In June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she would end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, removing legal protections from more than 500,000 Haitian nationals living in the United States. Earlier this year, she rescinded TPS for over 348,000 Venezuelans and 55,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans. With Cameroon and Nepal already terminated, more than one million TPS holders are now poised to lose lawful status in 2025—a single‑year mass expiration unprecedented in the program’s history that will reverberate throughout the U.S. labor market.
Many TPS holders work in America’s most labor-starved sectors, including construction, home healthcare, food processing, hospitality, and agriculture. Employers who have long relied on TPS workers will be forced to terminate experienced staff while scrambling to hire replacements in an exceptionally tight labor market. Revoking work authorization for such a large group, so abruptly, will cause needless disruption for businesses that are essential to the economic health of communities across the country.
There may be a solution to capitalize on these workers’ talents and ensure they can work and thrive in safe communities–unfortunately for the U.S. economy, those communities are abroad. Many OECD countries are experiencing the same labor shortages and are in desperate need of construction workers, home health aides, and childcare professionals. The U.S.’s loss in expelling one million TPS holders could be other countries’ gain.
The concept isn’t without precedent. In 2023, for example, Canada launched a new visa program under its “Tech Talent Strategy” targeting skilled professionals working in the United States. Unlike the H‑1B program, it offered a more stable path to permanent residency—and proved immediately popular, reaching its cap of 10,000 applications within 48 hours. Successful applicants received a three‑year open work permit, allowing them to work for almost any Canadian employer, anywhere in the country.
In June, Harvard University collaborated with the University of Toronto to develop a contingency plan for international students who may be unable to return to the U.S. in the fall, allowing international students at the Kennedy School to instead complete their degrees in Toronto.
Other countries are already creating pathways to attract talent the United States risks losing. Germany’s “Triple Win” program, for instance, uses bilateral labor agreements to recruit nurses from the Philippines, Tunisia, Jordan, India, and Indonesia into its elder-care sector.
Ordinarily, TPS is terminated when the extraordinary conditions—such as war, natural disaster, or political instability—that once prevented safe return have meaningfully improved. Nepal, for example, was on the TPS list after a devastating 2015 earthquake. A decade later, the country has made significant progress: 90% of destroyed homes have been rebuilt. While recovery is ongoing, it’s reasonable to assume Nepal would have been removed from the TPS list during this period based on improved conditions. That is not the case for Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Cameroon. In each of these countries, the conditions that justified TPS remain severe—and in some instances, have worsened—making the decision to terminate protection all the more difficult to justify.
The State Department has issued Level 4: Do Not Travel warnings for Haiti, Venezuela, and six regions in Cameroon and Level 3: Reconsider Travel warnings for Honduras and Nicaragua. In Venezuela, the state department warns potential travelers that medications are unlikely to be available and access to medical care is limited, and encourages anyone traveling to the country to prepare a will and a “proof of life” protocol with their loved ones in case of kidnapping or detention. In Haiti, U.S. government employees are prohibited from even walking in Port-au-Prince. The U.S. government states that travel to any of these countries could result in serious, life-threatening risks or death–yet they have been deemed safe enough for TPS holders to return permanently.
Realistically, TPS holders are not returning to their home countries. Haiti and Venezuela, in particular, remain in protracted political and economic crises, leading many to conclude that the countries are either failed states or on the cusp of failure. Currently, Haiti is plagued by violence and crime. More than 4,000 people have been killed since January alone, and gangs control 90% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, increasing fears of a total collapse of state presence in the city.
Venezuela continues to suffer under the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro after last summer’s stolen election. There has been a significant uptick in political repression and detention since the election, a primary concern for returning citizens. The country also faces severe shortages of food, medicine, and basic medical supplies.
In Nicaragua, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega has been found by the UN Human Rights Council to have committed crimes against humanity in its attempt to crack down on opposition. Students, academics, afro-descendant and indigenous people, and even Catholic clergy have been targeted for violence, torture, and imprisonment on political grounds.
Honduras has been under a government-issued state of emergency since 2022, allowing for the suspension of constitutional rights in some regions of the country. Violence, corruption, and attacks on human rights defenders, journalists, and members of the judiciary remain serious issues.
Cameroon was placed on the TPS list in 2022 after armed conflict broke out between government forces and separatists in the Anglophone regions, and attacks from the terrorist group Boko Haram plagued the Far North Region. The Anglophone crisis has resulted in more than 900,000 internally displaced people, and anglophone-majority regions continue to suffer from violence and arbitrary killings, human rights abuses, and attacks on journalists. Additionally, there are 3.3 million people in the country currently in need of humanitarian aid.
It is unconscionable to send TPS holders back to countries where virtually everyone’s lives are in danger. The international community must immediately step in—and doing so may also be to their economic benefit.
The American Immigration Council estimates that 94.6% of TPS holders are employed. According to FWD.us, 50,000 TPS holders are employed in healthcare alone. Additional research from the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) identifies 10,000 in childcare and 50,000 in construction—all sectors facing persistent labor shortages. TPS holders also contribute as entrepreneurs: a 2017 study found that 27,000 TPS recipients owned businesses, creating jobs for both themselves and U.S. workers. Importantly, maintaining TPS requires a clean criminal record. For countries like Canada, Italy, or Germany—actively seeking skilled workers with no criminal history—TPS holders represent a highly qualified and ready-to-work talent pool.
DHS should not be ending TPS en masse for this many people in such a short time without a realistic plan for where they could go. Across the U.S., TPS holders live with an estimated 260,000 U.S. citizen children and about 320,000 US citizen adults. This decision will force families to either separate or uproot their lives entirely to countries that are unstable and unsafe.
Absent litigation, this policy will move forward. The United States is poised to discard nearly a million legally present, work-authorized individuals, many with deep roots and valuable economic potential before the end of the year. Ideally, our allies and peers will see the value in these individuals and find innovative systems to bring them into their economies to minimize the already-massive disruption they will undoubtedly face.