Venezuelans who have migrated to the U.S. in the last two years got a measure of relief last week when the Biden administration announced they could live and work legally in the U.S. for 18 months if they arrived by July 31.
It’s also a big break for Chicago, allowing many migrants to seek work legally and begin the process of building lives here.
But we have to emphasize the “temporary” in President Joe Biden’s expansion of Temporary Protected Status to more Venezuelans.
A majority of the 14,000 asylum seekers who have arrived here in the last 13 months are from Venezuela, and 4,900 Venezuelan asylum seekers are spread among city shelters. These folks now should not have to wait a year for work permits, as most asylum seekers typically do, thanks to Biden’s redesignation of TPS.
But what happens to those who arrived after July 31? And what about those migrants from other countries?
That’s the question the Biden administration will have to answer, at the toughest of political times: the 2024 presidential campaign, when Republicans who take a hard-line stand on immigration will be eager to paint Biden as “encouraging” more migrants to supposedly “surge” across the southern border.
Why millions have fled Venezuela
Congress established TPS in 1990 to let migrants remain in the U.S. legally, on a temporary basis, if they face unsafe conditions or destruction from war or natural disasters in their home countries. Typically, there are extensions of months or years. (The Biden administration’s latest order also extended TPS for Venezuelans who had qualified under a previous March 2021 order.)
Venezuela certainly is unsafe. The U.S. currently has no diplomatic ties to the country. In January, the U.S. State Department advised Americans not to travel there, citing reports of human rights abuses, including torture, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and detentions without due process by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro. For years, the country has experienced shortages of gas, food, electricity, water, medicine and medical treatments.
That tells you why millions of Venezuelans have fled, including some 500,000 who have arrived in the U.S. over the last few years.
In the past, migrants with TPS could take for granted extensions of their protected status. Some extensions have been ongoing for decades. Now, extensions are a political hot potato. The program was passed with bipartisan support decades ago but now is a target of Republicans’ anti-immigrant fervor.
Former President Donald Trump tried to end TPS designations for immigrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, El Salvador, Nepal and Honduras. Those orders became the target of a number of lawsuits alleging that the Trump administration’s actions were racially motivated and violated the rights of those who benefitted from TPS.
Under Biden, TPS designations got back on track. The Biden administration was said to be worried about political blowback before finally heeding pleas from lawmakers from New York and Illinois — where cities are struggling to accommodate thousands of asylum-seekers who want to work but legally cannot — to expand TPS for Venezuelans.
The city isn’t off the hook. As immigration lawyer Paula Roa told Sun-Times reporter Michael Loria, the city should, as much as possible, support legal aid clinics that are bound to be overwhelmed by TPS applicants.
Chicago also must be prepared for more asylum seekers, who have stretched resources at the border in recent weeks. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and most of his fellow Republicans show no interest in spreading these vulnerable folks evenly across the country. They’d rather create chaos by simply shipping them to Chicago and New York.
Venezuelans who arrived after July 31 — and thousands likely on their way to the U.S. — could wait years for another expansion of TPS. If it comes at all.
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