Back in September, we published an article about the Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the legal status which protects refugees whose home countries have suffered natural disaster or war from deportation. The Trump administration suggested that it would be up to Congress to ultimately decide the fate of those now protected by the program.
Unfortunately, Homeland Security officials said on Monday that the Trump administration is ending a humanitarian program that has allowed some 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010.
By Miriam Jordan writes in the New York Times:
Haitians with what is known as Temporary Protected Status will be expected to leave the United States by July 2019 or face deportation. The decision set off immediate dismay among Haitian communities in South Florida, New York and beyond, and was a signal to other foreigners with temporary protections that they, too, could soon be asked to leave.
In september, before the Trump administration decided to end protected status for Haiti, the Embassy of Haiti in Washington D.C. announced the launch of a hotline to provide guidance to Haitian TPS recipients. The situation in the country is still complicated… Jordan adds in her post:
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is still struggling to recover from the earthquake and relies heavily on money its expatriates send to relatives back home. The Haitian government had asked the Trump administration to extend the protected status.
Linda Dorcena Forry, State Senator, representing First Suffolk District (Boston) in Commonwealth of Massachusetts calls the decision ‘a call to action’ in her tweet:
Today's decision regarding TPS is neither a defeat nor a victory, but a call to action. Here's my full statement.. https://t.co/Hp5zgPeYRB
— Linda Dorcena Forry (@ldforry) November 21, 2017
A few days before the Trump administration’s decision on TPS, The Guardian published a video (see below) of 10-year-old Ronyde Christina Ponthieux who recorded a personal appeal asking Trump to not end the temporary protected status (TPS) of her Haitian immigrant parents living in the US. While Ronyde is an American citizen, born and raised in Miami, her parents are not, and face deportation if Trump ends TPS.
The young girl’s plea has obviously not been heard…
The Guardian explains that almost 275,000 US-born citizen children have been born to TPS recipients from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras, according to the Center for Migration Studies, and some health experts have warned that worrying about separation can cause severe psychological or cognitive harm…
