Lawmakers Already Demanding Open Borders for Haitian Migrants

FAIR Take | March 2024

Not simply content with allowing massive numbers of Haitian migrants to be released in the U.S., the Biden Administration now considers calls to protect them from deportation for years to come, if at all, even to safe third countries. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 67 Members of Congress, including lawmakers from the Haiti Caucus, are demanding that the latest wave of migrants from Haiti, and presumably subsequent waves too, receive Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Over 117,000 Haitians currently living in the U.S. illegally are protected from deportation through TPS. This grant of TPS, however, runs out in August 2024, and open-borders advocates not only want Blinken and Mayorkas to extend it for those already here AND to offer it to newly-arrived Haitians entering illegally.

Adopted by Congress in 1990, Temporary Protected Status allows the government to grant foreign nationals living in the U.S. who come from countries experiencing civil war, environmental disasters that temporarily disrupt living conditions, or other significant but temporary emergencies a reprieve from deportation. Both legal aliens and illegal aliens are eligible for TPS, however typically TPS is sought most by illegal aliens, as legal migrants do not face the same threat of deportation. TPS is especially valuable to illegal aliens, as it not only allows the aliens to remain in the U.S., but also authorizes the alien to apply for work authorization.

In general, aliens can only apply for TPS if they are already in the U.S. This has the perverse effect of encouraging more people from a TPS-designated country to break into the U.S. so that they can then apply for TPS, either by falsifying their date of arrival, or by applying for TPS when the original designation is extended and applied to newly-arrived migrants. After the government announced that Haitian nationals would be eligible for TPS, the number of Haitians encountered by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) increased, with noticeable spikes over time coinciding with TPS announcements.

Since the Biden Administration came to office, over 350,000 Haitians illegally entered the United States. This is enough to fill the Miami Dolphins’ stadium more than five times over. The number of Haitians encountered leapt from 56,596 in FY 2022 to 163,781 in FY 2023.

The current unrest, and the prospect of TPS “protection” will no doubt drive more Haitians to our borders this year. Indeed, the statistics show that Haitian arrivals have been surging since TPS was redesignated in last 2022. Another major driver was the announcement of immigration “parole” for Haitians in January 2023, which also drove up encounters with Haitians by CBP. Readers can learn more about this through FAIR’s new Issue Brief which explains this little-known but critical driver of mass migration.

TPS, originally meant to temporarily shield aliens from being deported to unsafe conditions, is now being used as a shadow immigration program. Evidence and experience show that despite the name, TPS is never quite as “temporary” as it seems. Nationals of countries like El Salvador and Honduras have enjoyed TPS since 1999. The Biden Administration has also added Syrians and Palestinians to the list of non-deportable TPS beneficiaries. It seems likely that when the time comes to extend Haiti’s TPS, the Biden Administration will do so. FAIR research has found that there are nearly 700,000 people of all nationalities who already enjoy TPS. Furthermore, more than 1.7 million people are eligible, 1.4 million of this figure directly attributable to decisions taken by the Biden Administration.

As FAIR has previously reported, Haiti’s descent into another cycle of mayhem will trigger new waves of migrants to America’s shores. There are already signs that this is happening, with Florida intercepting armed people smugglers from Haiti. Florida has already struggled in the past with previous waves of Haitian migrants, some of whom belonged to the “Zoe Pound” street gang. But whatever happens, it seems likely that the current administration will do everything in its power to keep the Haitians who arrived from ever being removed.