The Trump administration is expected to announce on Monday plans to cancel a 2001 Bush-era policy that granted some 200,000 Salvadorans provisional residency permits and Democrats are livid.
The administration will announce that Salvadorans who received temporary residence under the 2001 policy that they have until Sept. 9, 2019 to leave the nation or figure out a legal way to obtain permanent residency in the U.S., The Washington Post reports. That gives the refugees in question roughly 609 days to become a legal resident or make plans to leave the country.
Salvadorans received temporary residency under the leadership of former President George W. Bush in the wake of two earthquakes that left parts of the nation destroyed and caused billions in damages. U.S. immigration officials were ordered to suspend the deportation of Salvadoran nationals after the first earthquake hit the nation in Jan. 2001, a precedent that continued ever since.
Democrats and liberals on Twitter reacted almost immediately to the news, calling the administration’s decision everything from “ethnic cleansing” to “stupid as fuck.”
getting pretty squarely into ethnic cleansing territory https://t.co/xfwA8zSr0j
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) January 8, 2018
OK some thoughts on today’s cruel decision to terminate #TPS for 200K Salvadorans. This was completely unnecessary and leaves hundreds of thousands of people in limbo (not to mention their families.) https://t.co/cuY6W6VxG8
— Philip Wolgin (@pwolgin) January 8, 2018
By canceling #TPS for Nicaraguans, Haitians and now Salvadorans, President Trump has now turned 250,000 lawful and *legal* immigrants into undocumented immigrants. It’s cruel, disruptive, unnecessary, and stupid as all fuck.
— Tim Rogers (@nicadispatch) January 8, 2018
This breaks my heart – 200,000 Salvadorans will be forced to leave the U.S. or face deportation as Trump administration ends immigration protection – The Washington Post https://t.co/nmSpzhsKgh
— Christy Turlington (@CTurlington) January 8, 2018
Human rights advocacy groups also took up arms against the decision.
“This is going to needlessly tear families apart and break up a community that has spent decades raising children, paying taxes and making positive contributions to U.S. society,” Geoff Thale, Program Director at the WOLA, a human rights advocacy group, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “What these long-term residents of the United States needed is a pathway to citizenship. Instead, under Trump, they will be forced to turn their lives upside down and drag their children back to one of the most violent countries in the world.”
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