Senate GOP Bill Doesn ’t Extend TPS. It Guts It

President Trumpannounced on Saturday that he had a new plan to open government that includes “a three-year extension of temporary protected status or TPS.” But as in the case of DACA—for reasons I explainedhere—theactual legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced to implement his proposal does not extend TPS. Rather, it ends it as it exists now, and replaces with an entirely different program with much more restrictive criteria.Temporary protective status, or TPS, is granted to nationals of country where the government feels it could not, at one time or another, send people back to due to a crisis in those countries, such as a war or natural disaster. Cribbing a lot from what I ’vealready written about the DACA provisions of this bill, here is a list of the changes to TPS in the bill:Ends TPS for 5 of the 9 TPS countries: Under President Trump, the government has terminated TPS forNepal,Sierre Leone, Liberia, Guinea,Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Yet only the last four nationalities will benefit from this bill at all (p. 1256). To treat this bill as if it reverses Trump ’s decisions is incorrect. It maintains the majority of them—notably for Africans who President Trumpdenigrated in a White House meeting last year.TPS recipients will lose their jobs: TPS extensions of work authorizationare automatically extended but p. 1271 of this bill requires TPS recipients to apply for an entirely new work authorization (p. 1277),...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 22, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs