US extends Temporary Protected Status to Haitians for 18 months

The United States Government announced on Monday that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Haitian nationals will be extended for another 18 months, with the program now expiring on August 3, 2024. Without this extension, Haitians’ TPS would have passed on February 4, 2023, but the “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that exist in the Caribbean country prompted the government to extend it, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also re-designated Haiti as a TPS beneficiary country, allowing Haitian citizens living in the United States as of November 6, 2022, to apply for TPS until November 3, 2022, assuming they meet all eligibility requirements. Haitians who enter the US after November 6, 2022, however, are ineligible for TPS and face deportation if they enter the country illegally.

“We are already providing much-needed humanitarian aid to Haitian citizens in the United States,” Mayorkas said, adding that “conditions in Haiti, such as socioeconomic challenges, political instability, and gang violence and crime, exacerbated by the environmental disaster, forced us to provide the humanitarian aid that we do today.” The US government cited the prolonged political crisis, severe insecurity, and gang crime that exacerbated a dire economic situation, a lack of access to food, water, fuel, and medical care during a cholera outbreak, and recent catastrophic earthquakes as reasons for extending and renewing TPS to Haiti.