On Friday, Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to eligible nationals of Nicaragua and Honduras. TPS was originally granted to Honduras in 1999 and to Nicaragua in 2001. As a result, thousands of their citizens were provided with work permits and legal documents to remain in the United States even though their papers had expired or they had never received any.
As I wrote in 2011, the US probably won't be ending TPS to Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, or Hondurans anytime soon. All of the people eligible for TPS have been in the country for over a decade. It doesn't make sense to make them go "home." For many, this is their home. I also wrote that the administration should start thinking about how to transition these people to some form of permanent legal status. However, it's now time to move beyond thinking about it and to act on it.
Unfortunately, other than increasing the number of deportations, President Obama doesn't really seem to be concerned with the crisis affecting millions of precariously documented and undocumented migrants in our country. Or maybe he cares and just doesn't think that it is a politically winning strategy to care. We'll learn more after the November elections apparently.
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