US who are unable to return home due to extraordinary circumstances, such as war or natural disaster. The former Obama administration renewed the program three times across 18-month increments. Beneficiaries of the program can legally work in the US, leave and return of their own volition, and cannot be deported. They can also apply for different legal methods to remain in the US.
But, James McCament, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services executive director, has now recommended against the reauthorization of TPS status for Haitian immigrants in the country. This is despite more than 1.5 million still being displaced in Haiti by the earthquake, last year’s Hurricane Matthew, and a cholera epidemic.