President Donald Trump’s new homeland security chief, Kristi Noem, has canceled the Democrats’ last-minute amnesty extension to 600,000 economic migrants from Venezuela, according to the New York Times.
The faster return of the Venezuelans to their home country will supercharge pressure for domestic political and economic reform, and it will cut off the migrants’ remittances that help the country’s Cuban-backed dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
The amnesty shift also suggests that Trump plans a pro-freedom foreign policy that can reinvigorate poor countries and boost beneficial U.S. exports to those countries.
In 2021 and 2023, President Joe Biden’s pro-migration czar, Alejandro Mayorkas, granted “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) to two groups of 600,000 Venezuelans who had moved illegally into the United States after 2018.
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The status for the 2023 population will formally expire in April 2025. The status for the 2021 population will expire in September 2025. The migrants will lose their work permits and can be repatriated when their status expires.
But on January 10, the Cuban-born Mayorkas announced he would extend the status by 18 months, starting January 17.
The extension would have continued the Venezuelan TPS amnesty until late 2026. That schedule would have forced Trump’s deputies to extend or cancel the TPS status in the run-up to the November 2026 midterm election.
The New York Times reported:
Ms. Noem’s decision finds fault with the move by Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary under Mr. Biden, to extend the protections for Venezuelans in the final month of Mr. Biden’s term. The agency generally must decide at regular intervals whether the protections should be extended before they expire. The notice argued that Mr. Mayorkas made his move too early and said the extension should not remain in effect “given the exceedingly brief period” since it was issued on Jan. 17.
A Homeland Security Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, argued that the last-minute extension by the Biden administration appeared to be a way to tie the hands of Trump officials.
The renewable TPS grants 18-month work permits and legal protections to favored nationalities.
Mayorkas used the program to help many groups of migrants to anchor themselves in U.S. society. For example, Mayorkas granted the TPS to roughly 300,000 Haitian migrants. Many also took jobs and housing in Springfield, Ohio, inflicting massive pocketbook penalties on ordinary Americans.
Mayorkas’ welcome for the Haitian migrants also accelerated the political and security crash in their homeland.
Breitbart News reported on December 11:
The latest Congressional Research Service report finds that more than one million foreign nationals remain in the U.S. thanks to TPS. In addition, nationals from Hong Kong, Palestine, Lebanon, and Liberia remain in the U.S. through Deferred Enforced Departure (DED).
When Biden took office in late January 2021, fewer than 320,000 migrants were in the U.S. as a result of securing TPS.
Today, 17 countries have TPS designations: Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Investors and business owners have welcomed the TPS program because it expands the supply of labor. It also increases the number of consumers and apartment renters, so creating shortages and rent increases for ordinary Americans.
In September 2024, Mayorkas justified his welcome for roughly nine million southern migrants by saying it expands the economy:
We look to the north, with Canada. Canada takes a look at its market needs, and it says, “You know what? We need 700,000 foreign workers to address our labor needs domestically.” And, so, they build a visa system for that year to address the current market condition. And they say, “We’re going to bring in a million people.” And it’s market sensitive.
We [in the United States] are dealing with numerical caps on labor-driven visas that were set in 1996. It’s 2024. The world has changed. It is remarkable how there can be [elite] agreement that [the visas system] is broken and not have an agreement on a solution. The country is suffering as a result of it.
However, Canada’s immigration inflow wrecked the nation’s economy and society and prompted the soon-to-depart Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to quit.
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