Biden should redesignate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status, which grants citizens from certain countries that are facing hardships a provisional permit to live and work in the United States.

Originally Published in The Boston Globe by Marcel García

It’s hard to overstate how dire conditions are in Haiti. Since late February, “endemic” and “cataclysmic” levels of gang violence, as a United Nations report put it, have resulted in the total collapse of government institutions. The ensuing humanitarian and security crisis left more than 1,500 people dead during the first three months of the year.

The catastrophic crisis has left about 1.4 million Haitians on the brink of famine. More than 4 million Haitians require food assistance and sometimes they eat only once a day or nothing at all, according to the Associated Press. The UN has reported that the number of Haitians fleeing such terrible conditions went from 50,000 last July to more than 350,000 this year.

To help vulnerable Haitian citizens who have had no choice but to leave their homeland and migrate to the United States, the Biden administration should redesignate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status, the humanitarian program that grants citizens from certain countries that are facing hardships a provisional permit to live and work in the United States.

What would a new TPS designation for Haitians mean?

First, a bit of context. The Biden administration has already extended TPS to Haitians, but the current designation, which expires Aug. 3, is only available to Haitians who were present in the United States by Nov. 6, 2022. Redesignating TPS would mean that Haitians who have entered the country more recently would become eligible to apply for the humanitarian program.

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