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Temporary Protected Status
protects families while also boosting the U.S. economy

New analysis finds that TPS helps protect hundreds of thousands of families while also filling worker shortage gaps in the U.S. workforce. The Biden administration should further expand TPS to protect more families and strengthen the U.S. economy even more this year.
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UPDATE 12/5/24: This report reflects estimates based on analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey and status of the Temporary Status Program as of February, 2024. Estimates and projections may be out of date, due to subsequent changes to TPS designations and eligibility.

Temporary Protected Status provides significant protections for families, allowing them to improve their economic condition, keep their families together, and more fully participate in their local communities.

New FWD.us estimates, based on analysis of census and other government data, show that hundreds of thousands living in the U.S. today are currently eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a form of immigration relief that provides work authorization and deportation protections for those whose home countries are very unsafe for return. These TPS-eligible individuals, who include current TPS holders, live with more than 400,000 U.S. citizen children, and more than 500,000 U.S. citizen adults.

Terminology for TPS Population Groups

TPS-eligible individuals: TPS holders plus those eligible for TPS but may have not applied or have an application being processed.

TPS -potential individuals: Additional TPS individuals who could be eligible with the designation of new countries or redesignation of current countries with new arrival dates as outlined in this report.

TPS-eligible individuals are also boosting the economy. Some 380,000 TPS-eligible people in the labor force are working in industries with persistent labor shortages, including 100,000 in accommodation and food services, 90,000 in business services, 50,000 in healthcare services, and 50,000 in other services.  

Since Congress established TPS more than three decades ago, TPS recipients have used the program’s work authorization to support themselves and to contribute enormously to the U.S. workforce and economy. For example: some 86% of TPS holders from El Salvador and 83% from Honduras—all of whom have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years—participate in the labor force. These labor force participation rates of long-term TPS holders are considerably higher than the U.S. labor force overall (about 63%), and are on par with the U.S. labor force in their prime working years of 25 to 54 years old (about 83%). In all, TPS-eligible individuals contribute nearly $31 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

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Evelyn's Story

Meet Evelyn, a TPS holder from El Salvador who has lived in California for three decades. She works as an organizer for Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles, where she advocates for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants like herself.

Many more individuals in the U.S., however, need protection from being deported to countries where their lives would be at risk. For example, current TPS countries in Central America like El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, as well as Nepal and Haiti, continue to face unsafe and deteriorating conditions. However, because TPS designations for these countries were issued up to 20 years ago, individuals who have arrived since then are ineligible to apply. The U.S. should redesignate TPS so that people who have been forced to flee these countries over the past two decades are able to access relief. Additionally, the Biden administration should provide a new TPS designation for Guatemala, which faces similar deteriorating conditions as its Central American neighbors. Last, it is imperative that the U.S. extend TPS protections to nations in Africa facing armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and Mauritania. All these countries meet statutory requirements for TPS, with armed conflicts, natural disasters, and/or humanitarian crises.

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Zeinabou's Story

Meet Zeinabou, a human rights advocate who works for the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in the US. Zeinabou has dedicated her life to protecting Black Mauritanians in the United States and beyond and is advocating for a TPS designation for Mauritania.

If all the countries named above were (re)designated for TPS in 2024, nearly 900,000 U.S. citizen additional children and more than 500,000 U.S. citizen additional adults living with TPS potential individuals could remain together, safe from family separation from deportation.

This combined group of immigrants from all countries listed above and potentially eligible for TPS already contributes more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy annually, despite the fact that they are undocumented and work in the informal economy. With work authorization available through TPS, they could contribute an estimated $5 billion more each year. Work authorization available through TPS would also enable TPS-potential individuals to work in higher-paying jobs and give them the career flexibility to meet labor demands in short-handed industries.

Providing formal work authorization would allow these individuals to contribute to industries struggling to fill critically needed open jobs. Nearly 600,000 of this combined group already work in industries that have been experiencing historic and persistent labor shortages during the past year, including nearly 200,000 in accommodation and food services, 180,000 in business services, 40,000 in healthcare services, and 90,000 in other services. But with work authorizations, more people could shift to industries with the greatest needs.

TPS provides lifesaving relief for those whose home countries are very unsafe

Congress established the Temporary Protected Status program as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. TPS is currently administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security. 

Since TPS was established, new designations have been issued 33 times by Republican and Democratic presidents, including six times during the George H.W. Bush administration, ten times during the Clinton administration, twice during the George W. Bush administration, seven times during the Obama administration, and eight times so far during the Biden administration.

