Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, his administration has greatly expanded the number of immigrants who are eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – a designation that gives them time-limited permission to live and work in the United States and avoid potential deportation.
The federal government offers TPS to qualifying immigrants who live in the U.S. and come from selected nations that are deemed unsafe to return to because of war, natural disasters or other crises.
Nearly 1.2 million of the roughly 21.6 million noncitizen immigrants living in the U.S. are either receiving or eligible for TPS. These immigrants come from 16 countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.
Federal immigration officials may grant TPS for up to 18 months based on conditions in immigrants’ home countries, and they may repeatedly extend this eligibility if dangerous conditions in those countries persist.
The Biden administration cited dangerous conditions in Cameroon, Myanmar, Syria and Venezuela when it recently expanded TPS protections to immigrants from those countries. The Federal Register provides detailed information about each of these countries’ designations.
The recent TPS expansions continue the Biden administration’s efforts to broaden the program.
Since 2021, the Department of Homeland Security – which oversees the program – has added Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine and Venezuela to the list of countries whose immigrants may qualify for TPS. It also extended the terms of eligibility for immigrants from most countries that were already covered by TPS.
The Biden administration’s expansions stand in contrast to the Trump administration’s efforts to end TPS for nearly all beneficiaries. On his first day as president, Biden asked Congress to pass legislation that would allow TPS recipients who meet certain conditions to apply immediately for green cards that would let them become lawful permanent residents. Green card holders may be granted U.S. citizenship if they pass additional background checks and meet the usual naturalization conditions of knowledge of English and U.S. civics.
TPS recipients are not currently eligible for permanent residency or U.S. citizenship unless they pursue those statuses through other immigration processes.
Some Temporary Protected Status recipients have lived in the U.S. for decades
Immigrants with TPS live in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, according to the Congressional Research Service. The largest numbers live in Florida, Texas, California and New York – all of them states with large immigrant populations.
Some current TPS beneficiaries have lived in the U.S. for two decades or more. For example, those from Honduras and Nicaragua have been eligible because of damage from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, provided they have been living in the U.S. since Dec. 30 of that year. And current protections for immigrants from El Salvador apply to those who have lived in the U.S. since Feb. 13, 2001, following a series of earthquakes that killed more than a thousand people and inflicted widespread damage there.
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