Haitians, Syrians are not only the immigrants watching US Supreme Court arguments on temporary protection
When the US Supreme Court hears arguments on the Trump administration’s plans to stop shielding Haitians and Syrians from deportation, people from more than a dozen other countries will pay close attention, perhaps none more than an estimated 200,000 from El Salvador.
Many Salvadorans have lived in the United States for 25 years under Temporary Protected Status, which allows those already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months as long as the Homeland Security secretary deems conditions unsafe for return.
President Donald Trump’s former secretary, Kristi Noem, ended TPS for all 12 countries that came up for renewal under her watch.
Court arguments on Wednesday will focus on whether the administration properly weighed conditions in Haiti and Syria when it ended TPS and if it prejudiced non-white immigrants.
The decisions affected about 350.000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, occupies a special place as a US ally among the leaders of the 17 countries that were designated with TPS when Trump took office, covering a universe of 1.3 million people that more than doubled during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Extending TPS would secure a pipeline of remittances that people send to family back home, but few are counting on Trump to deliver any favours when it is up for renewal September 9.
Jose Urias, who started a family, fathered two American children and founded a company that has built more than 150 homes in the Boston area, said he hasn’t lost hope.
“It’s not guaranteed, but it’s not impossible either,” he said in an interview from his home in Boston. Salvadorans with TPS have been living and working legally in the United States since at least 2001, when two major earthquakes that hit the Central American country resulted in special status.
The vast majority have children born in the US
Many have lost their jobs and fear being detained, separated from their American family members, and deported to a country they barely know.
“Our life is based here, I have lived more of my life here than in El Salvador,” said Urias, 47.
“It’s like living out your American Dream, and then suddenly - just like that — being told your time is up, as if to say, we don’t need you anymore,’ and having someone try to cut away everything you’ve built.”
After crossing the border from Mexico in 1994, he worked delivering furniture, washing dishes, and cooking in restaurants, before opening his construction business about 18 years ago.
First, he started remodelling houses, and then building and selling them.
He employs three people at a firm that sells houses and works with seven contractors that employ dozens of people.
Urias married a Salvadoran who is a TPS beneficiary too.
They have two sons who live with them - a 19-year-old sophomore at Babson College in Boston, and a 13-year-old.
Two of his 13 siblings were born in the US, and the others have permanent legal residency, like his parents.
The whole family lives in the US, and he said that his two American sons will stay in the U.S because it is their country and the place where they will find opportunities, even if the parents lose their TPS protections. “You feel a sense of fulfillment, because I’ve been able to attain so many things I never imagined,” Urias
said in Spanish. “Obviously, through struggle and sacrifice, and by adapting to the lifestyle here, to the local culture and
the language.”
