Some 170,000 Salvadorans with TPS anxiously await program’s end: ‘My life is in the United States’

Wednesday, September 9 is the date about 170,000 Salvadorans had circled in red on their calendars. A date they have awaited with fear and uncertainty because it is the day the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program ends — a program that for more than two decades has allowed them to live and work in the United States legally. Since 2001, when the status was granted again — Salvadorans were the first to receive it in 1990 as a result of the civil war in their country, but it expired in 1992 and was not renewed then — beneficiaries have had to renew it every 18 months. They have followed the rules, paid the fees, and integrated into a country they consider their own more than the one where they were born. Over a quarter-century they have learned the language, started businesses, raised families, bought homes… They are part of the country’s economic and social fabric, but the end of TPS would leave them in limbo.

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