For Salvadorans in ‘home’ is no longer limbo, ‘there’
It was a spirit of solidarity that led this country to create the Temporary Protective Status program in 1990 to protect migrants and refugees fleeing war, persecution, natural disasters and poverty. It was that same spirit of solidarity that has allowed some 200,000 Salvadorans since then to live and work in the country under TPS, after two earthquakes devastated El Salvador and made life unlivable for so many of them.
With the U.S. government’s decision to end the vital humanitarian relief program known as TPS, those Salvadorans currently living in the U.S. face being sent back to a country some of them barely know. Parents to 192,000 U.S.-born children, these wonderful people have worked for years to build a life in this country. “Home” is no longer “there.” Home is here. Faced with deportation, they are worried about their future and their children’s future.
Sadly, they are right to be. The reality of El Salvador today is a painful one. Caught between poverty, gang violence and organized crime, the country is one of the world’s five most violent. Gangs control entire neighborhoods. They extort businesses and recruit impoverished and vulnerable youth with join-or-die policies that terrorize families and often keep children from going to school.
Sending people back to that is not just wrong, it is cruel. “Deportees” will undoubtedly stand out and be targeted by gangs for extortion or worse because the gangs will think they have money. Those hoping to take their hard-earned entrepreneurship skills honed in the U.S. back to El Salvador will soon be targeted by criminal gangs, who daily extort businesses with the threat of violence.
With high rates of unemployment, the Salvadoran society simply doesn’t have the capacity to receive and properly integrate that many people. Sending people back will further exasperate the root causes of poverty, violence, and inequality that perpetuate forced migration out of the country. And the loss of remittances sent to relatives by TPS recipients in the U.S. will make a difficult economic situation even worse.
The U.S. government supports the Alliance for Prosperity and Security in El Salvador and neighboring Honduras and Guatemala, which addresses rampant violence and slow economic growth — the two biggest factors for migration from the region. A sudden influx of two hundred thousand people now would only further destabilize the region’s already tenuous situation, reversing any progress of development in the region and bringing infrastructure to a breaking point.
As a Church we will continue to work together, as we have for years, to address the root causes that force Salvadorans to seek safety and a better life in the U.S. in the first place. With the international community, we should invest more in violence prevention and youth development.
The U.S. Catholic Church, through Catholic Relief Services, is seeing the results of programs that help at-risk youth find jobs, go back to school, and develop life and leadership skills. We applaud Congress for protecting development assistance that make these programs possible and encourage Congress to continue to fund them.
Meanwhile, ending TPS will tear families apart. As Catholics, we find that unconscionable. The family is the sacred building block of societies. Salvadoran TPS holders deserve to live lives of dignity and not face devastating family separation. They merit our compassion and respect for the contributions that they have made to the U.S. and the lives they have made here.
This week, we’re meeting with members of Congress to urge them to find a permanent legislative solution that protects contributing TPS recipients who have lived here many years and their families. As pastors in a united Church, we cannot remain silent amid the panic playing out for these families.
Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez is the Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador. The Most Rev. Thomas Gerard Wenski is the Archbishop of Miami.