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The program of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) it has become a key tool of the US immigration program for President Joe Biden.
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program provides employment authorization and legal immigration status to individuals already in the United States when their country of origin has a situation that makes it unsafe to return for them.
The government has used it sparingly, though the Trump administration tried to end TPS for some 400,000 applicants. Court cases and the election of President Biden have prevented that from happening, and his administration has opened the program to twice as many applicants.
TPS also allows Biden unilaterally designate which countries are eligible, without going through Congress.
That has authorized the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide such immigration relief to hundreds of thousands of people, even as lawmakers fail to push other immigration policies through Congress and Republican-led states use lawsuits to hinder other initiatives.
Biden has more than doubled the number of immigrants eligible for TPS, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute. In January 2021, when Biden took office, 411,326 people were eligible for TPS. That number has since risen to 986,881.
Following the most recent additions and extensions from the Biden administration, approximately 500,000 people from 15 countries are currently registered for TPS or are eligible to receive it recently, according to research from the Pew Research Institute.
The list of countries with active TPS designations now includes Afghanistan, Cameroon, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.
What is required of immigrants applying for TPS
To be granted TPSapplicants must be from TPS-protected countries, meet filing deadlines, pay a fee, and show that they have lived in the US continuously since the events that triggered relief from removal.
They must also meet criminal record requirements, such as not having been convicted of any felony or two or more misdemeanors while in the United States, having persecuted others, or been involved in terrorism.
Most TPS holders have been living, working, and following these rules in the United States for nearly two decades.
The Administration is required to have federal officials announce 60 days before any TPS designation expires if it will be extended. Without a decision announcement, e; TPS is automatically extended for six months.
Congress and President George HW Bush authorized the TPS program in the 1990 immigration law, giving the White House executive power to designate and extend status to immigrants in the US based on certain criteria.