Fixing TPS After Mayorkas: Why the Nature of TPS Requires Giving Inadmissible TPS Holders a Method to Convert Status

Jonas Hallstein*

This Note analyzes recent jurisprudence regarding the statutory eligibility of foreign nationals who hold Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and have entered the United States unlawfully to convert their status to Lawful Permanent Residency (LPR) without leaving the United States and reentering at a later time. During early TPS-to-LPR jurisprudence, several circuit-level decisions held that inadmissible TPS holders could convert their status through an agency waiver of inadmissibility. Later on, however, many circuit courts precluded these TPS holders from converting their status. The Supreme Court's decision in Sanchez v. Mayorkas was the final nail in the conversion coffin, explicitly precluding many TPS holders from a realistic possibility of conversion. As a result, the circuit split surrounding conversion is resolved, but the future for TPS holders ("status holders") is in doubt. As a result, this Note argues that the best immediate course of action to ensure a future for TPS holders who have entered unlawfully, for both humanitarian and administrative purposes, is for the passage of legislation that would provide a pathway to permanent residency for these statusholders by establishing baseline requirements for conversion. This legislation would allow a pathway to permanent residency for many long-term TPS holders, lessening the administrative burdens on the United States government in the long term.

* J.D. Candidate, 2022, Columbia Law School. I thank Professor Gillian Metzger at Columbia Law School for her guidance in composing this Note. I further thank the staff of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, especially Robert Casty, Cassie Allen, Liz White, William Taub, Grace Pyo, Vineet Surapaneni, and Daniel Kim for their diligence in providing feedback on numerous drafts of this Note. Finally, I thank my parents for their unwavering support.