President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is extending and redesignating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 2,000 Yemen nationals who can continue living in the United States.
On Tuesday, Mayorkas announced an 18-month extension and redesignation of TPS for Yemen nationals — originally granted TPS in September 2015 by the Obama administration and renewed in July 2018 by the Trump administration.
Mayorkas said in a statement that he extended and redesignated TPS for Yemen due to “worsening humanitarian and economic conditions that prevent individuals from safely returning to their homes.”
The decision will allow about 1,700 Yemen nationals currently enrolled in TPS to stay in the U.S., to retain their legal status through March 2023 and will add an additional nearly 500 Yemen nationals to the TPS rolls who have resided in the U.S. since July 2021.
Yemen nationals retaining their TPS and those being added to the TPS rolls will be eligible to apply for work permits to take jobs in the U.S., Mayorkas said.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) praised the Biden administration’s extension of TPS for Yemen nationals. The group was founded by the left-of-center U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which advocates for open borders, more legal immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
CLINIC, according to the Catholic League, has previously been funded by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
“Protecting Yemenis in the U.S. from the devastating conditions in Yemen is a legal and moral duty and we applaud Secretary Mayorkas for this decision to grant maximum TPS protection,” CLINIC Executive Director Anna Gallagher said in a statement.
Three years ago, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen extended TPS for Yemen. At the time, there were roughly 1,250 Yemen nationals enrolled in TPS though now that number has grown to more than 2,000.
Most recently, Mayorkas renewed for 18 months TPS for more than 100,000 Haitians. In March, Mayorkas granted TPS to about 320,000 Venezuelans and 1,600 Burma nationals who can now remain in the U.S. for at least 18 months.
While originally intended to be temporary, TPS has become a quasi-amnesty for otherwise illegal aliens created under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 (INA) that prevents the deportation of foreign nationals from countries that have suffered through famine, war, or natural disasters.
Since the Clinton administration, TPS has been transformed into a de facto amnesty program as the Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations have continuously renewed and expanded the program for a variety of countries.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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