Posted on 01/29/2006 7:10:12 AM PST by jackbenimble
Special temporary U.S. residency issued to thousands of Central Americans is due to expire in the coming months, and with the debate over immigration increasingly fierce, many of the immigrants fear they will be sent home.
The temporary status granted to Nicaraguans and Hondurans after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and to Salvadorans following a devastating earthquake in 2001 has been renewed repeatedly with little public debate, but opposition is growing.
Critics say the program was never meant to be permanent and that it's time for the more than 300,000 people it protects to return home.
Immigrants and their advocates say allowing the special status to expire would devastate not only these individuals but also their families - and the Central American countries themselves - who count on the billions of dollars they earn in the United States and send home.
"We haven't seen this kind of debate in years. This is an election year, and this is a high-profile issue," said Ana Navarro, a Miami-based political consultant and former Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations.
She noted that the debate over the Temporary Protected Status - which is not officially a visa and does not lead to permanent legal residency - comes as at least four bills to control immigration are circulating in Washington.
The Department of Homeland Security must decided whether to renew the TPS for Nicaraguans and Hondurans by May and for Salvadorans by July. There are 220,000 Salvadorans, 70,000 Hondurans and 3,600 Nicaraguans in the U.S. under the program. About 4,000 Africans are covered by similar permits.
Waitress Iris de la Rosa, 33, said she doesn't know what she'll do if the protected status expires. She came to the United States illegally seven years ago from El Salvador because she couldn't support herself and her young daughter as a pharmacist's assistant.
She planned to stay only a few years, but took advantage of the TPS after the 2001 quake in her homeland. The permit allows immigrants who are already in the U.S., as de la Rosa was when the earthquake hit, to stay when extraordinary conditions make it temporarily unsafe to return.
If the program expires, TPS holders revert to their initial status.
"If they take away the TPS, will they just come and deport me?" asked de la Rosa, who now has a 2-year-old son born in Hollywood. She says her mother and daughter in El Salvador depend on the several hundred dollars she sends back each month.
De la Rosa said she likely would stay even if she loses the protection but hates the thought of becoming an illegal immigrant again. "Now I pay my taxes. I have a driver's license. I'm not worried that someone is going to pull me over at any minute," she said.
The nonprofit Central American Resource Center has been flooded with calls from people fearful they could lose their legal status.
"People ask us all the time, 'What's going to happen?'" said Daniel Sharp, legal director for the center in Los Angeles.
"It would be unfair to leave them out in the cold now," said Saul Solarzano, head of the center's Washington office.
Gerson Anzueto, 35, an employee at the Salvadoran restaurant El Atlacatl in Miami, said his girlfriend and several waitresses at his restaurant hold the temporary permit.
"This will have a big effect on employers, and not at just Salvadoran restaurants - Italian, you name it," said Anzueto, who is a permanent U.S. resident. "It's making people very scared."
The dilemma facing the Central Americans comes as other groups seek similar protection. Several Florida Republicans in Congress recently urged the Bush administration to offer Haitians TPS protection.
Some argue the U.S. should extend the protection to victims of other natural disasters, such as last year's earthquake in Pakistan.
U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said the issue goes beyond disasters. The rise of several populist governments in South America that often employ anti-American rhetoric makes it all the more important for Central American leaders to be able to cite the benefits of remaining U.S. allies, especially El Salvador and Nicaragua, where elections will be held this year.
El Salvador is the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq.
"These are friendly governments and neighboring governments that have been elected by their people," he said. "We should do whatever we can to support our friends in the region."
Central American leaders are lobbying hard for an extension, saying the damage caused by last year's Hurricane Stan alone should be reason enough.
De la Rosa acknowledges that she would rather stay in the United States because she can earn more than she could at home, and she doesn't have to worry about gang violence. If she were to return, she wonders what she and her government would do.
"There is still so little work, and if we all came back? What will they do with us?"
Interestingly, Newt G. was on Rush a few months ago, outlining just what you've described: how to deal with multi-millions of illegals already here, etc..
Wow, and New Zealand is regarded as a liberal place! Remarkable...perhaps it's due to remaining conservative common sense finally getting enough of all the liberal moveins...it's a popular destination for disgruntled, left American college students, is my point, and citizenship is a rigourous process, from what I understand.
