Biden Expands Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans in the United States

This measure will enable some 472,000 Venezuelans who arrived between 2021 and July 2023 to legally live and work in the US for up to 18 months.

Yesterday, the Biden Administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans who arrived in the US up through July 31 of this year. TPS enables migrants to live and work in the US legally for 18 months. Up until now, TPS status was only available to Venezuelans who arrived before March 2021. The Department of Homeland Security estimates some 472,000 Venezuelans who did not previously have TPS status will now be eligible for it. Another 242,000 who already had TPS will now be able to extend it.

This move is a valuable step in the right direction. Venezuelan migrants are fleeing a brutal socialist tyranny which has caused horrific poverty and oppression, and created the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western hemisphere (some 7 million refugees). Letting them live and work here legally is good for the migrants themselves, and also benefits the rest of us by enabling them to contribute to the US economy.

This step will also ease pressure on New York City and other jurisdictions where many Venezuelan asylum seekers who are legally allowed to stay in the US at least until their cases are decided,  have ended up reliant on public assistance and charity, because they are not allowed to work legally for at least 6 months after entering the US (in practice, often longer). They can now support themselves, especially with the economy facing serious labor shortages in many sectors.

Fully resolving New York's issues would ideally also require the city to ease zoning restrictions on the construction of new housing, and drop its guarantee of publicly funded shelter. But the grant of TPS to Venezuelans (who make up a large proportion of the city's recent migrant population) should help. It would also help, of course, if asylum seekers from other countries were also able to work.

Biden recently extended TPS for Ukrainians in the United States, who of course have fled a horrific war and Russian aggression. The expansion for Venezuelans is a similar policy, albeit affecting many more people.

While the expansion of TPS for Venezuelans is a step in the right direction, it is not a substitute for passing a Venezuelan Adjustment Act, allowing Venezuelans to live and work in the US permanently, as has been done for many other groups fleeing war and oppressive socialist regimes in the past. The TPS extension will expire in 18 months, and a hostile president could potentially terminate it even earlier.

Permanent residency and work permits that do not depend on the whims of whoever occupies the White House would allow the Venezuelans and others to better plan and organize their lives, and to make greater contributions to our economy and society. I expanded on the advantages of adjustment acts for Venezuelans, Ukrainians, and other similarly situated groups here and here. Most recently, I urged the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, to give permanent residency to Afghans who fled to the US after the Taliban seized control of their county.

Comments

[Brett Bellmore]

Getting tired of living in a monarchy, even if the king is currently somebody who agrees with you on some things?

[Nige]

Uh-oh. SOMEone doesn't believe Biden was democratically elected.

[MonitorsMost]

Congress authorized this in 1952. Don’t grant powers to the executive branch if you don’t want them to use it.

[Sarcastr0]

You know better about the American system than this kind of talk radio bullshit talk, Brett.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I haven't followed the details of the TPS program...how often does it actually prove *temporary*?

[Mr. Bumble]

Never!

[Longtobefree]

As often as a temporary tax expires.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Fleeing socialist tyrannies is o.k.; fleeing all those tyrannies we installed and supported, not o.k.

[Dilan Esper]

He's arguing for the same treatment for Afghans. Arguably we had a lot to do with what is going on there.

[Jacob Grimes]

"We installed."

One would think that Afghanistan, where we literally spent billions in direct aid and armaments, not to mention tens of thousands of armed forces deployed there, would have finally put to rest the absurd notion that US money can prop up regimes without any significant domestic support for those regimes.

Someone had to carry out orders for these dictators. Someone had to man their secret police forces. Someone had to report their neighbors to the authorities. Someone had to fire on protesters or imprison dissidents. None of these people were Americans.

[ReaderY]

Will just briefly point out that giving members of a single country a group benefit is as much discrimination on the basis of nationality as ecluding them, the issue is basically the same as for “affirmative action.”

Professor Somin railed against discrkmination on the basis of nationality when members of individual named countries were denied visas and argued the U.S. Predsident shouldn’t have to power to single individual countries out. (This was in addition to the religious discrimination argument.) But if the President doesn’t have the power to do that, he would for the same reasons not have the power to do this either.

[Longtobefree]

Those two examples are wildly different.
One was done by a republican, the other by a democrat.
Completely different.

[Dilan Esper]

Will just briefly point out that giving members of a single country a group benefit is as much discrimination on the basis of nationality as ecluding them, the issue is basically the same as for “affirmative action.”

This is true, and is why I basically think Trump v. Hawaii was rightly decided even though the underlying policy was awful. (I can say a similar thing about the Chinese Exclusion Cases of the 19th Century-- terrible policy, but constitutional.)

