President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has extended and reclassified a “temporary” amnesty for 4,000 Yemeni nationals residing in the United States, preventing their deportation and allowing them to work legally in America.
On Monday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has been extended and reclassified for thousands of Yemeni nationals in the United States, shielding them from deportation.
Yemeni nationals with TPS can stay in the United States and work legally until March 2026, provided they can prove they were in the country as of early July this year.
“The steps the Department of Homeland Security has taken today will allow certain Yemenis currently residing in the United States to remain and work here until conditions in their home country improve,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
In addition, Mayorkas announced so-called “Special Student Relief” for Yemeni nationals who are in the United States on F-1 student visas, which will allow them to “request employment authorization, work an increased number of hours while school is in session, and reduce their course load while continuing to maintain F-1 status through the TPS designation period.”
Originally intended as a temporary measure, Yemen was granted TPS in 2015 during the Obama administration, and most recently, the Biden administration extended it in 2021.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was established under the Immigration Act of 1990. It prevents federal immigration officials from deporting people from countries designated as undergoing famine, war, or natural disasters.
Since the Clinton administration, TPS has evolved into a de facto amnesty program, as Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden have consistently renewed the program for various countries.
Currently, almost 900,000 foreign nationals in the U.S. are protected from deportation under TPS. The largest groups come from Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and Ukraine.
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