How about a little TPS for our Guatemalan neighbors?

A May 2010 eruption of the Pacaya Volcano outside Guatemala City sent ash flying into the departments of Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, and Escuintla. The eruption killed two people, closed the national airport for several days, and left thousand people homeless. President Alvaro Colom declared a state of public calamity. Days later, Tropical Storm Agatha left over two hundred fifty people dead or missing.

Following these natural disasters, President Colom asked the asked the US Government to suspend the detention and deportation of Guatemalans living in the US for eighteen months. In June of that year, he officially requested Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for those Guatemalans living in the United States.

TPS would provide a temporary reprieve for the nearly 1.7 million Guatemalans living in the United States, perhaps as many as sixty percent without the proper documentation, until the country was able to recover from these back-to-back disasters. In recent years, TPS has been granted to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti following natural disasters. 

In September 2010, Guatemala was struck by another natural disaster when over fifty Guatemalans died from flooding and landslides caused by a tropical depression. Several people were killed when the buses on which they were traveling were overturned by landslides. First responders and civilians who raced to the scene to rescue the victims were themselves killed when the mountainside gave way once again. 

Guatemala was struck by a series of earthquakes that left over fifteen dead in September 2011. And now, in October, two weeks of uninterrupted rain has left at least 38 dead, 5 missing, 18 injured, and over 500,000 others adversely affected. Forty percent of the country's roads are damaged. Preliminary estimates put damage to the country's infrastructure and agricultural production at $250 million. 

So far, President Obama has far failed to respond to Guatemala's request for TPS. Instead, he has touted how many illegal immigrants have been deported under his watch. 

33,324 Guatemalans were deported in the last fiscal year. 

Here's an idea. The President should extend Temporary Protected Status to our Guatemalan neighbors so that the country can better recover from these natural disasters without the additional challenge of dealing with the deportation of thousands of their countrymen.

TPS isn't a magical solution to the migratory challenge that confronts the US and Latin American and its southern neighbors. However, it is one tool that the executive branch has at its disposal right now and can make a real difference in the lives of millions of people in Guatemala and the United States.

(Some of this was originally written for a letter to the editor of the Scranton Times in 2010. I hope that I won't have to use it next year as well.)