Haiti And El Salvador: The Temporary Immigration Status Ruse

The Global Conflict Tracker, an interactive tool from the Council on Foreign Relations, provides a broad human and geographical context regarding conflicts that is often missed by the daily news. There are common and predictable denominators across the board, and anyone with an unbiased eye can easily identify them — a.k.a. connecting the inconvenient dots.

Global Conflict Tracker as of January 17, 2020

Nowadays it appears that anything and everything has become an excuse to become a potential refugee or an asylee, and while there are those that qualify under international norms and can apply for asylum or refugee status, no country on Earth has the legal obligation to welcome anyone into its territory, for any reason. It’s a privilege, not a right, and let that be the starting point. In addition, all appeals to emotion are moot, because there’s a seemingly endless supply of refugees/asylees in the world seeking an economic leg up at the expense of the usual suspects.

While conflict is the main cause behind refugee/asylee applications, the U.S. Congress created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the Immigration Act of 1990 which covers a wider array of conditions. It cannot be stressed enough that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the discretion by law to decide when a country receives the TPS designation, and is based on the following criteria:

An ongoing armed conflict, such as a civil war, that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning nationals;
– An environmental disaster, such as an earthquake, hurricane, or epidemic, that results in a substantial but temporary disruption of living conditions, and because of which the foreign state is temporarily unable to adequately handle the return of its nationals; or
– Extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state that prevent its nationals from returning to the state in safety (unless the U.S. government finds that permitting these nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the U.S. national interest).

The keywords are “temporary” and “discretion,” yet those simple and clear legal concepts have not stopped the courts from interfering when termination of the temporary status is afoot. Needless to say, the courts are replete with activist judges that don’t know their place in the pecking order, although they will be forced back in line over the next few decades in legally accountable ways that they never imagined.

The best known TPS case pertains to El Salvador. It’s comprised of a group of approximately 250,000 people that have literally become the proverbial guests from hell, still residing in America 19 years after the earthquake of 2001 in their country. For perspective, Amazon.com was built in 20 years. Meanwhile, the Judicial branch overlooks the law, choosing to appeal to emotion and political agendas by stopping the DHS from exercising its legally appointed duties.

On Oct. 3, 2018, in Ramos, et al. v. Nielsen, et al., No. 18-cv-01554 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2018) (PDF, 458 KB), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California enjoined DHS from implementing and enforcing the decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador, pending further resolution of the case. 

Another TPS helping hand was extended to 46,000 Haitians by President Obama after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the second oldest free country on the western hemisphere after the U.S. But now the Trump administration wants to end their temporary stay, and the same sob story is being replayed.

They live in fear of a forced return to Haiti, a country where they were born and that they love, but one that’s been paralyzed by poverty, violent protests and a debilitating cholera epidemic. They fear even more for their American-born children, who, unlike them, would be eligible to remain in the only country they’ve ever known. For many Haitian immigrants, the idea of uprooting preteens to live for the first time in a deeply impoverished country seems out of the question. “Haiti will always be my home by birth, but this is my new home,” said Luce Janvier, a parishioner at the church. “It’s not safe in Haiti — not now, maybe never.”

Haiti And El Salvador: In short, you offer “temporary” room and board to Johnny to help him out, and when the time comes to depart, he takes you to court while saying “…this is my new home.”

Obviously the 1804 Haiti massacre ordered by Jean-Jacques Dessalines that killed the remaining French white people on the island wasn’t a clever move, for it wiped out the only viable intellect available as the centuries old Haitian lack of socio-techno-economic achievement has proven.

Please note that the meaning of “temporary” help is utterly ignored because the guests get a taste of a society that they could never build in their wildest dreams. But there’s the argument, especially as it applies to instability and conflict, that the U.S. government and its spooks are at fault for interfering in the refugees’ countries of origin, which contradicts the mantra that “all men are created equal.” Can’t claim to be as smart and then fail to be as smart.

When disasters occur within Western Civilization, who shows up to help? The 1994 Northridge earthquake that hit the Los Angeles area caused damages estimated at more than $20 billion ($35 billion today), killed 57 people, and was one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history. Yet it didn’t trigger any help from anyone south of the border, or from anywhere for that matter. Why? If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything?

It’s a never ending story of repetitive human flows of ineptitude that are slowly but surely diluting Western Civilization. But the predictability of refugees moving permanently into the country that offered them temporary shelter will become the driver that will shut the process down completely, once and for all. After all, we’re well into the 21st century, and if the alleged equally created human beings are unable to build sustainable civilizations by now, having had unprecedented access to assistance and information mostly financed by the evil Western Civilization over the last 60 years, the obvious conclusion is not pleasant and only safe spaces managed by unicorn lovers will save the guests from hearing the truth.


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