US could grant Temporary Protected Status to Guatemalans

President Obama is scheduled to meet with the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras at the White House this week. They are obviously going to discuss the recent flood of unaccompanied minors and families leaving the region for the United States. Vice President Biden is hosting them for lunch. Perhaps they are going to announce some new initiative but who knows.

President Obama could ask the Department of Homeland Security to move forward on granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to nationals of Guatemala. If we look at the map of where migrants are coming from in Guatemala, a large percentage are coming from the Western Highlands.

Gang violence is not as much as an issue there (though drug trafficking is) which is part of the reason why US officials claim that most Guatemalan migrants are leaving for economic reasons. The heavily indigenous highlands have some of the highest rates of poverty and malnutrition in the entire country.

This area of the country has been hit hard by earthquakes in September 2011, November 2012, and July 2014. If he does not want to extend TPS to all Guatemalans (which he could easily justify because of other natural disasters affecting the entire country), perhaps he could offer it to those migrants who are departing the western regions like San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Quiche, Totonicapan, and Quetzaltenango.

TPS for Guatemala does not help El Salvador and Honduras (many of whose citizens in the US already have TPS) and probably won't make a dent in the number of migrants leaving the region (that requires long-term structural changes) but The United States should grant TPS for Guatemala.