SALT LAKE CITY — When Geraldine “Gege” Baptiste had only one semester left at Bethune-Cookman — when she was just four classes shy of graduating — administrators told her to stop coming to class.
Baptiste was caught in the middle of a conflict over her legal status that is partly to blame for her accumulating $20,000 in unpaid fees to the financially struggling school. A Haitian immigrant brought to the United States by her parents when she was a toddler, Baptiste lives under Temporary Protected Status, a well-intended program that has put its hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries in legal limbo for decades.
Temporary Protected Status has drawn ire across the political spectrum, with one side demanding enforcement of its title — Temporary — and the other side calling for a path to citizenship. The debate is similar to that surrounding the fate of the more high profile Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, immigration program.
In November 2017, the Trump administration attempted to resolve the TPS conflict by announcing it was ending the program. But, a group of TPS holders from four countries, including Haiti, and their American-born, U.S. citizen children sued in federal court in March 2018, claiming the government’s action was illegal and unconstitutional. A federal judge in California issued an injunction against the administration while the case is litigated.
But earlier this month, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, finding that the Trump administration was within its legal authority to end the Temporary Protected Status program for beneficiaries from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The ruling also applies to TPS holders from Nepal and Honduras.
Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the TPS holders — indicated the ACLU would appeal the decision, either requesting a hearing before a full circuit court panel or before the U.S. Supreme Court. Another outcome could result from November’s election. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has promised to resolve the issue, which could include a path to naturalization for those who have been here on temporary status for decades, according to The Associated Press.
While parties battle it out in court, Congress has come to a stalemate. Last year, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, blocked legislation created to extend Temporary Protected Status to citizens of Venezuela. Speaking on the Senate floor, Lee objected to the bill on procedural grounds, pointing out it had not unanimously passed in the House before being fast-tracked to the Senate for a vote — meaning that legislators wouldn’t have a chance to offer amendments to the bill.
“Sen. Lee does not object to protecting vulnerable migrants from Venezuela,” Lee spokesman Conn Carroll said. “Sen. Lee does believe the TPS program is broken and needs to be fixed before more people from anywhere are added to it.”
A paradoxical status
A humanitarian measure granted by the U.S. government — and initially created by Congress in 1990 — TPS gives temporary protection from deportation to nationals from countries impacted by armed conflict or natural disaster. The United States is home to an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 TPS holders from Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sudan and South Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Nepal. The largest populations of TPS holders reside in California, Texas, and Florida. According to the Center for American Progress, some 2,600 TPS holders — all from Central America — live in Utah.
Although the status is temporary, TPS is usually renewable, creating a paradox — holders can end up living in the U.S. for years and many have been here for decades. TPS holders have a high rate of employment, working in a variety of industries including construction, health care, food service, and childcare. They pay taxes, most live above the poverty line and tens of thousands are home owners.
If a TPS holder has a child in the U.S., that child is eligible for American citizenship, resulting in hundreds of thousands of mixed status families. According to the Center for Migration Studies, more than 270,000 U.S. citizen children have been born to TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti alone.
Financial consequences
Baptiste’s story is typical of many TPS holders, specifically those who were brought to the country by their parents as young children — she has been in the U.S. for more than two decades. Before COVID-19 hit, both of her parents were employed — her father at a grocery store and her mother at a school aftercare program. (Her mother was laid off in the spring, due to the pandemic).
Baptiste, 24, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and her parents brought her and two older brothers to the U.S. in 1997, when she was a toddler. Baptiste’s two younger sisters were both born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and are U.S. citizens.
Because she arrived in America at the age of 2, Baptiste says she grew up not realizing that she had different citizenship than her many of her classmates and friends. Going through public school Fort Lauderdale, she was elected to student government at her high school and she joined a Black sorority in college. When Baptiste was 16, she got a work permit and a job at Publix, a grocery store. Earning a check and paying taxes was another step that contributed to Baptiste’s understanding of herself as a citizen.
Not only did she feel like part of America when she started applying to universities, Baptiste says, none of the academic advisers she consulted mentioned that she would be unable to receive federal funds. “I took it for granted that I would be able to get aid,” Baptiste says.
When some friends were applying to Bethune-Cookman — a private, historically Black university in Daytona, Florida — Baptiste followed along. Because it wasn’t close to home, her parents might not approve. But she applied anyway.
Baptiste was happy when she was admitted and received a $1,000 scholarship—a small dent in the $14,000 annual tuition. “Before I gave my parents a chance to tell me if they were happy or not I paid my deposit,” she says. “I’m like ‘I’m going.’”
Then financial aid administrators let Baptiste know that, because of her legal status, she was not eligible for federal aid. Distraught, Baptiste reached out to an administrator in a long, detailed email and Bethune-Cookman helped Baptiste — a liberal studies major who hopes to go on to nursing school — with institutional scholarships through her sophomore year.
After the university encountered financial trouble, Baptiste says, it began to help her less. Though she was accumulating a balance, they let her continue her studies.
