200,000 Salvadorans ordered to exit U. S.

The Trump administration will end temporary legal immigration status for 200,000 Salvadorans who have been living in the U. S. for nearly two decades, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday.

Salvadorans who currently have Temporary Protected Status ( TPS) must return to their homeland by September 2019 or become undocumented immigrants if they remain without legal protections.

The administration has now terminated TPS status for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan.

Salvadorans were first granted TPS in 2001after a pair of devastating earthquakes that killed nearly 1,000 people and destroyed more than 100,000 homes.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen concluded that El Salvador has recovered enough so the emergency declaration is no longer necessary.

“The substantial disruption of living conditions caused by the earthquake” no longer exists, Homeland Security said in a statement.

The latest decision runs counter to those made by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who extended TPS protections for El Salvador every 18 months. Their administrations said the country had not fully recovered from the quakes and also had raging violence from drug cartels that made it impossible for people to return to the nation.

The State Department issued a travel warning to U. S. travelers last February about widespread violence throughout that country. “El Salvador has one of the highest homicide levels in the world and crimes such as extortion, assault and robbery are common,” the warning said.

Homeland Security said Monday that its decision was based on earthquake recovery and not on the state of gang violence in El Salvador.

The move comes after lobbying by El Salvador’s government, a bipartisan group in Congress and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, all urging Washington to find a way that allows Salvadorans to remain in the USA.

El Salvador’s embassy said 97% of Salvadorans on TPS older than 24 have jobs and pay taxes, and more than half own a home. Salvadorans on TPS have given birth to 192,000 children, all U. S. citizens, according to the Center for Migration Studies.

“To disregard the contributions that El Salvadorans have made in communities across this country by stamping an expiration date on their lives here is inhumane,” said Amanda Baran of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “El Salvador is one of theworld’s most dangerous countries and will be unable to absorb the return of these thousands of people whose lives are inextricably intertwined with those of ours here in the United States.”