WASHINGTON | A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that thousands of people living in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents.
Immigration reform backers and activists in Aurora and across the nation said the ruling highlights the importance of congressional action.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that federal immigration law prohibits people who entered the country illegally and now have Temporary Protected Status from seeking “green cards” to remain in the country permanently.
The designation applies to people who come from countries ravaged by war or disaster. It protects them from deportation and allows them to work legally. There are 400,000 people from 12 countries with TPS status.
The outcome in a case involving a couple from El Salvador who have been in the U.S. since the 1990s turned on whether people who entered the country illegally and were given humanitarian protections were ever “admitted” into the United States under immigration law.
Kagan wrote that they were not. “The TPS program gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status, but it does not admit them. So the conferral of TPS does not make an unlawful entrant…eligible” for a green card, she wrote.
The House of Representatives already has passed legislation that would make it possible for TPS recipients to become permanent residents, Kagan noted. The bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate.
The news was discouraging to Aurora area activists protesting Monday at the Colorado State Capitol for immigration law changes.
“This is very hard to news to hear,” said Jessica Martinez Vasquez, Communications Director Colorado People’s Alliance. “These are families that have made their entire lives here. For this door to close really reinforces the need for the call to action we have in Congress.”
She said many people in the region here from TPS nations would put their lives at risk by being expelled.
“These are community members,” she said. “You’re not just deporting someone, you are pulling out a contributing member to these communities.”
A DACA recipient, Martinez Vasquez, 24, said her family brought her to the United States when she was 4.
“I remember when we were waiting for DACA to be decided in the Supreme Court and how nerve racking that is,” she said.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, who served a decade in Congress representing TPS holders in the region and calling for keeping up the program, told the Sentinel Monday he’d like to see a bipartisan bill signed by the president that “recognizes the need for those under TPS to be able to become legal permanent residents and have a path to becoming U.S. citizens.”
“In Aurora we have a large and vibrant Salvadoran community with many Salvadorans who have been here legally for decades here under the TPS program,” said Coffman, who sponsored legislation in 2018 to extend TPS after the Trump administration axed the program. “They have built businesses, raised families and have been an important part of the fabric of our diverse community.”
It’s estimated about 1,400 people living in Colorado have temporary protected status, most of them Salvadoran. A fourth of the state’s Salvadoran population lives in Aurora, according to Census data.
Aurora Congressman Jason Crow said in a statement that the ruling underscores the importance of the American Dream and Promise Act.
“Congress must take steps to reform our broken immigration system and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS, and DED holders who call our country home,” he said.
President Joe Biden has said he supports the change in the law. But his administration, like the Trump administration, argued that current immigration law doesn’t permit people who entered the country illegally to apply for permanent residency.
On the other side were immigrant groups that argued many people who came to the U.S. for humanitarian reasons have lived in the country for many years, given birth to American citizens and put down roots in the U.S.
Federal courts around the country had come to conflicting decisions about whether the grant of TPS status was, by itself, enough to enable an immigrant to try to obtain permanent residency.
Former President Donald Trump tried to cancel the program for many immigrants, stoking fear they could be sent back to their homelands where they haven’t lived in many years.
“All of these families that are established in the United States and have lived in our communities for decades faced a very real threat,” said Lisa Koop, a lawyer with the National Immigrant Justice Center who also teaches at Notre Dame’s law school.
In 2001, the U.S. gave Salvadoran migrants legal protection to remain in the U.S. after a series of earthquakes in their home country.
People from 11 other countries are similarly protected. They are: Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
Monday’s decision does not affect immigrants with TPS who initially entered the U.S. legally and then, say, overstayed their visa, Kagan noted. Because those people were legally admitted to the country and later were given humanitarian protections, they can seek to become permanent residents.
— Sentinel Managing Editor Kara Mason and Photo Editor Philip B. Poston contributed to this story
just shows how convoluted our immigration laws are