Salvadoran Doris Landaverde works as a security guard at the prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thanks to the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that the United States awarded in 2001 to hundreds of thousands of citizens of El Salvador; For this reason, her work and her life depend on each decision of the United States government on whether or not to revalidate this permit, with which the “threat” of being deported to her country overshadows her situation and that of the woman. her family.
Returning to El Salvador sees it as the “worst-case scenario” with all his working life and his contributions to the United States. “Although the situation for us as workers here is complicated by the cost of living that increases and increases, it does not compare with what we would expect if we were forced to return to our countries,” he says.
To date, El Salvador is the country with the largest number of immigrants covered by TPS based on the records of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) which -until the cancellation of the benefit in 2018- estimated some 198,000 Salvadorans protected by this legal status, followed by Honduras with some 60,000.
A study carried out by two experts from the region outlines the conditions in the two Central American countries and how the forced return of more than 250,000 emigrants and their family groups would put both nations in greater trouble.
The economist William Pleites, who until 2021 directed the second phase of the Fomilenio program in El Salvador with the endowment of more than 700 million dollars from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in Washington, considers in the report ‘El Salvador: country conditions’ that the forced return of nearly 200,000 Salvadorans and their family groups would be difficult to absorb for an economy that cannot even meet the employment needs of its nationals, with a deficit of more than 40,000 jobs each year.
“Deporting Salvadoran immigrants residing in the US would deepen the already terrible socioeconomic conditions in El Salvador and create conditions conducive to political unrest and destabilization,” considers the study, which breaks down some variables to understand the dimension of the problem.
Landaverde sees himself reflected in these data and says that “we are a fundamental part of the economy of Honduras and El Salvador”, due to the contributions that as immigrants “we make” to those countries through remittances to families.
Landaverde spoke with the voice of america this Monday in the framework of a general assembly of TPS beneficiaries organized in support committees from all over the United States and meeting on the outskirts of Washington to maintain “the fight” for the validity of the legal status canceled by the administration of former President Donald Trump between 2017 and 2018 to six countries that had the program.
The investigation, which tepesians used this Tuesday in multiple meetings in the offices of congressmen and senators also points to a decrease in remittances that would mean up to 1,200 million dollars each year, which would encourage an increase in poverty.
“Poverty rates would increase by 10 percentage points, unemployment and underemployment would affect approximately two thirds of the economically active population,” says the research.
multiple factors
Cecilia Menjívar, sociologist and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), coordinated the study in the United States and reviews the situation of the TPS class to consolidate the data and the impact it has on countries.
When presenting the results this Monday in a virtual presentation for the members of the National TPS Alliance, meeting in Maryland, he said that it is clear that “neither of the two countries” meets the necessary conditions to receive their emigrants before a definitive termination of the TPS that would force them to return.
Currently, some 350,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Sudan and Nepal continue to be protected in the United States while litigation is taking place in federal courts with lawsuits filed against the previous Administration alleging illegality in the cancellation of the immigration benefit.
For Menjívar, the socioeconomic conditions in the countries with the largest number of TPS beneficiaries indicate that new concerns are being added that make it more difficult for immigrants to return.
it is not only poverty, violence and insecurity –he said- more current issues add to concerns such as the effects of climate change.
“One thing that we found in the case of Honduras and also in El Salvador -but more amplified in the first- is that climate change is another new factor that adds to the impact of existing conditions. Honduras occupies the second highest risk of vulnerability to this phenomenon, and in recent years this country has lost 3.3 of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) due to climate change,” says the expert.
Menjivar and Pleites base their research on official data from the governments of the two Central American nations and those of international organizations that compile databases to read employment prospects, foreign investment, health care, education, social security, and reports of violence. and insecurity in those countries.
Data not to return
José Palma, another Salvadoran TPS beneficiary and national organizer of the movement that seeks solutions to the cancellation of status, tells VOA that the data from these studies reinforce the approaches that as a group make to the United States authorities to keep the benefit active.
These studies -says Palma- allow us to show “that economic angle” because although the governments of the Central American countries say that “they are in the right direction, these kinds of reports show that our countries still need support from the community tepesiana because he is not able to receive us with our family group”, he says.
The study concludes that both the Salvadoran and Honduran economies “are not generating the necessary jobs to absorb the demand”, in the past 25 years the Salvadoran economy has only generated an average of 13,000 jobs each year and the formal economy has been decreasing in comparison with the growth of its population since 1989.
According to comparative data from different sources, “60% of the labor force is underemployed,” very similar to Honduras, with the difference that the Salvadoran neighbor faces even more challenges due to widespread extreme poverty.
Cecilia Menjívar adds that before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Honduras had 71.5% of the population in poverty, that is, some 9.5 million inhabitants, and “25.2% in extreme poverty.”
One year after the pandemic began, the indicators had skyrocketed “By 2021, 73.6% of the country’s population lived in poverty; the share of those living in extreme poverty had increased to an astonishing 53.7% of the population,” the researcher reasoned.
Mardoel Hernández, a Honduran TPS beneficiary, comments to the VOA Seeing this information that puts two countries in line leads us to understand that “we share these rates” and that behind those numbers is reflected the forced migration that continues to leave nations, especially with the intention of reaching the United States, a country that questions whether or not to continue with legal status for thousands of Central Americans.
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