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On October 17, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that Secretary Mayorkas had placed Lebanon on Temporary Protected Status (TPS). With this designation, DHS expects up to 11,000 Lebanese currently in the country to be eligible to apply for renewable 18-month protection to remain in the country. These 11,000 people will join a growing number of people in 16 other countries protected by TPS. As of March 31, 2024, this is over 863,000 people.
With DHS potentially revoking TPS subsidies or allowing them to expire, those in this “twilight state” are increasingly vulnerable to the whims of the executive branch. As of today, there are 13 TPS designations scheduled to expire in 2025 without further action by the DHS Secretary, and four, including Lebanon, will expire in 2026. As a result, whoever wins the presidential election will decide on hundreds of TPS designations. Thousands of people can continue to live and work legally or risk losing their status and being deported.
What is Temporary Protected Status?
TPS is a legal protection created by the 1990 Immigration Act in response to El Salvador’s then-ongoing civil war. Representative Joe Mauchly of Massachusetts faced his first serious humanitarian crisis in 1983 after reports surfaced of massive human rights violations inside El Salvador and the torture and execution of people deported from the United States. He introduced a bill that would establish legal authority to halt deportations into the country. These efforts ultimately led to the creation of the TPS in 1990, making El Salvador the first country designated under this authority.
Under TPS, the DHS Secretary is authorized to temporarily protect from deportation nationals from countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or “extraordinary and temporary circumstances.” . DHS can designate countries for TPS for 6, 12, or 18 months at a time, but not for longer periods.
When DHS grants TPS to a particular country, individuals from that country who are present in the United States as of the specified date can apply for TPS. They must pay an application fee, undergo extensive background checks, and are barred from joining TPS if they have committed certain crimes or pose a national security risk. Undocumented immigrants or those with another form of immigration status can apply for TPS.
What are the benefits of TPS?
Once TPS is approved, the individual can legally work in the country for as long as the TPS remains granted. You will also be protected from deportation during that period unless you commit a crime that violates the terms of TPS. TPS patients can apply for permission to travel outside the United States, but cannot otherwise leave the country without risking losing their status.
Who has TPS?
As of May 31, 2024, the latest date for which data is available, 16 countries have been designated as TPS. In most of these countries, very few people hold that position. As of that date, fewer than 35,000 people from Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen held TPS status. The five countries with the largest TPS population are, as of the same date, Ukraine with approximately 50,000 TPS beneficiaries, Honduras with 54,000, El Salvador with 180,000, Haiti with 200,000, and Venezuela with 344,000 TPS beneficiaries. person. These numbers may now be even higher following the redesignation of Haiti, Yemen, and Somalia as TPS in July 2024, creating a combined 320,000 new TPS beneficiaries. It is expected that
What happens when my TPS expires?
The DHS Secretary typically must make a decision before the end of the 6, 12, or 18 month TPS period. Whether to extend the previous designation or let it expire. The Secretary can also “re-designate” TPS, which allows people who entered the country after the original designation date to apply for TPS.
If DHS extends TPS without redesignation, individuals who currently hold TPS can apply for renewal of status, but individuals who entered the country after initial designation will remain ineligible. If DHS allows TPS to expire, people will lose their status and work authorization, become illegally present, or return to their previous immigration status (if still valid). The DHS Secretary can terminate TPS before it expires, but this has never happened in the program’s history.
Since 1990, a total of 12 TPS designations have been allowed to expire: Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Montserrat, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.
During the Trump administration, DHS chose to allow TPS to lapse for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal, and Sudan, arguing that the conditions that justified their original designations were no longer valid. Those expirations were temporarily blocked by the courts and will remain in place until President Biden takes office and Mayorkas renews each designation.
In 2025, the next president and DHS secretary will decide the fate of thousands of TPS holders within months. El Salvador’s TPS expires in March 2025, and Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela’s TPS expire in April 2025. If not renewed or redesignated, six additional countries will lose their TPS between May 2025 and July 2025.
Therefore, if the new administration chooses not to renew TPS for these countries, hundreds of thousands of people could lose their legal status and work permits within four months in 2025.
Can TPS patients obtain permanent legal status?
TPS does not provide an independent mechanism for beneficiaries to obtain permanent legal status. That means some people may remain here in TPS for years without finding a way to obtain legal permanent resident status.
Given the extensive contributions of TPS patients to the United States and the economy, many people are seeking a path to permanent legal status for long-term TPS patients, including over 180,000 people in El Salvador. TPS beneficiaries are also included for more than 20 years. Unless Congress acts, these people, who have spent years paying thousands of dollars in application fees and passing numerous background checks, will be left in limbo for 18 months at a time. .
Submitted to: Department of Homeland Security
