‘Unless their status is extended this week, they must leave by Jan. 22.’
DHS Must Decide Whether To Deport 50,000 Haitian Immigrants By Thanksgiving Day
The New York Times published an editorial today calling on the Trump Administration to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians.
The piece in its entirety can be accessed here, and follows below:
The Temporary Protected Status program provides the sort of assistance the United States should be proud to extend to foreigners fleeing civil unrest, violence or natural disasters. Enacted by Congress in 1990, it currently offers safe and legal harbor to 437,000 people from 10 countries. Many stay for a long time, their status regularly extended because of continued turmoil in their homelands.
That, alas, is a far cry from the spirit of the Trump administration. But even President Trump’s bombastic pledges to throw up a Mexican border wall, expel illegal immigrants and bar entry to Muslims are different from expelling people who, though they may have entered the United States illegally, have been allowed to stay legally, often for many years, with solid jobs and large families, while their homelands remain unsettled or dangerous.
On Thanksgiving, of all days, the Department of Homeland Security is to announce whether it will extend the temporary protected status that was granted to about 50,000 Haitians when their country was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. Their stay has been regularly extended, but in May, John Kelly, then secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, gave them only six more months, explicitly to get ready to go home. Unless their status is extended this week, they must leave by Jan. 22.
By any reasonable measure, Haiti is not ready to take them back. The destitute country has never fully recovered from the 2010 earthquake or the cholera epidemic that followed. Last year, Hurricane Matthew added even more suffering. The country does not have the resources to absorb 50,000 people, and the money they have sent back is a critical source of income for their relatives and homeland.
Every member of Congress who represents South Florida, where most of these Haitians live, is in favor of extending their status. One of them, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Miami, is among the congressional members of both parties who have proposed legislation that would allow these immigrants to eventually apply for permanent residency, which is not possible under current rules.
What Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of homeland security, does will be watched closely, not only by Haitians but by others in the Temporary Protected Status program, most of them from Central America. Earlier this month, Ms. Duke ended the protected status of about 2,500 Nicaraguans, but she defied the White House by delaying for six months a decision on a far larger group of about 57,000 Hondurans. The Times reported that Mr. Kelly, as White House chief of staff, has put pressure on Ms. Duke to end the status for both groups. Mr. Kelly’s deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, is Mr. Trump’s pick as the next head of homeland security and is undergoing confirmation hearings.
Ms. Duke was right to resist the White House, and she was right to include in her decision a call on Congress “to enact a permanent solution for this inherently temporary program,” one that would make it possible for people under temporary protection to seek a more stable and permanent stay in America. And on Thanksgiving Day, the only right decision is to extend our welcome to the Haitians.