Trump Is Ending 'Special Protections' For 200,000 Immigrants

The last few months have seen little movement on the immigration issue, as the White House and Congress have been more focused on the now signed into law tax reform. During his first year in office, Trump made some impressive changes to the nation’s de facto open border policies, however, there’s still a long way to go if he wants to make good on all his campaign promises.

With a new year just beginning, it appears that Trump fully understands the need ratchet up his immigration agenda, as he just made the first move of the year on the issue as he begins the fight over DACA.

As reported at the New York Post, President Trump is ending special protections for Salvadoran immigrants, forcing nearly 200,000 to leave the country or face deportation, officials said Monday.

El Salvador is the fourth country whose citizens have lost Temporary Protected Status under President Donald Trump, and out of all the others, they’re by far the program’s biggest beneficiaries.

News of the policy change was reported to the media by two anonymous US officials, as no one has been given the go-ahead to speak about it publicly yet. The sources say that Salvadorans will have until September 2019 to adjust their legal status or leave the country.

The US created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to provide a safe haven from countries affected by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war, and other disasters. As it stands, it currently protects around 320,000 people from 10 different countries. There are nearly 440,000 beneficiaries from the 10 countries, including 263,000 from El Salvador.

The program has been very generous to Salvadorans, as it’s allowed for them to come to the US under the guise of humanitarian aid after a large earthquake struck Central America in 2001. Since then, many of those that initially came here have started families and opened businesses.

Due to El Salvador’s poverty and all-around mismanagement, its economy significantly relies on all the remittances its citizens send home from the US.

President Salvador Sanchez Ceren spoke by phone Friday with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to renew his plea to extend status for 190,000 Salvadorans, so Congress could have more time to come up with a long-term solution.

That solution may come as part of the Trump administration’s larger push to negotiate with Congress over the wall and DACA, which is the next big fight for the president. However, rather than rely on the generosity of other nations for decades, these nations need to get their own act together.

Providing protected status to these immigrants does nothing to fix the underlying problems that caused them flee their homelands from the beginning. Maybe the leaders of these nations will get their act together now that they know the US won’t be their sugar daddy indefinitely.

Source: New York Post