Local Immigrants With Special Protective Status Learn To Live With Uncertainty
As Irma Flores stirs mik in a pan, her daughter Gabriela Portillo-Perez speaks with her grandmother Isabel on the phone in El Salvador. Photo by Jesse Costa for WBUR.
An estimated 8,000 immigrants in Massachusetts are awaiting decisions that will determine their fate in the United States.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is issued to immigrants from some countries where conditions are unsafe. On Monday night, the federal government announced the termination of the program for Nicaraguans as of Jan. 5, 2019. It extended the status for Hondurans for six months, citing the federal government’s need to obtain additional information on the ground before making a long-term decision.
Decisions have not yet been made for El Salvador or Haiti.
One Salvadoran family in Haverhill is learning to live with the uncertainty.