Christian groups decry United States policy change on Salvadorans as Episcopalians offer support

But what about when the people impacted by a bad situation are living next door to us?

Millions of Salvadorans rely on remittances from the United States; a year ago some $4.5 billion was sent home.

The family of local college student Francisco Serrano is plagued by uncertainty after a decision to revoke the temporary protected status of some 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created by Congress in 1990, and allows foreign citizens to remain and work legally in the USA if they are unable to return home due to armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary circumstances”. The United States has been fueling chaos in El Salvador long before the recent exodus: Washington notoriously supported the country’s civil war during the 1980s and early 1990s, as the right-wing military regime terrorized the country with massacres and mass human rights violations. Let’s stop playing politics and considering what’s best for one party vs. the other party, but do what is best for this country. He said he met with youth “who tearfully explained to me why they attempted to migrate north, forced out of their homes, extorted by gangs”.

Miguel Aguiler, who was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was 11, has found a route to legal status, but fears for his fellow “Dreamers”. Finally, there is the matter of climate change, with the United States as the world’s biggest historical contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

In November, Homeland Security announced it was ending TPS for roughly since a powerful natural disaster in 2010 decimated the country. Ana Pottratz Acosta, assistant teaching professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has clients whose families in El Salvador warn them not to come back.

“We are going to burn up the phone lines” to urge Congress to step in and stop Trump’s TPS evictions. How about I force my way into Mr. Giridharadas’ residence uninvited and demand to stay for at least 17 years under the guise of seeking “temporary” shelter. Almost 90% are in the labor force, many working in construction, restaurants, and landscaping, and one in three owns a home. And they grew up so fast in a country that had thousands of weapons on the streets. In the case of the Salvadorans, officials insisted that the humanitarian program that shielded them, known as Temporary Protected Status, should lapse because their country had surmounted the original calamity that triggered TPS in the first place.

Unfortunately, the arguments surrounding the topic of TPS are often fueled by misunderstandings.

For some deportees, the call center industry, which El Salvador’s investment promotion agency (PROESA) says employs 25,000 people, is not an option because their US police records raise security concerns with clients.

“We are not being complacent”, he said. The U.S. needs a smarter and better approach to dealing with foreign nationals left in limbo by protracted instability in their home countries. And they don’t because they didn’t experience the war [or unsafe situation]. But they always were expected to go back home when those conditions improved.

SIMON: As it’s seen there in El Salvador, what would the effect be of 200,000 Salvadorans perhaps returning?

Shutting down TPS will also aggravate the crisis of Trump’s expanded ICE enforcement crusade, with federal raids and mass detentions now blasting through many cities. They’ve gotten jobs, paid taxes, started families. They must return home by July 2019.

One of Guevara’s grandmothers lives in El Salvador, but he doesn’t know anyone else there. Over 100,000 children were encountered by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) between 2013 and 2014. They’re members of our faith community. To date, we’ve granted sacrosanct TPS status to more than 400,000 people from a total of 22 countries who have grown increasingly entitled to automatic renewal of their protections every 18 months during the past two decades.