A blow to Salvadorans and the Massachusetts economy
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A young girl looked on as immigrants and activists protested Tuesday near the White House in the wake of the DHS decision.
JANUARY 10, 2018
FOR THE PAST 16 years, Juana Portillo has worked for C&W Services, a Massport contractor, cleaning terminal B at Logan. Portillo and her husband, a maintenance worker at a building in downtown Boston, bought a home in Chelsea two years ago and have five American-born kids. Originally from El Salvador, Portillo and her husband are law-abiding, tax-paying residents of Massachusetts. Their kids attend the Chelsea public schools and are American in every sense.
Yet President Trump intends to throw workers like Portillo and her husband out of the country, a callous move that will also turn their children into collateral damage. On Monday, the US Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of the temporary protected status for El Salvador, a program that has allowed more than 200,000 immigrants like Portillo and her husband to legally live and work in the US. The termination is effective Sept. 9, 2019, meaning they have 18 months to leave or face deportation.
Beyond the cruelty of turning our backs on longstanding vetted immigrants and sending them to a country that cannot absorb them, ending protected status for citizens of El Salvador is a self-inflicting wound to the American economy.
The protections were granted to Salvadorans for the first time in 2001, after a series of earthquakes killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. The program has been reauthorized 11 times after different administrations have reached the same conclusion: Extraordinary conditions — poverty, governance challenges, extreme violence — make it unlikely the Central American country could adequately handle the return of its nationals.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/01/10/blow-salvadorans-and-mass-economy/gELgYVBxoBL1SoEIa5kXcP/story.html
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By MARCOS ALEMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS SAN SEBASTIAN SALITRILLO, El Salvador — Jan 10, 2018, 12:00 AM ET
he Associated Press
Flor Tovar and her two sons Christian, right, and Omar Elias, left, pose for a photo at their home in Ciudad Real, El Salvador, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Tovar receives a lifeline every two weeks in the form of wired cash from her husband living in the United States. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Every two weeks, Flor Tovar receives a lifeline in the form of cash wired from her husband living in the United States.
The money pays the $50 rent for her modest two-bedroom home in a low-income housing development about an hour northwest of El Salvador's capital. It also covers school transportation for their two sons, the electricity, water and cable television.
Now a decision made in Washington to end temporary protected status for her husband and nearly 200,000 other Salvadorans in the U.S. has the 33-year-old Tovar and her sons wondering what a future without that income would look like. Salvadorans with the status have been given until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or face deportation.
"It is very worrisome. These people don't have the resources to come back, and the crime is terrible here," Tovar said Tuesday.
More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-decision-hit-families-pocketbooks-el-salvador-52251971
