Presbyterian Church (USA) agencies Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and the Presbyterian Office of Immigration Issues are joining in calls for support of legislation to grant temporary protected status (TPS) to Cameroonian nationals in the United States.

The Cameroon TPS Act of 2021, introduced in October by Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Hank Johnson, cites ongoing state-sponsored violence, domestic terrorism and heightened tensions between a variety of groups and communities as reasons the West Central African nation is not safe. Despite those realities, refugees are regularly returned to their country by the United States government.

“We witnessed deportation flight after deportation flight return Cameroonian migrants last year as the country was in the midst of armed civil conflict,” Amanda Craft, manager for Advocacy in the Office of Immigration Issues in the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), wrote in a blog post highlighting the plight of Black migrants in the US. “We witnessed flight after flight of Haitian migrants returned to Haiti, a country in the midst of civil unrest.

As people of faith, we have a responsibility to stand with our siblings; we have a responsibility to help magnify their stories and their asks; we have a responsibility to ensure our government meets every migrant with dignity and respect.

“The immigration system will not change unless we push for that change.”

(Rich Copley, Presbyterian News Service)