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By
Richard Irwin
Editor, Immigrants' Rights Update
On Oct. 1, 2007, approximately 3,600 nationals and
former residents of Liberia will lose their temporary protected status (TPS)
when, on that date, the designation of Liberia as a country whose
nationals and former residents may be eligible for TPS is terminated, as
we reported previously
in Immigrants’ Rights Update.
Unless individuals from Liberia who currently have TPS are granted some
other lawful immigration status or permission to remain in the United
States by Sept. 30, if they remain in the U.S. they will begin to accrue
unlawful presence as of Oct. 1.
In justifying the termination of the TPS program
for Liberia, the
Federal Register notice announcing the termination says, “The
uncertain situation that characterized the immediate aftermath of the
armed conflict’s end and the temporary and extraordinary conditions
caused by the long war have improved.” However, the Los Angeles
Times reported on Jan. 15 that people returning to Liberia after
having been forced by 14 years of civil war there to flee and live
abroad, many in refugee camps, are finding that the houses and land they
left behind have been taken over by others. In some cases, those who
took over the returning refugees’ houses and land are from tribes other
than the returnees’, a fact that is again fanning tribal rivalries in
Liberia (Robyn Dixon, “In Liberia, a Peace on Uneasy Ground”). The new
occupants sometimes have torn down the rightful owners’ homes, built new
ones, and even established new businesses on the appropriated land,
according to the article.
The conflict over land is complicated by the fact
that many returning refugees do not have documents that establish
definitively their ownership of the land that has been taken over —
either because they fled in such a hurry that they had to abandon
everything, or they never had property deeds to begin with, or multiple
deeds exist, each indicating that the land belongs to a different party.
The article reports that other factors, too, are
threatening the fragile peace in Liberia: 80 percent of the population
lives below the poverty line; the unemployment rate is 85 percent; many
former armed forces and security personnel are idle, unemployed, and
disaffected because the country’s armed and security forces were
disbanded after the last civil war ended three years ago; and “[t]ens of
thousands of civil servants are being dismissed in a major downsizing of
government, leaving them jobless and their families often hungry.”
The article warns that this volatile combination
of severe problems “could ignite violence, dragging in the ready pool of
former combatants.” It is to this uncertainty and turmoil that current
TPS beneficiaries from Liberia will be forced to return later this year.
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