On Aug. 20, the United States deported more than 160 people to Haiti on the first removal flight since the government ended temporary protected status, or TPS, for approximately 350,000 Haitians. The plane, which included some former TPS holders, landed in Cap-Haïtien rather than the capital Port-au-Prince, because continuing insecurity has made the airport too dangerous for U.S. commercial flights. Nothing says 'welcome back' like a landing strip your own country can't safely use.
TPS allows eligible foreign nationals already in the U.S. to remain and work legally when conditions in their home country prevent safe return. Haiti's 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced 1.5 million, seemed to fit the model. For 15 years, successive administrations renewed or redesignated Haiti for temporary protection. But this June, after a lengthy legal battle culminating in a Supreme Court decision, Haitians lost their protection. Fifteen years: long enough to raise a child, start a business, and still be told the emergency is 'temporary.'
Advocates and critics of TPS point to the same 15-year duration as evidence for their positions. Both sides overlook a more fundamental question: What should we do when the disaster becomes chronic? It's the policy equivalent of ignoring a leaky roof for a decade and then arguing about whether it's still raining.
My parents immigrated from Haiti to the United States in the 1980s. Their story is not a TPS story, but it taught me that migration often begins long before disaster strikes. My work has reinforced that lesson. I lead the development of networks - subsea and terrestrial - that connect people and economies. I think a lot about resilience, redundancy and a system's capacity to absorb failure. A well-designed network should be able to lose a link and reroute. But when recovery is incomplete, the system becomes more vulnerable and, without sufficient investment, may never return to full capacity. Much like a country, or a immigration policy, or a metaphor stretched to its limit.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, between 2008 and 2023, 44 natural disasters triggered approximately 2.9 million internal displacements in Haiti, against a population of roughly 10 million. The country has rarely had time to recover before the next shock. That's not a temporary crisis; that's a subscription service.
Meanwhile, successive Haitian governments have contended with political instability, state capture by elites and chronic underinvestment, particularly in rural infrastructure, where barely 1 in 10 people have electricity. By the mid-2010s, roughly 80 percent of urban households relied primarily on charcoal, increasing the demand for wood across an already stressed landscape and accelerating migration toward cities that lacked the jobs, housing and public institutions to absorb it. In short: a perfect storm of bad luck and worse planning.
This trajectory has become familiar worldwide as climate and natural disasters collide with already stressed systems. Instead of its current approach of temporary renewals or terminations based on the latest country assessment, Congress should establish a formal process for when an emergency becomes a protracted national crisis. Because 'we'll check back in a decade' is not a policy; it's a procrastination tactic.
I propose a two-step national stability review, conducted jointly by the Departments of Homeland Security and State, that would be triggered whenever a country has been designated for TPS for 10 consecutive years. The country-level review, with its findings published, would answer fundamentally different questions than Homeland Security seeks to answer today. Not whether the conditions that triggered the crisis or the current TPS designation persist, but rather whether their persistence means the crisis has become chronic. A chronic situation could be determined by measuring the severity and durability of the conditions, whether environmental and climate shocks compound them, whether it is feasible to safely return within a designated period and whether institutional capacity can support returnees.
Not every protracted crisis would result in a designation. But if the country review finds the conditions have become chronic, a second-stage individual assessment would follow for people who have held TPS status continuously for 10 years. Only those demonstrating durable economic, community or family ties to the U.S. would become eligible to apply for permanent residence, subject to criminal, security and admissibility screening. Neither assessment on its own would be sufficient. It's a bit like a credit check for your life, but with fewer hidden fees.
The review would intentionally limit eligibility to those with a substantial history of temporary protection and deep rootedness in the U.S., thereby matching the relief to the nature of the problem and ensuring selectivity. Congress has provided permanent relief for specific populations and has considered broader legislation such as the American Dream and Promise Act. However, those have generally been limited to a nationality and a specific amnesty date and promised permanent status. A national stability review would ask whether TPS remains the appropriate legal instrument given the nature and persistence of the crisis. In other words, maybe it's time to stop calling a decade-plus emergency 'temporary' and start calling it what it is: a long-term commitment.
The United States cannot offer a right to permanent residency to the billions of people who experience environmental vulnerability, weak infrastructure or poor governance. A national stability review would neither admit new migrants nor automatically convert anyone's status, but it would end the practice of renewing protection for a decade or more and then suddenly declaring the country healed or, worse, signaling that we no longer care whether it is. Because 'thoughts and prayers' is not a immigration policy, and neither is 'we'll see.'
Fifteen years of temporary protection isn't merely evidence of political paralysis; it is evidence that in many cases, it is no longer logical to call a crisis temporary. An earthquake or hurricane ends. But a country where planes cannot safely land in its capital has already made the case that it is experiencing system-level failures. Congress should recognize the difference between acute emergencies and structural fragility and create a more nuanced humanitarian pathway for when the next disaster becomes a chronic condition. Until then, we'll keep pretending that 'temporary' means something other than 'until we get around to it.'
Alex-Handrah Aimé is vice president of Network Investments at Meta, where she focuses on the subsea and terrestrial infrastructure that connects data centers and provides connectivity to billions of users. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and is a PD Soros Fellow and a 2026 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.