Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that national immigration legislation prohibits people who entered the country illegally and now have Temporary Protected Status from looking”green cards” to stay in the country forever.
The designation applies to folks who come from countries ravaged by war or disaster. It protects them from deportation and allows them to work lawfully. There are 400,000 individuals from 12 nations with TPS status.
The outcome in a case between a few from El Salvador who have been at the U.S. since the early 1990s turned on whether people who entered the country illegally and were granted diplomatic protections were ever”admitted” into the United States under immigration law.
Kagan wrote that they weren’t. “The TPS program gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status, but it doesn’t acknowledge them. Hence that the conferral of TPS doesn’t earn 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 receivers to become permanent residents, Kagan said. The bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate.
The case pitted against the Biden administration against Allied groups that argued many men and women who arrived at the U.S. for humanitarian motives have dwelt in the nation for several decades, given birth to American citizens and put down roots at the U.S.
In 2001, the U.S. gave Salvadoran migrants legal defense to stay in the U.S. after a series of earthquakes in their home nation.
Individuals from 11 other nations are similarly protected.
Monday’s decision does not affect immigrants with TPS who originally entered the U.S. legally and then, state, overstayed their visa, Kagan noted. Because those folks were lawfully admitted to the nation and later were given humanitarian protections, they can want to become permanent residents.
