One More Break for the Undocumented

President Salvador Sanchez Ceren’s government expressed its “congratulations” through its Ministry of Foreign Relations, after an announcement made January 6 by President Barack Obama’s administration about a new extension of Temporary Protection Status, known as TPS.

The TPS extension, the 10th one since its creation at the start of 2001 after the devastating earthquakes in January and February, is good news for our compatriots who have sought shelter in that immigration benefit, since, even when they could not leave the country, they were allowed to work without major setbacks.

Although the main people favored by TPS are our family members in the United States, who arrived undocumented seeking the “American dream,” the Salvadoran government benefits too.

On the one hand, it means there is confidence in President Sanchez Ceren’s government, which indicates that the United States isn’t using immigrants to pressure the government, and also that, although the country must work toward having its “far away brothers return,” this will not turn into a “time bomb for the government.”

Although we shouldn’t have so many immigrants outside of our borders, what is certain is that in the United States alone there are close to 3 million Salvadoran men and women, and it is those millions of compatriots who sustain our economy, the tenth, up to now, in consumption.

In the face of the lack of foreign investment at year’s end, if it is serious, one cannot get around the fact that 2.2 percent of the economy’s growth in 2014 had to do with the almost $4 billion in shipments sent to families — we do not have the exact data from the BCR [El Salvador’s central bank] yet, but we calculate that it will reach that figure.

Certainly, the growth has to do with other internal factors, such as small businesses and cooperatives producing school supplies, shoes and uniforms; and also, of course, with the millions invested by large corporations. Due to all of the above-mentioned, each and every Salvadoran woman should congratulate herself for the TPS extension.

The main lesson is certainly to keep working toward improving the nation, in all aspects, in order to prevent more Salvadorans feeling obligated to abandon their native land in search of better opportunities. This year, under President Salvador Sanchez Cerén’s leadership, plans to improve the country will be specified, which will mean modifying the economic model of consumption that began to crumble in 2009, with the arrival of the first president under the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front’s flag. The new TPS will be valid for 18 months from March 10, 2015, and will expire on Sept. 9, 2016.