The Temporary Protected Status conferred on immigrants from designated countries provides yet another example of the meaning of “temporary” government programs. The meaning of “temporary” must be subsumed under a broader category of Newspeak that includes government programs adopted under the banner of “emergency.” Bruce Springsteen captured the spirit of the thing in “For You” on his first album: “Your life was one long emergency.”
Governors including Minnesota’s ineffable Tim Walz proclaimed an “emergency” to justify the exercise of tyrannical powers that should never have been imposed in the first place during the Covid era. Syria received a TPS designation in 2012 because of “extraordinary and temporary conditions” related to the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad. Haiti received a TPS designation in 2010 after an earthquake.
In September 2025 and November 2025, respectively, the Trump administration had the temerity to terminate the “temporary protected status” of Syrian and Haitian immigrants. It took yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Mullin v. Doe to let it be.
“Temporary” and “emergency” government programs promise that they will end some day. Even if they do and even if there was some basis for their adoption in the first place, they go on way too long. In general, it would be wiser to proceed on the assumption, to borrow the words of another song, “some day never comes.”
