All House DEMs plus four Republicans (Representatives Salazar, Fitzpatrick, Lawler, and Bacon) signed a discharge petition to force a vote on a proposal to extend a “temporary” amnesty for about 350,000 Haitians.
Instead of voting to codify border security, Congress will vote to extend one of the policies that drove the 2021-2025 border crisis.
The vote is expected on Wednesday, April 15.
The Obama Administration granted “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) to approximately 60,000 Haitians in 2010. The designation allowed them to remain in the U.S. even if they entered illegally or overstayed their visa, and made them eligible for work permits. The original designation was to last 18 months to give Haiti time to recover after an earthquake. That was more than sixteen years ago.
In theory, Temporary Protected Status is a short-term measure to allow beneficiaries to remain and work in the United States until conditions in their home country allow them to return. Proponents of the program emphasized that the immigration benefits would be temporary, and beneficiaries would ultimately have to return home.
In practice, TPS has never been temporary. Until May 21, 2017 (when TPS was terminated for approximately 4,000 people from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) every previous wave of TPS had failed to go home as multiple administrations avoided making the tough decision, required by the law, to end TPS when in-country circumstances had changed.
President Biden expanded TPS as part of his broader effort to go around immigration limits set by Congress. During the Biden Administration, number of Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries tripled from roughly 400,000 to approximately 1.3 million. Haiti alone expanded from the original 60,000 in 2010 to 350,000 by the end of Biden’s term.
President Trump has tried to end some of these designations but has been repeatedly blocked by the courts. Although the law states that “there is no judicial review” of any determination “with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation,” (8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(5)(A)) the lower courts have blocked efforts to end TPS designations.
TPS Designations Set to Sunset but Blocked by Courts:
TPS for Venezuela – initially designated in 2021 – is set to sunset in October 2026 after the Supreme Court allowed the termination to take effect.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments later this month to clear up the “confusion” over whether courts can block an administration’s TPS decisions.
Roughly 1.3 million people – primarily inadmissible aliens from over a dozen countries – have been granted “temporary” amnesty under TPS. The House is voting to extend Temporary Protected Status to “only” 350,000 Haitians. But that could be just the tip of the iceberg.
The TPS program has grown into an open-ended amnesty program for over a million people, many of whom have been beneficiaries for decades. It turns out that there is nothing “temporary” about Temporary Protected Status.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program is yet another example of a broken immigration promise, along with Congress’ promises that that 1965 Act would not increase immigration, or that 1986 “compromise” would deliver worksite enforcement after the “one-time” amnesty, or that the 1990 Act’s H-1B program would not allow employers to fill jobs with foreign workers when qualified Americans are available.
These and other broken promises have caused considerable harm to generations of American workers, and undermined the public’s trust in immigration itself.
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