President Trump announced 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 explained here—the actual 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’ve already written about the DACA provisions of this bill, here is a list of the changes to TPS in the bill:
1 - Ends TPS for 5 of the 9 TPS countries: Under President Trump, the government has terminated TPS for Nepal, 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 Trump denigrated in a White House meeting last year.
2 - TPS recipients will lose their jobs: TPS extensions of work authorization are automatically extended but p. 1271 of this bill requires TPS recipients to apply for an entirely new work authorization (p. 1277), meaning that unless courts protect them, there will be a major gap in work eligibility. This is especially true because the government can take a year to enact this new program, virtually guaranteeing that everyone with TPS right now will lose their jobs.
3 - TPS recipients must reapply for initial status: When the government extends TPS, renewals of status are free. But this legislation requires a fee to apply to continue in status (p. 1265). Reapplying for initial status also requires that they reprove their eligibility, which is a costly process and often requires hiring an attorney.
4 - Much higher evidentiary burden: Reapplying will become even more onerous because p. 1256 increases the evidentiary standard to prove eligibility to receive TPS from a “preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing.” The only higher standard of proof in the law is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” People win multi-million judgments based on the preponderance of the evidence standard. Clear and convincing is often used for cases like withdrawing life support. In the immigration context, USCIS explains that preponderance of the evidence is usually the standard—meaning that “even if the director has some doubt as to the truth,” he should approve “if the petitioner submits relevant, probative, and credible evidence that leads the director to believe that the claim is ‘probably true’ or ‘more likely than not.’” Clear and convincing is used rarely for cases like “to rebut the presumption of a prior fraudulent marriage” (i.e. for applicants the government has reason to be suspicious of). TPS recipients proving that they entered before 2011 or that they resided continuously, for example, just became much more difficult under this legislation.
5 - Massively Increases TPS Application Cost: P. 1243 contains a fine or penalty but rebrands it as a $500 “security fee” to pay for Trump’s “wall.” This is despite the fact that many TPS recipients entered legally and were stranded after hurricanes or earthquakes hit their home countries. This fine comes on top of the normal fees for processing the application, and it essentially increases the cost of the $50 application for TPS status by tenfold. It basically doubles the $495 cost of an extension of TPS work authorization.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/senate-gop-bill-doesnt-extend-tps-it-guts-it
No comments:
Post a Comment