Source: Department of Justice, "Temporary Protected Status," https://www.justice.gov/eoir/temporary-protected-status.
1. These designations were previously terminated, yet court injunctions prevented terminations from taking effect, and DHS extended the validity of all TPS-related documents for beneficiaries of TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. DHS subsequently issued new designations for Haiti and Sudan; DHS has also rescinded the terminations for El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, and announced extensions for those countries.
2. Counts of redesignations and extensions include only formal redesignations and extensions of the TPS designation, but do not include automatic extensions of documentation or benefits
3. For countries with active designations, we have listed the date of termination as the date on which the most recent designation, redesignation, or extension is scheduled to expire. Please note that these dates could change if the designation is terminated, extended, or redesignated.

Immigrants can apply for TPS if Congress or the Secretary of Homeland Security issues a designation that “conditions in the country temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely.” Many TPS recipients originally entered the U.S. as temporary immigrants or visitors, individuals seeking humanitarian relief, or without immigration status.

For more information on Temporary Protected Status, see our TPS blog: 5 things to know.

Upon registration with and approval by USCIS, TPS holders are protected from deportation and can receive work authorization. Only individuals already in the U.S. when a designation is announced are eligible to receive TPS. The program is not a substitute for refugee or asylum protections, which provide permanent relief to individuals who are actively fleeing dangerous conditions and need to permanently resettle; TPS is instead a temporary relief for individuals who are already in the U.S. and who cannot safely return home.

Many TPS holders have lived in the United States for many years, setting down roots and building families here. As a result, many TPS recipients are deeply ingrained into American families and communities. Whether these families will be able to remain safe and together is inextricably bound to their loved ones’ TPS protections.

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Wilna's Story

Meet Wilna, a mother, Haitian TPS holder and a community leader working every day to secure immigration relief for her family and for her community in Florida.

TPS expansion should be at the forefront of President Biden’s immigration agenda in 2024

The Biden administration has already used its legal, statutory authority to expand deportation protections and work authorizations to hundreds of thousands of new individuals. But the opportunity to expand TPS to other immigrants, many of whom have been in the United States for many years, is still available, and would be supported by the American people. Polling from FWD.us shows that two-thirds of voters in key 2024 battleground states support expanding TPS to crisis-ridden countries.

The economic benefits are clear—expanded work authorization would boost the economy in 2024 and provide greater certainty for employers desperately trying to fill worker shortages. 

Work authorizations through TPS would also help tens of thousands of newly arrived immigrants in several U.S. cities provide for themselves and their families, instead of being forced to rely on city services. And work authorizations through TPS would allow most to send money back home to their families; historical evidence suggests that these remittances could help reduce irregular migration from these countries.

The Biden administration should immediately expand TPS to more countries in 2024. The conditions warrant it. The administration has legal authority to do it. U.S. families need it. Employers are asking for it. The public approves of it. Our borders and cities will be better for it.

Population estimates in this report reflect TPS-eligible and TPS potentially eligible holders as of September 30, 2023. Immigration status assignments performed by FWD.us researchers using the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) provide the base data for the data analysis. Other government data, including figures from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Department of Homeland Security, allowed researchers to add to the underlying 2022 ACS data to obtain end of 2023 estimates. (See our complete methodology for 2023 immigrant assignment.) Note that several countries are not itemized by CBP, including Afghanistan, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen; consequently, population estimates for these countries are solely based on the 2022 ACS.

Some TPS-eligible individuals have no immigration status and thus are unprotected, while others have a protected status such as parole or are waiting on a decision in their asylum case. Estimates, then, are considered conservative, as they do not include those who entered the U.S. without an encounter with border authorities or those with nonimmigrant status. The population estimates assume no emigration of TPS-eligible individuals since 2021. Potential TPS holder characteristics, including state of residence, are the same as undocumented peers from the same country who entered the U.S. during 2021 and 2022; consequently, they do not reflect new destination patterns within the U.S. 

Industries deemed to have labor shortages are those that consistently had 4% or more of its jobs open January through September 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Current contribution to the U.S. economy is based on spending power, or total wages after the payment of federal, payroll, state, and local income taxes. Additional billions of dollars contributed to the U.S. economy through TPS designation is based on a multiplier from a predictive regression model using the 2022 ACS that compares TPS holders from El Salvador (2001 original designation), Honduras (1998 original designation), and Nicaragua (1998 original designation) with undocumented adults without any protected status who entered the U.S. before 2000, controlling for several economic and demographic characteristics. This multiplier was added to the current economic contributions of TPS individuals by demographic groups. The TPS economic boost reflects the additional spending power.

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