Opinion | Letter

Don’t Deport Salvadorans

Veronica Lagunas, left, and her daughter Angie at their home in Sylmar, Calif. Ms. Lagunas is one of nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have just lost their temporary permission to live and work in the United States. Emily Berl for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “U.S. Eliminates a Protected Visa for Salvadorans” (front page, Jan. 9):

I am saddened by many things done and said in the Trump administration. But no act has been as cruel as the decision to end Temporary Protected Status for the nearly 200,000 Salvadorans living in the United States, many of whom have been living, working and raising families here for more than 20 years.

What possible good can it do for the United States to send a hard-working, taxpaying people back “home,” a place devastated by a long civil war where gang violence reigns?

The Temporary Protected Status program was not meant as a pathway to citizenship, but what better way to judge a person’s worthiness for citizenship? What more proof do we need that a person who enters the country illegally out of fear for his life (or a life of utter poverty) will make a good citizen than over 20 years of being gainfully employed and paying taxes?

ERIKA BERRY, BALTIMORE