Murkowski Engages with DHS Secretary Noem on Temporary Protected Status
Washington, DC – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) engaged with the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on a number of important issues to Alaska during a Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. The Senator spoke up for those in Alaska under temporary protected status and humanitarian parole, and impressed upon Secretary Kristi Noem the importance of prompt processing of applications for humanitarian parole and temporary protected status.
Click here to watch the full interaction.
The full transcript of the exchange is below.
TRANSCRIPT
Murkowski: Here with regards to parole and temporary protected status, we have a relatively significant population of immigrants in Alaska that are under [humanitarian parole] or TPS or both. They're small, but for us, they're meaningful in our communities. It's the Ukrainians, we have Afghanis, Venezuelans, we have some Haitians. The majority of these folks are just truly valued members of their new community. They're helping us meet workforce needs and really contributing to the tax base here. They've expressed great concern about their status and work authorizations that may be revoked or allowed to expire.
So, USCIS hasn't processed re-paroles, TPS renewals, or work authorizations for the Ukrainians, at least, for almost five months. The concern is, they have they have paid the fees to USCIS to process their applications, and yet they're not seeing any action on this. Can you share with me, share with the committee, any information on when this pause might end? There are so many that are concerned that the work authorizations will expire while they're waiting for this process.
Noem: Yeah, we do have several countries that have been evaluated by the administration on their participation in TPS, and the program, as it was established, was meant to be utilized on a temporary basis, so some of these TPS programs have been in place for many, many years. But, the evaluation on why TPS should be utilized and when it can be utilized by a country is the process that the administration's going through. So, if it's a conflict, environmental [or] economic concern, something that's going on, and you talked specifically about the Ukrainians as well. I will say that that program is still there and being evaluated, but those folks may have gotten an email or something that was not correct and was rectified. So, I know some folks were alarmed by that that they received but we did rectify that and that was sent out if their legal status had changed, you know, it certainly did not apply to them and we communicated that with them as well. The one thing I will say is that anyone who is on a program like this or on parole that has been revoked always has the opportunity to apply for asylum as well. That is the application that we are forwarding in many of these instances across the country from different countries that interact with us through these different programs.
Murkowski: And again, just the timing of an expiration of the work authorization while they're waiting. So, as much information as you can share with us and I'm sure other states as well. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
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