Roughly 170,000 immigrants from El Salvador covered by Temporary Protected Status can still legally work and live in the U.S.– for now.The Trump administration declined this week to terminate TPS for Salvadorans, even though it has done so for people from other countries like Haiti and Syria.
But it also hasn't said whether it will extend the protection in the future.In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it will make an announcement on Salvadoran TPS, "at the appropriate time."The lack of action means that TPS recipients still have legal status, but their lives remain in limbo."I feel numb … the physical and emotional damage of the last month, it's so frustrating that it feels like we suffered that all for nothing," TPS recipient Daysi Gonzalez said in an Instagram post.Gonzalez has been chronicling on social media what it has been like to live under the weight of uncertainty.Gonzalez, who is now 31, arrived in the U.S.with her parents and older sister when she was six years old.
They were visiting family in California and she was promised a trip to Disneyland.But a month and a day into their six month tourist visa, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake devastated El Salvador, and TPS was extended to Salvadorans who were in the country at that time.She's never been back to El Salvador.
She's now a partner at the political consulting firm where she started off as an intern.She and her older sister own a home together.
Those accomplishments have turned into a painful checklist of things she has to figure out how to dismantle, if her TPS is ultimately revoked and she has to leave the country."I've tried to adjust status in different ways, but there are very limited legal options to adjust your status and there is no pathway to citizenship for TPS," she told NPR.Congress created TPS in 1990 to allow eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S.if they can't return safely to their home countries because of things like natural disasters and armed...