South Florida representatives ask Bush to keep immigration program in place

[Apollo8138]

U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart are holding a joint news conference today to announce that they and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have sent a letter to President Bush asking him not to kill a program that allows thousands of foreign nationals to remain in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to end the special immigration status that has allowed some 300,000 illegal Salvadoran, Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants to remain in this country, many of them in Florida, Bush administration officials say.

But the final decision on the Temporary Protected Status for the three nations, which would force those migrants to return home or remain here illegally and risk deportation, still is under intense debate within the administration, the officials add.

TPS, which bars the deportation of illegal migrants from those countries, was approved for Nicaragua and Honduras after Hurricane Mitch struck them in 1998, and for El Salvador after earthquakes there in 2001 killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed more than 220,000 homes.

TPS was intended to allow illegal migrants from these countries to stay in the United States temporarily and thereby soften the blow of the natural disasters. But today these poor countries rely heavily on remittances sent by their citizens working in the United States.

Source

[Dalice]

They are from Florida where most of these people live. I wonder how they feel about sealing the borders with a fence?

What these people will do to get votes and their name out in the open :rolleyes:

[Apollo8138]

This had to do with the incident that happened almost 2 weeks ago when 15 Cubans were sent back home.