Trump ended protected status for Salvadorans who’ve been in the U.S. since 2001 after an earthquake in their home country, setting up the prospect that more than 200K people who have lived and worked here for nearly two decades will be kicked out of the country. Via The Washington Post:
The administration said it will give the Salvadorans until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or find a way to obtain legal residency, according to a statement Monday from the Department of Homeland Security. The Salvadorans were granted what is known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, after earthquakes hit the country in 2001, and their permits have been renewed on an 18-month basis since then…
Immigrant advocates, Salvadoran government officials and many others had implored [DHS Secretary] Nielsen to extend the TPS designation, citing the country’s horrific gang violence and the potentially destabilizing effect of so many people being sent home.
Others urged her to consider the approximately 190,000 U.S.-born children of Salvadoran TPS recipients. Their parents must now decide whether to break up their families, take their entire families back to El Salvador, or stay in the United States and risk deportation.
Senior DHS officials told reporters Monday that the families would have to make that decision, and that the effect on American businesses, among other potential consequences of the TPS decision, were not part of Nielsen’s decision-making process. They said it is up to Congress to determine a remedy.
It’s a cynical ploy, of course, as are Trump’s actions on the Dreamers, the Muslim ban, ending TPS for Haitians, etc. Xenophobia plays well with Trump’s base, the only segment of our population he’s interested in pleasing. Maybe kicking brown people out of the country will distract the mouth-breathers from the fact that Trump is enriching himself and his fellow plutocrats at the public’s expense.
Will the cynical ploy work? Could be! People are pretty fucking racist and stupid. We have all the proof for that we’ll ever need sitting in the White House. I just hope the Democrats are ready to play hard ball on the upcoming spending bill — and that non-xenophobic assholes will reward them for their courage by turning out this fall.