Thread: Legal Status Extended for Central Americans

Legal Status Extended for Central Americans

Associated Press

The Homeland Security Department has estimated 66,000 people from Honduras and 3,000 from Nicaragua are eligible.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government has decided it will allow people from Nicaragua and Honduras to stay another 18 months in the U.S. with temporary legal status.

The temporary protected status granted people from those Central American countries who were in the U.S. before Dec. 30, 1998, was due to expire July 5, 2010. The new expiration date is Jan. 5, 2012. The temporary legal status has been extended repeatedly since Hurricane Mitch devastated the region in 1998.

The administration says Nicaragua and Honduras continue to recover from Hurricane Mitch preventing them from adequately handling the return of their citizens.

The Homeland Security Department has estimated 66,000 people from Honduras and 3,000 from Nicaragua are eligible.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05 ... olitics%29

It should be called permanent legal status.

Youd' think they'd need their citizens back to rebuild, eh? Disgraceful!

The administration says Nicaragua and Honduras continue to recover from Hurricane Mitch preventing them from adequately handling the return of their citizens.

BS! It has been 12 years since the hurricane. Its way past time to have them return home. Over 66,000 can marry and have families that will double or triple their numbers if they are not stopped. What an outrageous excuse!

Fire Napolitano! She has simply gone t--- up before immigration.

Call their comment line and complain.
DHS Citizen Line

* Operator Number: 202-282-8000
* Comment Line: 202-282-8495

face it, after 12 years, they are established in the country and have adjusted to US lifestyle.
they will never be sent back home. i dont think anyone in the administration have the guts to tell these people to go home

Legalization by the Littles – Central American Division

By David North, May 6, 2010

Once upon a time – back in 1998 – there was a big wind, a really big wind, in Central America. It was called Hurricane Mitch, a category five storm.

People in the U.S. from Honduras, and to a lesser extent, Nicaragua, who were in the U.S. at the time, legally or illegally, who did not want to return to their storm-damaged countries were granted the right to stay legally in the U.S., and to work here on the grounds that those two countries, at least temporarily, were prevented from "adequately handling the return of [their] nationals." The government's term is Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Mitch is still with us, in a way, because in his wake the U.S. government has just extended TPS to tens of thousands of Central Americans from its current expiration date, July 5, 2010, to January 5, 2012. That is an 18-month extension, something that USCIS has been doing repeatedly since the storm.

Mitch apparently was a bad hurricane because 12 years later USCIS still says that the countries it hit cannot handle the return of their countrymen; that includes 66,000 from Honduras and 3,000 from Nicaragua. If Honduras takes more than a dozen years to recover from a hurricane, how long will it take Haiti, a much poorer nation, to recover from its earthquake? TPS has been extended to Haitians who were in the U.S. on the date of its earthquake earlier this year.

The Central American TPS population, incidentally, is both aging and shrinking. Aging because only those who were here at the time of the storm are covered, so the age distribution is not from, say, 0 to 100, it is from 12 to 100.

As to shrinking, four years ago, when there was an earlier extension of TPS status, USCIS estimated the size of the Honduran population as 75,000 (not the current 66,000) plus 4,000 from Nicaragua (not 3,000).

If enough time passes, and the agency continues its current pattern, the TPS population totals will shrink to zero.

http://www.cis.org/north/TPS-renewal

These people should be sent home immediately. Honestly they should have never been here in the first place. Hurricanes occur all of time, couldnt they have relocated to other parts of Central America that were less devastated? Now these people have had kids and have good jobs while Americans suffer.

I went to Jamaica after Hurricane Gilbert in the same year, (I think). The damage was mainly roofs blown off, because the buildings themselves were generally masonry. Even the poor people usually had masonry houses, although they had little means to rapidly repair their roofs and were suffering a great deal, since it was the rainy season.. These other countries have more resources to assist people.

Needless to say, roofs damaged by hurricanes can be repaired in a relatively short time. And their basic housing, such as cinder block, is relatively easy to build.

This is just a bunch of lame brain politics.