How presidential ideology affects temporary protected status

Abstract

In his State of the Union Address, given on March 1, 2022, President Joseph Biden mentioned the need for immigration reform that would benefit those who hold temporary immigration status. But who are these people? The temporary migrants this paper will focus on are those with Temporary Protected Status. People with this status are from a country which has been designated as having extreme temporary conditions that would make repatriation dangerous for the migrant. But who decides which countries get designated and why? The Secretary of Homeland Security, designated by the president and carrying out their orders, makes the designation announcements. Though there is no clear reason as to why they designate some countries and not others, even if conditions are similar. This paper will investigate to see if the ideology of the president influences TPS designations. I hypothesize that presidents who have a conservative ideology are less likely to designate countries for TPS than presidents with liberal ideologies. This paper will explain TPS law and analyze immigration theory by drawing connections between theory and TPS designations. Then, it will discuss the effect of ideology on decision making and describe the developing political polarization in the US. With this foundation and basic understanding of TPS policy, presidential ideology, and political polarization, a chi square test will determine if the ideology of the president has an effect on TPS designations. This will be followed by discussing the results of this experiment in the larger sense of the policy. To finish, policy recommendations will be given that could fix some of the current problems with TPS in practice.