The House Judiciary Committee has released a new report detailing the significant and controversial changes former President Joe Biden made to the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program during his four years in office. Established 35 years ago when Congress adopted the Immigration Act of 1990, the TPS program also saw significant expansions under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, being extended to individuals illegally residing in the United States from Haiti and Liberia, respectively.
“What was intended by Congress to be a temporary status has become, over time, a permanent, automatically renewed designation, with some countries being designated for TPS for decades despite changed country conditions,” the House Judiciary Committee report states, adding: “The Biden-Harris Administration vastly expanded this de facto amnesty to hundreds of thousands of new aliens, many of whom are in the country illegally.”
According to House Judiciary Committee investigators, Biden government officials doubled the number of TPS grantees compared to the status grants during President Donald J. Trump’s first term in office. In total, around one million foreign nationals residing in the United States were recipients of TPS during Biden’s time in office, with an estimated 725,000 being of Haitian or Venezuelan origin.
When President Trump’s first term ended in January 2021, the number of TPS grantees stood at just 410,000. However, the former Biden government ballooned that number to 1.4 million.
The committee report goes on to criticize the long-standing misuse of the TPS program, suggesting TPS has become a de facto amnesty rather than its intended temporary measure. It argues that many beneficiaries enter the U.S. without visas, with data showing that 95 percent of Venezuelans and 91 percent of Haitians did not have a visa upon entry.
