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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31395 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Temporary Protected Status and Asylum are different legal protections, with different criteria and processes. More generally, what does the term "illegal immigrant" refer to? I am under the impression it refers to people in the United States without a legal status that permits them to remain. That very literally does not include people with TPS (like the Haitians in Springfield have). if "illegal immigrant" includes even people who have legal permission to be here, what precisely are the boundaries? Are there green card holders who are "illegal immigrants?"

"TPS does not eliminate the effect of [an] unlawful entry.” (Sanchez v. Mayorkas (2021) 593 U.S. 409) It, similarly to DACA/DAPA, just temporarily waves a magic wand over otherwise-unlawfully-present migrants because the executive believes that extenuating circumstances make repatriation a bad idea at the moment. Worse, the Biden Administration is affirmatively facilitating the importation of well north of a million migrants who have no reasonable avenue to U.S. citizenship or even long-term work authorizations through the unprecedented expansion of a "parole" authority from the early 50's.

So technically yes, these people aren't "illegal immigrants" in the classic sense of the term; there are legal fig leaves justifying the government's failure to remove them. However, they certainly are not modal immigrants, i.e. people who intend to and are authorized to permanently remain in the U.S. and who in due course will become citizens. Instead, the law has shifted in order to find ways to putatively bless the importation of a millions-strong second-class-citizen helot class entirely dependent upon the whims of the state and their employers. Heckuva job. sarcastic clapping.

I feel like one obvious difference between DACA/DAPA and TPS is that TPS is Congressionally authorized (by the Immigration Act of 1990) while DACA and DAPA are purely executive action. The TPS program is also not limited to people who initially lacked a lawful status like DACA and DAPA are. The Sanchez decision is limited to unlawful entries. If you were in the United States lawfully when you were granted TPS you can still get permanent resident status like anyone else here lawfully for an extended period of time.

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