How many years should foreigners who have been given “temporary” protection from deportation, be allowed to live in the United States of America? How many years should Americans be forced to pay for the education, healthcare and social service costs associated with almost a quarter of a million people who were given temporary residence in the U.S. following a massive earthquake? How many of these 200,00 people applied for citizenship? 

The Trump administration said Monday it is ending special protections for Salvadoran immigrants, an action that could force nearly 200,000 to leave the U.S. by September 2019 or face deportation.

El Salvador is the fourth country whose citizens have lost Temporary Protected Status under President Donald Trump. Salvadorans have been, by far, the largest beneficiaries of the program, which provides humanitarian relief for foreigners whose countries are hit with natural disasters or other strife.

Roy Beck of NumbersUSA praised President Trump for his decision, claiming: “By ending the Salvadoran TPS, Sec. Nielsen has taken a major step toward saving the TPS program so it can be used for future emergencies.”

“The past practice of allowing foreign nationals to remain in the United States long after an initial emergency in their home countries has ended has undermined the integrity of the program and essentially made the ‘temporary’ protected status a front operation for backdoor permanent immigration.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s decision, while not surprising, will send shivers through parts of Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and other metropolitan areas that are home to large numbers of Salvadorans. They have enjoyed special protection since earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001, and many have established deep roots in the U.S., starting families and businesses.

The action also produces a serious challenge for El Salvador, a country of 6.2 million people whose economy counts on money sent by wage earners in the U.S. Over the past decade, growing numbers of Salvadorans — many coming as families or unaccompanied children — have entered the United States illegally through Mexico, fleeing violence and poverty.

In September 2016, the Obama administration extended protections for 18 months, saying El Salvador suffered lingering harm from the 2001 earthquakes that killed more than 1,000 people and was temporarily unable to absorb such a large number of returning people.

“The substantial disruption of living conditions caused by the earthquake” no longer exists, the department said in a statement.

Why was the Obama administration so keen on extending the stay for 200,000 Salvadorans? Should working Americans be asked to foot the bill for millions of non-citizens living in America simply because Democrat leaders need their votes?

Washington Times reported that A research group in New Jersey has taken a fresh look at postelection polling data and concluded that the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates.

As many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election, which put Barack Obama in the White House.

The research organization Just Facts, a widely cited, independent think tank led by self-described conservatives and libertarians, revealed its number-crunching in a report on national immigration.

Just Facts President James D. Agresti and his team looked at data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that every two years questions a sample size of tens of thousands of voters. Some acknowledge they are noncitizens and are thus ineligible to vote.

Nielsen, who faced a Monday deadline for a decision, determined that El Salvador has received significant international aid to recover from the earthquake and that homes, schools, and hospitals there have been rebuilt. Salvadorans will have until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the country or adjust their legal status.

Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.

These numbers are more in line with the unverified estimates given by President Trump, who said the number of ballots cast by noncitizens was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Last month, the president signed an executive order setting up a commission to try to find on-the-ground truth in illegal voting.

Headed by Vice President Mike Pence, the panel also will look at outdated voter lists across the nation with names of dead people and multiple registrants.

For 2012, Just Facts said, 3.2 million to 5.6 million noncitizens were registered to vote and 1.2 million to 3.6 million of them voted.

Could President Trump’s decision to end the deportation protection for Salvadorans have anything to do with the war he has openly waged against the violent MS-13 gang, that originated in Los Angeles and was composed of refugees from El Salvador?

Insight Crime – The MS13 was founded in the “barrios” of Los Angeles in the 1980s. As a result of the civil wars wracking El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, refugees flooded northward. Many of them wound up in Los Angeles, living among the mostly Mexican barrios of East Los Angeles. While the Mexican gangs reined in the local underworld, the war-hardened immigrants quickly organized themselves into competing groups, the strongest of which was called the Mara Salvatrucha.

The gang was initially composed of refugees from El Salvador in the Pico-Union neighborhood, which is where the name comes from “mara” is a Central American term for gang; “salva” refers to El Salvador; “trucha,” which means “trout” in English, is a slang term for “clever” or “sharp.” However, with the concentration of Spanish speakers in Los Angeles, the gang expanded into other nationalities and then into other cities.

By the end of the 1990s, the United States tried to tackle what they were starting to recognize was a significant criminal threat. Partly as a way to deal with the MS13, and partly as a product of the get-tough immigration push toward the end of the Clinton presidency, the government began a program of deportation of foreign-born residents convicted of a wide range of crimes. This enhanced deportation policy, in turn, vastly increased the number of gang members being sent home to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and elsewhere. According to one estimate, 20,000 criminals returned to Central American between 2000 and 2004. That trend continues. One US law enforcement official told InSight that the United States sends 100 ex-convicts back per week just to El Salvador.

Central American governments, some of the poorest and most ineffective in the Western Hemisphere, were not capable of dealing with the criminal influx, nor were they properly forewarned by US authorities. The convicts, who often had only the scarcest connection to their countries of birth, had little chance of integrating into legitimate society.

They often turned to what they knew best: gang life. In this way, the decision to use immigration policy as an anti-gang tool spawned the virulent growth of the gang in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.