'Temporary' Status Means Never Having to Say Goodbye

By Mark Krikorian, February 4, 2010

If you think the Haitian illegal aliens and legal visitors to whom the administration has granted "Temporary" Protected Status (TPS) are ever going back, look at the experience of the Liberians.

About 3,000 or so of them were granted this status (which allows them to live and work here legally) in 1991 because civil strife back in Liberia supposedly made the normal enforcement of our immigration laws impossible. The civil war there ended in 2003. After repeated renewals, their TPS was finally allowed to expire in 2007.

But they're still here. That's because the minute their statutorily defined TPS status expired, President Bush just granted them Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), which is basically the same thing but without the statutory authorization. (The first President Bush made up DED out of whole cloth.)

The Liberians' latest "temporary" status is set to expire at the end of March, and there's a campaign afoot to get it extended. I'll eat my hat if the president doesn't give them what they want.
(Please see below for more complete information. poster)

Like the motto of the immigration bar says: It ain't over til the alien wins.

http://www.cis.org/Krikorian/LiberianTPS

Organizations: Sign-On to Ensure Liberians are not Forcibly Removed from the United States

Audience members at the first ever public hearings of a truth commission held in a diaspora, the Diaspora Hearings of the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN, June 2008.

The United States has protected Liberians living in the U.S. from deportation since 1991. Each year, Liberians have registered for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), paying filing fees to renew their status and work authorization. In 2006, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced the termination of TPS for Liberians. President Obama has extended Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians but it will end March 31, 2010.

The Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act, S. 656, and the Liberian Refugee Immigration Protection Act, H.R. 2258, would allow eligible Liberians to apply for lawful permanent resident status.

Submit the form below by Friday, February 5th to sign on as an organization to the letter calling on President Obama to extend Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians. DED ends on March 31, 2010. Without extension, Liberians will face deportation.

Read The Advocates for Human Rights/Dorsey & Whitney Report Liberia Is Not Ready 2009.

Download the Liberian Immigration Policy Toolkit, including country conditions informatin, letters to elected officials, media coverage, and backgrounders on the issue.

ngo_sign_on_liberian_ded_extension.doc
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