(Daily Caller) CBS News debate moderator Margaret Brennan hammered Sen. J.D. Vance with a “fact check” suggesting that foreign nationals on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are here legally, yet experts say that the moderator’s take doesn’t hold water.
During the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, Brennan — appearing to break a rule previously set by CBS that moderators would not fact check candidates — responded to Vance by appearing to suggest that those on TPS have legal status in the country and those who enter through the CBP One app also have a similar status. However, immigration experts that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation say Brennan’s “fact check” was incorrect, noting that those who obtain TPS are not automatically granted legal status and inadmissible foreign nationals enter the U.S. via the CBP One app daily.
“CBS moderator Margaret Brennan was wrong in her ‘fact check’ regarding Haitian migrants,” Julie Kirchner, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said to the DCNF, adding that most Haitian migrants who have entered the U.S. in the past four years have no legal status. “Haitians who enter the country illegally and then obtain temporary protected status are shielded from deportation, but receiving temporary protected status does not confer legal status.”
Kirchner — who previously worked in both Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — explained that migrants who are actually in the U.S. legally would not need to be shielded from deportation to begin with, and being granted parole into the U.S. is not a lawful form of admission into the country.
“Finally, Haitians who cross the southern border illegally and claim asylum do not have, and will not get legal status, until their application for asylum is actually approved — which usually takes years, and, as the data show, happens in less than 5 percent of cases,” she said.
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Brennan’s exchange with Vance occurred after the senator had mentioned Springfield, Ohio, amid a larger point about the issues of illegal immigration and the effects mass immigration have on smaller cities like Springfield.
