The words of the second-in-command in the new administration of the US administration to regularize their status raise hope, but also caution, to the thousands of TPS beneficiaries. They believe that there are many obstacles that need to be resolved, but in the panorama it undoubtedly offers more possibilities than in previous years.
Elected Vice President Kamala Harris’s statements on President Joe Biden’s priority agenda to pave the way for permanent residence for the nearly 300,000 temporary protected status (TPS) beneficiaries and an additional 600,000 young people living under the Program Deferred Action, DACA, arouses great hope among the Salvadoran beneficiaries of these programs, numbering more than 200,000, but also caution regarding the implementation of the proposal that Harris put forward a few days after taking office.
The National Alliance of TPS, which brings together some 70 committees in 30 states of the American Union, the vast majority of which are headed by Salvadorans, welcomes the announcement of the elected vice president, given in an interview for one of the Spanish television networks in the United States; However, they recognize that words and will alone are not enough, so they are willing to keep working to see those intentions realized.
Also read: Joe Biden’s government offers “automatic” legal residency to TPS beneficiaries
For three years, the members of this movement have fought relentlessly against the decisions of the outgoing Donald Trump administration that proposed the expulsion of these thousands of workers from the country during his tenure but crashed against the judicial decisions that prevented or delayed their target.
Salvadoran José Palma, leader of the TPS National Alliance, and a local leader in the state of Massachusetts, says the words of Vice President-elect Harris are in stark contrast to what he has experienced in these four years of Republican tenure, and they maintain Long live the flame to see the goal achieved, which won’t be entirely easy. Kamala Harris said in the televised interview that the comprehensive immigration reform plan will be promoted in the first 100 days of President Biden’s administration and that the plan will include an acceleration of the transition to permanent residency cards for TPS and DACA beneficiaries.
“The immigration process will address the fact that people with temporary protected status, especially dreamers and TPS beneficiaries, will automatically receive green cards,” said Harris, indicating that the plan would make a difference to the process for those millions of undocumented immigrants. which they will also try to regularize.
For TPS and DACA, the House of Representatives, by a democratic majority, approved in June 2019 the “Law of Dreams and Promises (HR6)” proposal, which duly dated more than 900 thousand workers by the country’s security forces, which having had renewable legal residency status and proof of their tax payments, they can move on to permanent residency.
However, the proposal reached the full Senate, which was then controlled by the Republican Party, and its leadership in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell, who, when an issue was of no concern to the Conservative agenda, simply left it indefinitely in the without taking over. to the full debate, which even prevented his party’s lawmakers from voting on the proposal.
Read more: Joe Biden offers to divert immigration detention funds into the development of the Northern Triangle
Salvadoran José Palma notes, “There is a lot of emotion in those words (from the interview with the elected Vice President Harris), but we need to understand that things are happening because of the work done in the community, we should to fill. of joy and drive to keep working and leaves us a huge message that an election has good or bad consequences, ”Palma told El Diario de Hoy of the City of Boston.
This Salvadoran leader says we should keep a close eye because it is basically not clear from the interview what the project would be that the Biden government would promote.
On the one hand, whether they would be based on the bills that have been semi-successful in some federal legislatures in recent years, or whether it would be a new proposal; especially given the fact that the Democratic majority in the Senate – with the victory of the two Georgian Presidents – is only relative to the tiebreaker position for one vote, thanks to the power the Vice President will have, given that there are 50 Republican lawmakers, 48 Democrats and 2 independents aligned with the Liberals.
Mardoel Hernández, leader of the TPS National Alliance in the Washington Metropolitan Area, adds with cautious optimism to receive the new administration’s position and acknowledges that this is due to the current vice president’s -elect, a state senator through California, has repeatedly hosted representatives from the organization when they lobbied for the legislature, and that allows it to properly identify these two groups of immigrants.
You may be interested: Donald Trump is accused of “inciting insurgency” after motivating the Capitol attack.
“We see a very encouraging vision, a product that stems largely from the work we have done, but we must not neglect ourselves, we must understand that the struggle is still difficult due to the narrow majority in the Senate,” admits Mardoel Hernández like a change. Deep in immigration law, what Harris apparently says, a package that Tepesians would be in requires more than a simple majority in the Senate.
The TPS National Alliance said in a statement released Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris’s words testify to the fruit of her four-year struggle marching to Washington DC to lobby lawmakers during ongoing visits to the Capitol; They are also evidence of the fight in federal courts where they stood up against President Donald Trump, appealing to the judges for his right to remain in the country where they have provided more than 20 years of working life with impeccable records who show their good conduct before the law.