My eyes are practically filled with tears of joy on this news. Something our Salvadoran and Honduran and Nicaraguan friends have been PRAYING for for years has really happened …

A-G-A-I-N-S-T … A-L-L … O-D-D-S!!!!!

If there is a such thing as miracles, this is it.

Thousands of undocumented workers from war-torn El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America have had their temporary protected status in the U.S. extended. President Bush hinted at it in his state of the union message but I was not sure what he would do. News reports continuously said that Bush would let this bill die and force the poor Central Americans back. That in turn would benefit only Hugo Chavez who, like bacteria, prospers in wretched conditions.

Central America, as it picks itself up by its bootstraps, depends on the remittances of its emigre population. Not only that, its immigrants contribute greatly to the U.S. economy. But more than this, Central Americans have been a bulwark of support for the U.S., fighting even for the freedom of others in Iraq and elsewhere, and being such good friends of freedom, democratic revolution and decency, this is the LEAST we can do for them.

THE U.S. IS HELPING ITS FRIENDS!!!!!

The Washington Post has the scoop here.

EFE has the story here:

US-IMMIGRATION
U.S. to extend TPS for Central Americans, newspaper says

Washington, Feb 23 (EFE).- The U.S. government plans to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for another year for more than 300,000 Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The newspaper, which cited unidentified U.S. officials, said the announcement would officially be made Friday, when El Salvador’s president, Tony Saca, meets at the White House with President George W. Bush.

Although the announcement has not been made officially, congressional sources told EFE Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security planned to recommend extension of the special immigration status.

The United States grants TPS to citizens of countries affected by war or natural disasters. TPS allows immigrants to live and work legally in the United States.

Some 80,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans are in the United States with temporary visas that expire in July under TPS, which was granted to them in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and has been extended several times.

Slightly more than 250,000 Salvadorans were granted TPS after the devastating January and February 2001 earthquakes in their country, and their legal status expires in September.

The billions of dollars in remittances sent by Latin American workers in the United States to relatives back home have become an important source of income for the region’s countries.
The U.S. Senate is expected to take up on March 2 the tough immigration bill that was approved in December by the House of Representatives.

Sponsored by Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, that measure calls for building hundreds of miles of additional barriers along the border with Mexico and for making unauthorized immigration a criminal offense.

Sensenbrenner’s bill has sparked an angry reaction in Mexico and Central America, and a group of Mexican lawmakers came to Washington last week to lobby their U.S. counterparts for a more “just” reform of immigration laws.

Bush, meanwhile, has proposed granting renewable two-year work permits to workers from south of the border, but his plan has been received unenthusiastically in Congress.

Democrats and some Republicans say Bush’s proposal is inadequate because it does not offer migrants a path toward legal permanent residence. Most Republicans, however, condemn the guest-worker initiative as a defacto amnesty that will only encourage more illegal immigration.

Most of the Central Americans who benefit from TPS live in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Miami, Boston, Chicago and New York, according to U.S. Census data. EFE jab/hv

***

REJOICE! And welcome to our country, amigos centroamericanos!