No News on TPS for Guatemala

California State Assemblywoman Norma Torres of  recently sent a letter to President Obama asking him to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Guatemalans living in the United States.  According to Torres's Wikipedia entry, she was born in Guatemala and relocated to Los Angeles at the age of five along with her father and two brothers when her mother died.  Torres has also been credited with rallying the other hispanic members of the California Assembly to support Guatemala's request for TPS protection. 

In September, US Ambassador Stephen McFarland said that TPS for Guatemala was under "active consideration."  In that sense, the recent Torres story in Prensa Libre has nothing new to report.

Perhaps it posisble that the president thought that by taking a tough stance against illegal immigration during his first two years in office, congress would come around and be more inclined to support some version of comprehensive immigration reform.  However, the president has not received "credit" for putting more guards on the border, spending more on border enforcement, and deporting a record number of illegal immigrants.

Now that Congress has killed the Dream (Act) because anything that doesn't round up and deport eleven million illegal immigrations is regarded as amnesty, let's hope that the executive branch will be more inclined to use its powers to push immigration reform at the margins.  Granting TPS to Guatemalans living in the US would be one small step in the right direction.