Biden Expands Protected Status to Syrians on U.S. Soil

FAIR Take | February 2024
At the end of January, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas announced the extension and “redesignation” of Syria for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The Secretary claims TPS is “warranted” due to the ongoing armed conflict and extraordinary and temporary conditions in Syria. The designation is valid for 18 months through September 30, 2025, allowing Syrian nationals (even if illegally present) to be protected from removal.
An extension of TPS simply allows those already covered to remain in the country and continue to work. However, each time a country is redesignated, more foreign nationals (many who illegally entered the U.S.) after the first declaration of TPS will now also be shielded from deportation and receive work permits. The redesignation allows the Secretary to protect more people, even though the designation was first made over ten years ago.
Syria was initially designated for TPS in 2012 by the Obama Administration, and then later extended and redesignated three times. The Trump Administration also extended TPS for Syrians in 2018 and 2019, after which Secretary Mayorkas extended and redesignated the country again.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 2,500 new aliens may become eligible for TPS under the 2024 redesignation of Syria. When Syria was last re-designated in 2022, the number of newly eligible Syrians was just 960. Today, more than 7,400 Syrians have been approved for TPS, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The department, in its notice, stated, “The ongoing civil war in Syria is in its thirteenth year and has involved large-scale destruction of infrastructure, widespread civilian casualties, and human rights abuses and violations. The humanitarian consequences are dire, including mass displacement of civilians, high levels of food insecurity, and limited access to healthcare and clean water.”
While the Administration claims conditions in Syria have remained the same, they have actually changed significantly since the original TPS designation. First, the Syrian government is no longer actively under threat because a ceasefire has held since 2020 and ISIS has been defeated, leaving the conflict more similar to Mexico or Colombia’s internal issues or the situation in the nation of Georgia than a war of moving fronts. Moreover, the Biden Administration has deported Syrians back to Syria in each of the past three years, undermining its own justification for granting Syrians blanket protection.
Granting and re-designating Syria for TPS is threatens our national security because it encourages illegal immigration from a designated state sponsor of terrorism, as it does with other high-risk countries like Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan that also have TPS designations. Not only is Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, it is part of the “Axis of Resistance”, with strong ties to Iran, a country which has already explicitly threatened to attack the U.S. The national security implications of exempting Syrians from deportation, and encouraging more migration from there, are significant.
Background. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is an immigration protection created by Congress in the Immigration Act of 1990 to provide temporary relief for people in the United States who could not return to their home country. TPS is considered a form of humanitarian relief that provides a temporary stay of deportation and employment authorization for foreign nationals of countries designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The point of TPS is that it is temporary in nature, but as Milton Friedman once quipped, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
For over 30 years, the TPS statute has provided safe haven to many foreign nationals and has been used by Republican and Democrat administrations. Today, there are 16 countries designated for TPS, and the Biden administration designated or redesignated 8 countries in 2023 alone. Today, it is being used as a backdoor amnesty that prevents foreign nationals in the U.S. from being removed, even if it is safe to return to their home country. As of February 2024, more than 697,500 individuals in the U.S. have Temporary Protected Status.
A total of more than 1.774 million foreign nationals currently in the U.S. are eligible for TPS. Of this total, more than 1.429 million or over 80 percent of them are eligible because of decisions made by the Biden Administration.
Country |
Date of Original Designation |
DHS estimate of total eligible individuals |
May 20, 2022 |
87,100 |
|
May 25, 2021 |
3,890 |
|
June 7, 2022 |
19,600 |
|
March 9, 2001 |
239,000 |
|
December 12, 2022 |
26,730 |
|
August 3, 2021 (initial designation from 2010 terminated in 2019) |
260,000 |
|
January 5, 1999 |
76,000 |
|
June 24, 2015 |
14,500 |
|
Jan 5, 1999 |
4,000 |
|
September 16, 1991 |
4,300 |
|
Nov 3, 2011 |
715 |
|
April 19, 2022 (initially designated 1997, re-designated 2013, terminated in 2018 subject to litigation) |
5,840 |
|
March 29, 2012 |
7,408 |
|
April 19, 2022 |
226,300 |
|
March 9, 2021 |
795,000 |
|
September 3, 2015 |
3,680 |
|
Totals |
|
1,774,063 estimated by DHS to be eligible 1,429,775 are newly eligible under Biden administration designations or re-designations |
FAIR has long espoused a view that our laws should not reward illegal immigrants to the United States regardless of the political or natural upheavals in their homelands. Otherwise, experience shows that we will encourage further illegal immigration. By now, we should have learned from experience that TPS is misnamed – what we offer as ‘temporary’ protection is most often seen by the aliens residing illegally in the United States as a foot in the door to legal permanent residence.
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