ICYMI: “‘I feel this is my home’: Hundreds protest in Washington to support immigrants with temporary protected status”
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ICYMI: “‘I feel this is my home’: Hundreds protest in Washington to support immigrants with temporary protected status”
Washington, DC - Hundreds of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, their families, and allies marched to Capitol Hill yesterday to demand a path to residency after the Trump administration worked to strip more than 300,000 immigrants of their legal immigration status over the past two years. In a new piece for the Washington Post, Marissa J. Lang reported on the action. TPS has helped immigrants from around the world live here in the U.S., many contributing to their communities for decades.
Trump and his administration are systematically stripping life-saving protections from our immigrant neighbors, putting thousands at risk of deportation to countries facing political unrest, violence, and natural devastation, and threatening hundreds of thousands of families with separation.
With 98% of TPS holders in limbo, uprooting this program for the sake of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda will have devastating impacts on communities across the country. Value Our Families continues to call on Congress to create permanent legislative solutions that protect immigrants and their families, so they may continue to live without fear of losing their homes and their families.
The following is an excerpt of the piece. To view in full, click here.
Hundreds of immigrants and their families representing more than a dozen countries and several states gathered Tuesday in Washington to demand that permanent residency be made available to thousands of immigrants who came to the United States fleeing war and disaster.
...The protest, which began in front of the White House, was part of events organized this week to draw lawmakers’ attention to the plight of immigrants granted temporary protected status. Organizers said they wanted Republican and Democratic lawmakers to meet families that remain in limbo as courts review the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail the program.
...TPS recipients are a special classification of immigrants who come from countries embroiled in conflict or devastated by natural disasters. The program was created to allow citizens of those countries to live and work legally in the United States until the situation in their home countries stabilizes.
As the Trump administration has sought to tighten immigration and asylum laws, the president ended TPS designation for six of 10 countries in the program: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan. Of the more than 300,000 people enrolled in the TPS program, a majority hail from those countries.
...TPS Alliance, an organization that advocates for TPS holders, heralded this week as the “biggest mobilization” of TPS holders in history.
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