Politico: Biden May OK Quasi-Amnesty for New Nicaraguan Migrants

The Biden Administration’s plans for the move come amid “pressure from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers,” Politico’s Maya Ward reported Monday, citing “three people familiar with” the situation.

“It’s not clear when the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] would roll out the policy, and plans were subject to change before final approval,” noted Ward. “The White House and DHS declined to comment.”

The TPS program grants temporary amnesty to 530,000 foreigners in the United States, as Breitbart News noted. The number does not include their U.S.-born children. The DHS reported that 4,250 Nicaraguans held quasi-amnesty status in 2021.

Last year border patrol agents had 163,876 encounters with Nicaraguan migrants, most of whom were allowed to seek asylum, CBS news reported.

“Biden has designated six new countries for TPS since taking office and redesignated six other nations, making an additional 712,000 U.S. immigrants eligible for the status,” Ward wrote, citing the Migration Policy Institute.

The DHS typically designates TPS for foreign nationals when they cannot arrive home safely due to circumstances in their native countries, such as war, environmental catastrophe, or different “extraordinary and temporary conditions,” the DHS notes. Nicaragua first gained the TPS in 1999 following the devastating Hurricane Mitch.

Congress created the system in 1990. Some presidents have abused the system “to quietly import and keep many foreign workers, renters, and consumers in the United States,” Breitbart News’s Neil Munro noted:

This TPS program policy is just one element of the federal Extraction Migration economic strategy. That strategy aids investors by cutting Americans’ wages and by boosting housing prices. It also pushes up inflation for a wide variety of goods, such as used autos and food.

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[Former] President Donald Trump did not extend some of the TPS grants that had been repeatedly extended by prior presidents. The extensions were often granted long after the original disasters had been overcome. But Trump was stopped by lawsuits and Biden’s election.

Nicaragua was one of several countries where Trump did not extend the program.

In a February 23 letter, more than a dozen House Democrats called on Mayorkas to redesignate Nicaragua’s TPS status, citing the rule of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and now-vice president, Rosario Murillo.

“The increasingly totalitarian nature of the [Daniel Ortega/Rosario Murillo] regime and the brutal political repression Nicaraguans face in their daily lives exacerbate the urgent need for the Biden Administration to redesignate and extend TPS to Nicaragua,” wrote the Democrats, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL), and Joaquin Castro (D-TX).

Additionally, 272 organizations directed a letter to Mayorkas early last month calling on him to grant TPS for Nicaraguans, as the Miami Herald reported.