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?"
Hmm -- well what about taking the knowledge gained here and taking it back to their countries and using it to better their countries and not just their own families?
The 300,000 have had 5 years to make anchor babies. No good deed goes unpunished.
""It would be unfair to leave them out in the cold now," said Saul Solarzano, head of the center's Washington office. "
I didn't know it was so cold in El Salvador...
Smart Conservatives know that Bush's Shamnesty program is a smokescreen for cheap labor junky employers. And a BOHICA for the American worker.
"In this instance we are talking about sending 300,000 people home and it looks pretty clear that nobody is going to leave willingly. Can you imagine having this problem with 11 million people?"
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I don't believe the political will exists to send them home. That being the case, to get the wall built and stem the illegal tide we will have to figure out how to legalize the status of the 11 million who are here and won't be leaving.
Or by implementing tough workplace enforcement that made it almost impossible to get a job at anything better than a day laborer in the underground economy, and by cutting off all the social benefits, maybe we could just make life so miserable for them that they leave on their own.
As far as I am concerned, the anchor babies are NOT US citizens. Kick the entire lot of 'em back to their craphole countries.
What ?!
That is just plain stupid.
It's also unbelievably arrogant to argue that these countries can't or won't take care of their own disasters. ..noblesse oblige.
Send the Salvadoreños back home. It's their home, for better or worse. THEN they can try to come to this country legally and on their own.
We don't need any more "huddled masses."
We need more AmerICANs, not refugees, evacuees, sick, poor, broke and INSTANT welfare recipients.
We are supposed to be here in life to give, not to take. We have enough to take care of with our very own, home-grown sick, incapacitated, poor&elderly, down&out and free-loaders.
"...maybe we could just make life so miserable for them that they leave on their own."
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As we make things tougher the PUBS will be labeled a party of hate mongering racists. The media will portray how we are destroying these "poor innocent families." If the PUBS want to retain a majority they need Hispanic votes.
Also, we have a labor shortage in this country for the low end heavy labor jobs.
Also, we have a labor shortage in this country for the low end heavy labor jobs.
Hell if there is a shortage why are they on street corners begging for work. Spare me!!!
Here is exactly what will occur IF "guest worker" programs are put into place and practice. Many to most "guest workers" will plea reason to remain in the country -- children, sick parent/s, car broke down, political persucution, bought a house so can't leave, in debt so can't leave, emotional duress, racism, need an operation, lost my I.D. and on and on -- after their "guest worker" status is set to expire, with many attorneys ready and at the wait to sue the U.S. and individual states for a variety of reasons to force the continued presence in the country of the "guest worker" at issue.
These are the facts and familiar behaviors over time of nearly all who arrive in the U.S. illegally, and that is that they impose upon the country and insist the country accommodate them.
This story represents most of the realities in real time and real lives as to why I won't support "guest worker" programs -- because I know human nature and I know that "guest worker" programs are gateway programs that will encourage even more illegal immigration and illegal aliens afterward.
About these people, this story, they need to go home. They can go home and apply for immigration and citizenship afterward and then return the legal way after completing that process, just like every other million-upon-millions of legal immigrants.
The U.S. has to start being firm in enforcing citizenship and immigration laws, despite the hardships involved. The sanctity and significance and worth of citizenship is involved here.
Well, actually, the consistently DEMO union members are genrally anti-illegal alien, too, because it's obvious that American union membership suffers by the ever growing "unregulated" cheap labor pool of illegal aliens in the country.
So, I don't believe it's accurate to project that the Republicans should take the heat on this issue.
Although I recognize that it's a case of Florida and elections for Republicans there, here's my attitude about that: those FL Republicans will grow bigger and taller and more capable in the eyes of many IF they enforce immigration laws and the return of these people to where they came from.
NONE of these people of issue here was unaware of the terms of them being carted to the U.S. They were aware of their status, some admitted (article) that they knew they were "illegal" prior to this program and that they were here anyway -- thus, they are aware of their behavior that is punishable, and should be.
Send them home. It's harsh to some, but it's a case of that we have laws and they are being violated. We have to enforce our immigration laws and require citizenship or at least permanent residency for people from other countries who seek presence in the U.S.
Send these people home and stop loading them into the country when disasters strike elsewhere. Take them aid, go and assist (the U.S. already does that anyway), but we should not be and have to stop appearing to be the social aid nation for the world's needy.
Send these people home, give them instructions as to how to apply for citizenship and let them work it out just like every other LEGAL immigrant who has then become a U.S. citizen has done for the last two centuries. That's part of what it takes and what it means to be here anyway, to live by our rule of law.
Someone added the keyword, "immigrants" to this thread and I'm wondering why. They are not immigrants but guests. Some of them were here illegally as illegal aliens who were then included in a program definin them as guests with temporary status.
None of them immigrated with legal process otherwise, nor appears to be involved in working toward citizenship on their own merits/efforts, at least that's not explained in this article that any are.
De la Rosa said she likely would stay even if she loses the protection
I'm sure she is a Hispanic that will not be voting for the GOP. Sounds like a Democrat to me.
On the other hand, I am a Hispanic that has voted all my life for the GOP but unless the GOP knocks off the hispandering I will be moving onwards to a conservative third party. I don't give a damn about Republican partisanship. I want good governance and we are not going to get it from racial panderers.
I would say this article is very good evidence of just how well a "guest worker" program is going to work. Forget it. A pig with lip-stick is still a damn pig. Get ready for the next big wave people!!! If Bush gets his way it is coming.
One Happy Hemisphere -- only 'trusted travelers'(as the CFR calls them), don't want to go home. This should have been anticipated, no matter how many jobs/industries we send south. 'How can you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Paree'? Well, if bin Laden nukes the US, I suppose that might send some scurrying back home. Or maybe not.
New Zealand just outlawed anchor babies. What do they know that we don't?
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