Gonzalez, 31, faces dismantling home and career if TPS revoked
Daysi Gonzalez has spent the past month chronicling on social media what it has been like to live under the weight of uncertainty. “I feel numb … the physical and emotional damage of the last month, it’s so frustrating that it feels like we suffered that all for nothing,” the 31-year-old TPS recipient said in an Instagram post.
The Department of Homeland Security declined this week to terminate TPS for the roughly 170,000 Salvadorans the program covers, even as it has ended the protection for people from more than 10 countries during President Trump’s second term. In a statement, DHS said it would announce a decision on Salvadoran TPS “at the appropriate time.” TPS recipients retain legal status and work authorization, but lack clarity on how long those protections will last.
Gonzalez arrived in the country at age 6 with her parents and older sister, who were visiting family in California on a six-month tourist visa and had promised her a trip to Disneyland. A month and a day into the visit, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake devastated El Salvador in 2001, and TPS was extended to Salvadorans already in the country. Gonzalez has not returned to El Salvador since.
Today she is a partner at the political consulting firm where she began as an intern, and she and her older sister own a home together. NPR described those accomplishments as turning into “a painful checklist of things she has to figure out how to dismantle” if her TPS is ultimately revoked and she has to leave the country. “I’ve tried to adjust status in different ways, but there are very limited legal options to adjust your status and there is no pathway to citizenship for TPS,” she told NPR.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to allow eligible migrants to live and work legally in the United States when conditions in their home countries — natural disasters, armed conflicts — make return unsafe. Salvadorans were first granted the protection in 2001, in the wake of the earthquakes.
According to the immigrant advocacy group fwd.us, more than 150,000 Salvadoran TPS holders contribute an estimated $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy each year as part of the workforce, paying about $1.5 billion in federal and state taxes. Over the past 25 years, they have given birth to approximately 150,000 American children, fwd.us reports.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled the president has virtually unrestrained power to end the TPS program, a decision that has intensified the push for congressional action. The National TPS Alliance is advocating for a legislative pathway to permanent residency. “There are legislations in Congress that would provide a pathway for permanent residency,” said Jose Palma, a TPS recipient and the alliance’s national coordinator. Palma said one such bill is one Republican vote away from reaching the House floor.
The National Salvadoran American Association is trying to convince congressional Republicans to back a more short-term solution — an 18-month extension of TPS. Association chairman Francisco Semiao urged lawmakers to frame the issue as a humanitarian matter rather than strictly an immigration policy debate. “Let’s not think about this as solving an immigration issue as make this like the next humanitarian extension for people that just can’t all of a sudden be told, you can’t be here anymore and you only have 60 days or 6 months to leave,” Semiao said. “But people need more time than that if they need to sell their homes, sell their businesses, other arrangements.”
That would give Salvadoran families more time to plan, he said.