I think citizenship SHOULD be a rigourous process...New Zealand, the U.S., etc. If not difficult, then what's the point. Also, consider the consequences.
Yes, to no more 'anchor babies.' The U.S. sure does need to do likewise (14th Amendment needs to be clarified and misapplied revision removed).
Hmm, well, I do admire most of what Newt G. reasons. I'm not familiar with, however, what he's proposed/proposing as to solution here, however. I hope it's not the "deporting them is unrealistic" opinion!
The same as before you came here, sheeesh.
Newt? Newt speaks with forked tongue.
[snip]This month, The Wall Street Journal published dueling pieces on its opinion pages. Fifteen Republicans including Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp hailed the president's plan as "a humane, orderly, and economically sensible approach to migration."
http://www.ampolitics.ghazali.net/html/muslims_are_growing.html
Well, what CAN they say?
I think this is the one issue that the Republicans of "concept" and political construct get all wrong. I admire Gingrich and certainly admire Karl Rove, but it's a Rove concept and plan to institute the "guest worker" plans and programs, from what I understand. President Bush gets blamed about this but I get the impression -- this is pure assumption on my part, however -- that he's reiterating Karl Rove's concepts as to "guest worker" plans more than anything.
Who knows, but the point is that I have read that Rove envisions this/these programs and undoubtedly he is having immense influence on eliciting supportive, consenting even, comments from others if/when they're all commisserating about, collaborating upon the same goal (to implement "guest worker" programs).
I have no idea why because they very concepts are so easily perceived by most as impractical and therefore, suggest that they are misleading in their, well, "simplicity": all the cheap, compliant labor from all the needy countries, all going about doing the work cheaply and orderly and doing everything they are told according to "the plan."
The rest of us can easily see why and how they'll go wrong and work toward very bad circumstances. Thus, I write that the very concepts appear to be misleading -- that we're being told fairy tales and I honestly cannot believe any Republican who promotes these "guest worker" programs who maintains a straight face.
What worries me mostly is that they are intending to implement them despite lack of voter lack of support, that the fact that voters, most Americans, don't want these programs and that they'll be implemented anyway, is really a problem to my view.
I do.not.get why Rove or any of the rest of the GOP who is promoting these "guest worker" programs would be threatening voter enthusiasm, support to this degree. Obviously, they've already secured the degree of assurance about them from somewhere (agriculural industry almost certainly, Chambers of Commerce certainly, Food and Service industries, construction industry), such that that support makes it workable for them to be overriding and even ignoring voter disapproval.
The mere fact that these business organizations conclude they "must" have a supply of cheap labor from other countries raises my suspicions acutely, because, almost certainly, there are *other problems* inherent to their conditions that "cheap labor" from other nations are not going to necessarily salvage or patch over -- and, not to be overlooked is the very significant fact that these industries anticipate continuing a certain profit margin by way of continuing cheap labor that the taxpayers are paying for otherwise...we make those profits for those industries possible, while paying for those profits through all the extra services and such for illegal aliens/"cheap labor" but more than anything by way of genral denigration of the country by way of. Those same industries sure aren't lowering their prices and costs to the taxpayers when/as they're profiting as they claim to be from "cheap labor"/illegal aliens...
No "guest worker" programs should ever be possible at the expense of the American voter and in spite of us. That's a huge sticking point to my view about these plans.
Now that I mention these plans...there is H. R. 4437 that was passsed by the House in the Fall but which is being maligned by these "guest worker" programs being attached in the Senate. I hope people will write to their Senators about this and complain, demand the removal of the addons in the Senate that is attempting to include the "guest worker" program in that legislation.
That's the problem with Newt. He sounds sane, but then he stands up with Hillary and you suspect he's sold you down the river. But his plan for dealing with illegals sounded workable. Expensive and unpopular with some, but workable.
Open borders RATS. Open borders PUBS. There is not much difference. At least if I vote third party my vote gets counted as a protest. By voting for either of the treason parties I am voting in support of open borders. You can't get good government if you keep voting for the same scumbags who are giving you bad government.
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