Disparity in Temporary Protected Status Implementation

Abstract

Immigration continues to be one of the ‘hot topics’ for both major US political parties; only one seems to be serious about the Emma Lazarus sonnet that so eloquently beseeched all nations to ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores’. Inscribed on a bronze plaque and hung inside the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor, the statute and the words became a symbolic invitation to emigrants as they passed on their way to Ellis Island to be processed for American citizenship. The sonnet was written in 1893, the statute was placed in the harbor in 1903 (Khan, 2010). Both events occurred more than 100 years after creation of the first US naturalization law in 1790, the precursor to current US Immigration laws (Mason & Stephenson, Jr., 1997). Now, more than 200 years later, for some there continues to be a caveat to the invitation.The invitation to these ‘teeming shores’ was then (as specified within the Law) and seems to be now, for ‘free white persons’ only (1 Stat. 103). US immigration policy has since that time reflected an ensconced color-code from within. Needless to say, those groups with a legacy from the African Diaspora would not have been included as one the ‘most welcomed’ groups. In this project we discuss the disparate application of immigration policy, specifically the 1990 US Immigration Law, Section 244 (Temporary Protection Status-TPS), as it is applied to Haitians. It is often said that this country’s foreign policy is a reflection of its domestic policy. While identifying immigration as part of the DNA of US foreign policy, this chapter synthesizes and correlates the particular nature of the inequitable extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to persons who are the progeny of the African Diaspora.