Washington, DC – The news that the Biden Administration and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) families in the Ramos case have failed to reach a settlement is a colossally disappointing development for more than 250,000 TPS beneficiaries from El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. Unless their status is immediately resolved, it also has the potential to inflict much larger disruption and damage to our economy and the communities where these TPS recipients have deep roots.
As Andrea Castillo and Hamed Aleaziz of the Los Angeles Times report,
“After more than a year of negotiation, settlement talks between the Biden administration and plaintiffs in a lawsuit over temporary protected status fell through on Tuesday, leaving more than 250,000 people at risk of deportation.
The litigation followed concerted actions by the Trump administration to end TPS for the citizens of several countries — El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Sudan and Nepal — as part of its efforts to wind down extended use of the protections…
…The Biden administration redesignated temporary protected status for Haiti and Sudan, but has not done so for the four other countries. Those beneficiaries could lose their protections as early as the end of this year, while the Biden administration goes to court to defend the previous administration’s decisions.
As a presidential candidate, however, Joe Biden called President Trump’s decision to rescind TPS ‘a recipe for disaster,’ promising to protect beneficiaries from being returned to unsafe countries.”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The news that the Ramos settlement talks have broken off is beyond disappointing, with the potential to harm long-settled affected families, disrupt our economy, and dispirit Latino and immigrant voting communities just ahead of a consequential election. We urge the Biden Administration to take immediate action to protect this population. They should not be left in limbo, living in fear that they will lose status in two months.
Let’s be clear, we are in this position because Donald Trump and Stephen Miller wanted to deport TPS holders until the Ramos lawsuit intervened. Decades of blocking immigration reform have made hundreds of thousands of essential workers dependent on temporary fixes, rather than having a permanent place in the country they call home. Today’s GOP is going all-in on the demonization and dehumanization of immigrants, which moves us farther from resolving issues on which the American people agree, like modernizing our immigration system.
President Biden and Democrats should break cleanly and clearly with the Miller/Trump approach and take action immediately. More than 250,000 long-settled residents who are living, working, and raising families in America are set to be uprooted from this country and their communities.
At a time when Biden’s Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh is telling CNBC that the failure to deliver on immigration reform would be a “catastrophe” for the U.S. economy, the possibility of removing existing TPS workers – along with DACA holders – from existing jobs would compound the economic harm at a time when we already face the prospect of recession and job loss.
We can and must do better and resolve the uncertainty facing these essential TPS holders and their employers before more damage is done.”