In the spring of 2018, when she was just a semester shy of graduating, Baptiste was informed that — unless she caught up on the $20,000 she owed — she could no longer enroll. After applying unsuccessfully for numerous scholarships, she resigned herself to not completing her education and took a job as a pharmacy assistant at a hospital.
Then, a miracle.
When Baptiste posted something on Facebook about her challenges to continuing her education, Daphne Valcin — a total stranger who had never met Baptiste — was moved.
“I do what I feel I am led to do by God. I have to be obedient to it if I feel I am led to it,” Valcin reflects.
A mother of two young children and a life coach, Valcin said she felt she didn’t have the time to help. But she reached out to Baptiste nonetheless and joined the team of women volunteering to raise funds to send her back to school. They set a goal: $20,000 to pay off Baptiste’s debt. Then, they would try to get the money together for Baptiste to re-enroll in the fall of 2020 — despite the pandemic — so she could finally finish her degree.
Conflict and confusion
“I think that these kids are actually eligible” for federal financial aid, says Michael A. Olivas, an emeritus law professor specializing in immigration and author of “No Undocumented Child Left Behind.”
“Not only do (TPS holders) have lawful presence,” Olivas argues, “they have lawful status.” While the government explicitly made a provision making DACA recipients ineligible, he points out that no such provision exists for TPS holders.
Other researchers, however, disagree and many college and university financial aid FAQ pages explicitly state the same.
Some state governments may play a role in perpetuating confusion over TPS holders’ ability to access funding. Olivas says federal law actually allows states to create exemptions to prohibitions against benefits — which California, Texas, and New York state have done to create Dream Acts offering state aid to students who aren’t eligible for federal funding.
Lee blames the perpetual uncertainty of TPS holders for creating the financial mess Baptiste and others can get into, “If the Temporary Protected Status program were reformed so that it truly was that — a temporary status — then we could begin to talk about what federal benefits people in the program should receive. But until that happens, any talk of expanding the program’s benefits is premature.”
Support for TPS?
Lee’s not alone in his views. Neither Republican nor Democratic lawmakers support the idea of keeping migrants in the country permanently on temporary status. Although their proposed solutions differ. Many on the right say that TPS should be just that — temporary — while those on the left seek a path to permanent residency or naturalization.
Regardless, the U.S. should take greater responsibility for TPS holders, says Cecilia Menjivar, a professor of sociology at UCLA, largely because government is responsible for creating the conditions that has spurred their migration, particularly “in the case of Haiti and Central America.”
Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute who has been conducting extensive research on TPS holders, is also a critic of the government’s handling of this group, albeit for different reasons.
She argues that the government should choose between, “making sure that the protections are not renewed for so long or that people have a path to permanency. But it shouldn’t keep people in a temporary status for so long.”
Lee agrees. “The Temporary Protected Status program is supposed to offer temporary status to foreign nationals whose country is temporarily unsafe to return to. Unfortunately in practice, this ‘temporary’ status has almost always become a permanent status regardless of whether or not a foreign national’s home country has become safe again.”
In its 2017 announcement of the federal government’s intention to terminate TPS for Haitian nationals, the Department of Homeland Security stated that the “extraordinary but temporary conditions caused by the 2010 earthquake no longer exist.” The DHS also noted that “the number of displaced people in Haiti has decreased by 97%.”
The agency cited consultations with Haitian officials in its announcement; however, The New York Times reported that the “Haitian government had asked the Trump administration to extend the protected status.”
In Florida, where a majority of Haitian TPS holders live, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers disputed the federal government’s decision, arguing they should be allowed to stay in the U.S., The Washington Post reported.
No road to citizenship for TPS holders
For now, Baptiste says her story has a happy ending — with the help of Valcin and others, she raised the money to clear her debt and to pay for her final semester. She anticipates graduating at the end of the semester, just after her 25th birthday.
While she is making strides toward her dreams, she remains concerned about others in her position.
The U.S. government, Baptiste says, should ensure that immigrant students won’t “go through this much hardship ever again. Hard working immigrant students that grew up in the U.S. public education system should have a fair shot at federal funding as well.”
Speaking more generally of living on uncertain temporary status for years, Baptiste says, “There should be a law that says, ‘OK you’ve been here for this long and you’ve committed no crime, you should have some sort of route to citizenship.’ Why isn’t there a route for people like us who want to do better and give back to the community?”
The resolution is now in the hands of all three branches of government: the judiciary, where the 9th Circuit decision could end up at the Supreme Court; the legislative, where Congress could clear up the conflict through lawmaking; and the executive, which has thrust the issue to the forefront by taking action to end Temporary Protective Status as we know it.
“It’s a really devastating day for hundreds of thousands of people who have lived and worked in the country lawfully for decades,” Tom Jawetz of the Center for American Progress told The New York Times in response to the circuit court ruling, “But it’s not the end of the line for them. There will be additional litigation, and ultimately the fate of these people may be decided by the outcome of the November election.”