Abogados de Inmigracion

By law the secretary of homeland security, in consultation with the secretary of state, can offer "temporary protected status," or TPS, to illegal immigrants of a particular nationality if calamities such as natural disaster or war make it too burdensome for their home countries to receive them.

Immigrants must pay a fee to apply for TPS and are eligible only if they were already in the United States at the time the benefit was offered and if they do not have a criminal record. The status is usually granted for up to 18 months, but the government can, and often does, renew it repeatedly as conditions warrant.

Although immigration authorities have halted all deportation flights to Haiti for the time being, there was no word yet on whether TPS would be granted.

"TPS is in the range of considerations we consider in a disaster, but our focus remains on saving lives," Matthew Chandler, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said Thursday.

Supporters of Haitian immigrants have been lobbying for the move since the fall of 2008, after two hurricanes and two tropical storms ravaged Haiti over a four-week period.

Within hours of Tuesday's quake, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mario Diaz-Balart -- all Republicans from Florida -- sent a letter to President Obama reiterating their earlier pleas for TPS for Haitians. "The combined destruction of today's catastrophic earthquake and the previous storms clearly makes forced repatriation of Haitians hazardous to their safety at this time," they wrote. "We strongly believe that it is for such a situation that Congress enacted TPS."

They are among several leaders holding separate news conferences in Miami on Thursday to draw further attention to the issue. Others include the head of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, who will be accompanied by Edwidge Danticat, a celebrated Haitian author and winner of a MacArthur Fellow "genius" grant. Twenty-six refugee agencies also sent a joint letter Thursday urging Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to consider TPS for Haitians, and the National Council of La Raza released a statement to the same effect.

The U.S. government currently extends TPS to nationals from five countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan. However, despite requests by successive Haitian governments, Haitian immigrants have been denied the benefit numerous times during their nation's tumultuous history.
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Most recently, after the storms of 2008, President George W. Bush's administration suspended deportations for a few months before formally refusing to grant Haitians TPS and resuming repatriation flights.

Shortly after Obama took office, his administration informally stopped deporting non-criminal Haitians: According to government statistics, in 2009 only 221 non-criminal Haitians were deported, compared with 1,226 in 2008. (By contrast, the number of Haitians with criminal records who were deported remained roughly the same at 466 in 2009 compared with 428 in 2008.)