Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

The Immigration Act of 1990, as the bill was called, was also a chance to resurrect the plan to protect Salvadorans from deportation. Moakley called it temporary protected status (TPS), and while, in theory, it could apply to immigrants from anywhere who were stranded in the US during periods of upheaval in their home countries, Moakley singled out Salvadorans. In the spring of 1980, 92,000 Salvadorans were living in the US, according to the Pew Research Center; by 1990, there were 459,000. Moakley’s measure was immediately opposed not just by conservatives but also by Democrats like Kennedy, who worried that it would doom his broader bill. This time Moakley had leverage, as chair of the Rules Committee and as head of a prominent task force investigating human rights abuses in El Salvador. If the Salvadoran issue “goes,” Moakley told Senate leadership, “then there’ll be no fucking bill.”