2023-07-20 06:48:04
Twenty-six US senators on Tuesday (07.18.2023) urged the government of President Joe Biden to reassign for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans the immigration protection known as Temporary Protection Status (TPS), which prevents them from being deported and gives access to work permits.
In a letter sent to the US president, the senators did not ask for an extension of TPS, but for a new designation, which allows people who do not currently have that protection to file an initial registration application.
The United States designated Venezuela for the first time for TPS in 2021 and extended it until March 2024. Nicaragua has benefited from it since 1999 and last June it was extended for 18 months.
“Both countries clearly meet the requirements to be designated for TPS under our immigration laws,” the senators wrote in the letter sent to the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
TPS prevents deportation and gives access to a work permit to foreign citizens who cannot return safely to their country due to natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary conditions.
“Venezuela continues to be ravaged by violence, instability, and repression, and Venezuelans are suffering from the country’s historic collapse” led by the “repressive regime of Nicolás Maduro,” the text reads.
The senators accuse Maduro of human rights abuses, of having imprisoned “some 245 political prisoners” and of disqualifying opponents so that they cannot run in the elections.
“The humanitarian crisis facing the Venezuelan people has only worsened in the last two years” with millions of people still unable to access basic health care and adequate food, they warn.
The senators, all Democrats except for the independent Bernie Sanders, estimate that the situation has also worsened in Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega has transformed the country “into a police state in which the executive branch has instituted a regime of terror and the suppression of all freedoms.”
In 2022, the Nicaraguan government closed more than 2,000 NGOs and intensified its repression against the Catholic Church. In February 2023, it deprived 316 people of their nationality and expelled them from the country.
There are currently more than 400,000 people from 16 countries covered by TPS in the United States. According to the pro-immigrant group Immigration Forum, among them there are 251,567 Salvadorans, 80,709 Hondurans and 4,526 Nicaraguans. In addition, up to 323,000 Venezuelans could obtain this immigration protection.
gs (afp, efe)
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