It's perfectly clear that you can discriminate by nationality in immigration policy. If you couldn't, as you advert, the entire basis for stuff like decisions to grant protected status to refugees from some countries, or even foreign policy decisions like the Cuban Adjustment Act, would be unconstitutional.

Immigration policy is a close relative of foreign policy. There's a lot of aspects of it the Constitution does apply to and limit (particularly due process), but the government has the power to say "people from country X have one set of rules and people from country Y have another". You really can't run a refugee policy, or a foreign policy, without such determinations.

[Magister]

The issue in Trump v Hawaii was not whether we can treat countries differently, but whether the specific treatment was animus against Muslims rather than for national security as the two dissents argue. It's the same as in most discrimination cases: is a policy chosen for good enough reasons despite its discriminatory effect? is discretion allowed for in an acceptable policy applied in a discriminatory manner? Whether the decision is correct rests upon the specific facts of the case, not some universal principle.

[Roger S]

Facts of the case? No, if judges are ruling based on some sort of presumed mind-reading animus, then judges have left the law and the facts and are just applying their own prejudices.

[VinniUSMC]

Magister applies the "OrangeManBad" school of thought.

[Dilan Esper]

Do you think Chinese exclusion wasn’t motivated by animus against Chinese?

Do you think that the fact that many Cuban refugees were white was no factor in our Cuba policies vs. other countries in the region?

Do you think that the facts that Ukrainians are white and European have something to do with why they get more generous treatment than, say, escapees from several African countries who just suffered coups?

Yes, it’s true, there’s a ton of racism in our immigration policies. No doubt. But it’s also true that there’s no way to subject all these decisions to court review without basically allowing the judiciary to override all the foreign policy and immigration policy calls embedded within them.

[Roger S]

You could argue that all immigration restrictions are based on animus towards foreigners. We used to block Communist immigration. Was that based on animus towards Communists?

Support for Ukraine can be attributed to the Deep State wanting to bring back the Cold War. Race could be a factor, but the Russians are mostly white also.

[Dilan Esper]

The key point is can we litigate any of this stuff and what the "real" reasons for this or that preference are? It seems to me that the better approach is to say this part of immigration policy is committed to the President and Congress.

[Magister]

I'm not arguing for a disparate impact standard. I have no opinion on anything that predated a ton of really bad Supreme Court decisions.

You can't say that Trump v Hawaii was rightly decided without looking at the specifics of how it was implemented, which the dissenters argued was not done. I do think that a policy that starts out as "exclude everyone of that religion/nationality" and works toward something constitutional deserves a lot more scrutiny than something that starts out with a desirable goal like "exclude terrorists" and works toward the same place; the odds that those two approaches would result in the same policy seem very small.

[Dilan Esper]

If the governing doctrine (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Cases) is that the political branches get to make nationality-based calls, I'm not sure the history really matters.

[Sarcastr0]

I'd argue it's more situational than national, but we already have national quotas so that ship sailed.

[Idihax]

Just remember, these "temporary" statuses are never ever withdrawn. So granting temporary status to these people, whether Venezuelans fleeing communism, Haitians an earthquake, or whatever else, means that they're here forever.

[StonewallDeSoto]

They're all here forever anyway. Do you think any illegal alien is showing up to their 2030 court date?

[Jerry B.]

And, in the future, when migrants arrive at the border, they will all be from Venezuela, but the coyotes ate their ID.

[StonewallDeSoto]

Why did I get a "Stand for Israel" advertisement on this post? Hmm...

[John Rohan]

What about the pull factor? Now Venezuela just got the message that they have a green light to proceed to the United States, en masse.

And I don’t think this is going to ease the burden on NY as much as Somin claims. There are almost 500k eligible – just how many jobs are there for unskilled manual laborers who don’t speak English AND employers are willing to hire them at the minimum wage? (which is currently $15/hr in New York, and is scheduled to go up over the next few years).

The problem is that prof Somin is only giving us half the libertarian argument, and that’s let people come and let them work. The other half of the argument, which he generally ignores, is don’t give them free benefits! You can't have open borders and a generous welfare state at the same time. We have to feed, house, and educate every one of those 500k. Are they really going to pay that back in taxes? The lower half of the country essentially don’t pay anything in income taxes.

[mulched]

Somin's article 15 months from now demanding the status be made permanent is already written.

[Sarcastr0]

Congrats on discovering consistency of opinion.

[MonitorsMost]

Great news. 95% of them will be ardent anti-communist and anti-socialists. Work hard and be entrepreneurial to provide a better life for your family. Sounds like great future Americans to me.

[Sarcastr0]

The nativism overcomes the partisan politics.

Negative affiliation beats positive affiliation.

The modern GOP.

[Frank Drackman]

Sounds like the "Reverend" Sandusky is right about "replacement"after all. I haven't heard about 472,000 Amuricans seeking asylum in Venezuela.