Yemeni TPS holders have 60 days to renew their Temporary Protected Status beginning Tuesday.
The U.S. government had announced in early July that it would be extending TPS for Yemenis for 18 months until March 3, 2020. Without the extension, it would have expired Sept. 4.
TPS allows status holders to live and work temporarily in the U.S. while their own nations recover from the effects of armed conflict or natural disasters.
With the publication of a Federal Register notice expected Tuesday, Yemeni nationals who currently hold TPS status, will have two months to re-apply.
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen renewed TPS for Yemen because “the ongoing armed conflict and extraordinary and temporary conditions that support Yemen’s current designation for TPS continue to exist.”
There are about 1,250 Yemenis with TPS status. To be eligible for renewal, TPS holders “must have continuously resided in the United States since Jan. 4, 2017, and have been continuously physically present in the United States since March 4, 2017.”
Yemen joins Syria and South Sudan, which also won extensions for TPS under the Trump administration. But TPS has been canceled for six other countries: Sudan, Nicaragua, Nepal, Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras. The cancelations affect more than 300,000 people, who now await the expiration of their status. Sudanese TPS holders will be the first to lose their status later this year on Nov. 2.
As VOA has reported, there is little understanding of what will happen as TPS expires across the six countries between now and January 2020.
An announcement on TPS for Somalia will be made before November.
