Miami.
A federal court it blocked the possibility that thousands of immigrants covered by the Official Protection Status program, mostly Central Americans, could access permanent legal residence (“green card”) in the United States.
In a ruling known late Friday, the Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit, Based in New Orleans, has indicated that immigrants covered by the TPS cannot access permanent legal residence if they entered the country illegally, a requirement, according to him, indispensable to be able to obtain the “green card”.
In a failure of the case of the Honduran Luis Rodríguez Solórzano against the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), the appellate court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Central American in his attempt to get the “green card.”
According to court documents, the Honduran he entered the United States illegally in 1997 and two years later the TPS was designated for his country due to the passage of Hurricane Mitch.
Rodriguez Solórzano requested and received TPS, Which allowed him to stay and work legally in the United States, where his wife is a citizen, who in 2014 filed a visa application in his favor.
It was then that USCIS asked the immigrant to provide evidence of their legal admission to the country, to which Rodríguez Solórzano he filed a writ arguing that because he had TPS, he could adjust his status without this evidence, a point that was rejected by the federal agency.
And the appellate court now ruled in favor of USCIS and assured that the TPS “does not exempt” Solórzano from the requirement to be inspected and admitted to the United States, “so that, as” he was never admitted legally, now you can’t try to adjust yours statute“.
With this ruling, the Fifth Circuit coincides with similar decisions of the courts of appeals of the third and eleventh circuits, although it is contrary to the views of the sixth, ninth and eighth circuits.
These courts of appeals considered at the time that the TPS it eliminates the requirement for border inspection, thus allowing holders of this migration protection program to aspire to become legal residents.
the TPS program grants temporary legal residence with a work permit for citizens of a group of countries designated by the U.S. Government as places where there have been natural disasters or where people are fleeing because of violence.
The program currently covers citizens of 10 countries: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
There are more than 320,000 TPS-protected people in the U.S., including about 195,000 Salvadorans, 57,000 Hondurans, 46,000 Haitians and 2,500 Nicaraguans, according to data from the Pew Study Center.