US senators ask to extend immigration protection for Venezuela

Two US senators asked the government this Friday to renew the immigration protection to avoid “a death sentence” for Venezuelans who have fled the country.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Bob Menendez, and Republican Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas requesting that he extend the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans that expires in September.

TPS prevents deportation and gives access to a work permit for foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their country, and has so far been used in cases of natural disasters, armed conflict and other extraordinary circumstances.

The senators are asking for an additional 18 months of TPS for Venezuelans due to “the (President Nicolás) Maduro regime’s ongoing campaign of state-legitimized violence against the people of Venezuela and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country.”

“Failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country,” the letter read.

In recent years, more than 6 million people have fled Venezuela, of which more than 80% to other Latin American and Caribbean countries, “putting social protection systems throughout the region to the test,” add Menendez and Rubio, who accuse the Maduro government of using food “as a weapon of social and political control.”