Immigrant Rights Essay
How to you Include TPS in the Fight for Immigrant Rights
As a DACAmented Salvadoran immigrant, I am grateful for the momentum and support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has gained over the last few months. The uncertainty we have lived with since 45 was elected has been draining to say the least. We’ve received support from from national organizations, CEO’s and U.S. citizens. However, the lack of support and inclusion of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) makes me nervous and upset. For decades, TPS has protected undocumented immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Excluding TPS beneficiaries from our conversations and fight for immigrant justice puts the lives of immigrants at risk.
It is disheartening to learn how many immigrant rights activists and advocates don’t even know what TPS is. TPS is designated to undocumented immigrants living in the United States at the time their country of origin experienced a horrific natural disasters. The United States helps those countries to recover by granting a work permit renewable every 18 months to immigrants from the countries affected. For example: Salvadorans living in the United States at the time two …show more content…
massive earthquake devastated El Salvador on January 13 and February 13, 2001. According the President Bush’s TPS news release, the earthquakes killed over 1,100 and injured an estimated 7,859 Salvadorans. A month after the earthquakes occurred, over 2,500 individuals went missing.
Some may wonder why are we even talking about inclusion when it should already be something that we practice in social justice spaces.
However, this has never been the case in the fight for immigrant rights. For too long Central American and immigrants from Afro descent have been erased and forgotten. This erasure has lead to many injustices and crimes committed to these community go unheard of and ignored. For example, TPS beneficiaries have been living in uncertainty since May 24, 2017 when the Trump administration only gave a 6 month extension to Haitians. Why didn’t the nation express their outrage then? Why didn’t allies march across the their cities for our Haitians brothers and sisters? Why did they ignore this
injustice?
Your support is way overdue.
Ignoring and excluding TPS is not an accident. The erasure of our struggles is a common theme that has put our lives in danger. We rarely here our narratives and stories in the media and when we try to bring up our perspective among allies and activists we are accused of dividing the community. We are fighting
I didn’t think we needed have to create this but it appears that immigrant rights activist and allies need a guide on how to include TPS in their fight for all immigrant rights. Contrary to popular belief, fighting for TPS is not a complex concept, in fact it is quite easy. Immigrant rights and allies can advocate for TPS recipients whenever they advocate for a clean Dream Act.
This inclusive approach entails adding talking points about TPS to phone banking scripts, uplift the stories of TPS families at rallies and calling out xenophobia that exists in this Mexico centric society.
The country has become obsessed with helping young immigrants because we make them comfortable, because it is easy to support the “good immigrant” narrative. For so long we have played this game, told certain stories and it has not gotten us anywhere. If folks are so obsessed with seeing young immigrants strive through DACA or the DREAM Act, then they need to be ready to fight for our parents, our aunts and uncles, TPS beneficiaries, immigrants with or without criminal records. We say we don’t want DACA recipients to be used a bargaining chips by Democrats, but we are doing that all on our own when we exclude the majority of the 11 million undocumented community. Division will not lead us to freedom, exclusion will be our self-destruction.
As a DACAmented Salvadoran immigrant, I am grateful for the momentum and support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has gained over the last few months. The uncertainty we have lived with since 45 was elected has been draining to say the least. We’ve received support from from national organizations, CEO’s and U.S. citizens. However, the lack of support and inclusion of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) makes me nervous and upset. For decades, TPS has protected undocumented immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Excluding TPS beneficiaries from our conversations and fight for immigrant justice puts the lives of immigrants at risk.
It is disheartening to learn how many immigrant rights activists and advocates don’t even know what TPS is. TPS is designated to undocumented immigrants living in the United States at the time their country of origin experienced a horrific natural disasters. The United States helps those countries to recover by granting a work permit renewable every 18 months to immigrants from the countries affected. For example: Salvadorans living in the United States at the time two …show more content…
massive earthquake devastated El Salvador on January 13 and February 13, 2001. According the President Bush’s TPS news release, the earthquakes killed over 1,100 and injured an estimated 7,859 Salvadorans. A month after the earthquakes occurred, over 2,500 individuals went missing.
Some may wonder why are we even talking about inclusion when it should already be something that we practice in social justice spaces.
However, this has never been the case in the fight for immigrant rights. For too long Central American and immigrants from Afro descent have been erased and forgotten. This erasure has lead to many injustices and crimes committed to these community go unheard of and ignored. For example, TPS beneficiaries have been living in uncertainty since May 24, 2017 when the Trump administration only gave a 6 month extension to Haitians. Why didn’t the nation express their outrage then? Why didn’t allies march across the their cities for our Haitians brothers and sisters? Why did they ignore this
injustice?
Your support is way overdue.
Ignoring and excluding TPS is not an accident. The erasure of our struggles is a common theme that has put our lives in danger. We rarely here our narratives and stories in the media and when we try to bring up our perspective among allies and activists we are accused of dividing the community. We are fighting
I didn’t think we needed have to create this but it appears that immigrant rights activist and allies need a guide on how to include TPS in their fight for all immigrant rights. Contrary to popular belief, fighting for TPS is not a complex concept, in fact it is quite easy. Immigrant rights and allies can advocate for TPS recipients whenever they advocate for a clean Dream Act.
This inclusive approach entails adding talking points about TPS to phone banking scripts, uplift the stories of TPS families at rallies and calling out xenophobia that exists in this Mexico centric society.
The country has become obsessed with helping young immigrants because we make them comfortable, because it is easy to support the “good immigrant” narrative. For so long we have played this game, told certain stories and it has not gotten us anywhere. If folks are so obsessed with seeing young immigrants strive through DACA or the DREAM Act, then they need to be ready to fight for our parents, our aunts and uncles, TPS beneficiaries, immigrants with or without criminal records. We say we don’t want DACA recipients to be used a bargaining chips by Democrats, but we are doing that all on our own when we exclude the majority of the 11 million undocumented community. Division will not lead us to freedom, exclusion will be our self-destruction.