What Is Temporary Protected Status and Who Qualifies?

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a federal immigration benefit that lets nationals of certain countries stay and work legally in the United States when it isn’t safe to send them home. The Secretary of Homeland Security designates a country for TPS when armed conflict, a natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions make return dangerous, and the protection lasts as long as the designation stays in place. You qualify if you’re a national of a currently designated country (or a stateless person who last lived there), you’ve been in the U.S. since the dates set for that designation, you file during the registration window, and you don’t have disqualifying criminal or security history. TPS shields you from deportation and can come with a work permit, but on its own it does not lead to a green card.

Which Countries Are Currently Designated

As of 2026, the countries with active TPS designations are Burma (Myanmar), El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.¹

This list is in significant flux. The government has moved to terminate designations for several countries, and federal courts have intervened in many of those cases. Haiti, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Burma all had terminations blocked or stayed by court orders in late 2025 and early 2026. Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua saw terminations take effect, followed by a district court order vacating those terminations, which was then itself stayed by the Ninth Circuit. Venezuela’s termination was allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court in October 2025, though some work authorization protections remain in place through late 2026 for certain beneficiaries.¹ Before you file anything, confirm the current status of your country on the USCIS TPS page, because the situation shifts faster than any article can track.

Who Qualifies for TPS

Four things have to line up. You must be a national of a designated country, or a person without a nationality who last habitually resided there. You must file within the registration or re-registration window USCIS publishes in the Federal Register for your country. And you must meet two separate residency tests tied to dates set in that same notice.²

Continuous physical presence means you’ve been physically in the United States since the effective date of your country’s most recent designation. Continuous residence means you’ve been living in the United States since an earlier date, also specified in the notice. These two dates are not the same, and confusing them is a common way applications fail. Brief, casual, and innocent trips outside the country generally don’t break either requirement.

Missing the filing window is the single most common way people lose their shot at TPS. Mark the deadline as soon as USCIS publishes it.

Documenting Your Time in the U.S.

You’ll need to prove both residency requirements with paper. Lease agreements, rent receipts, utility bills, pay stubs, employment records, school transcripts, medical records, and bank statements can all help build a timeline. Gaps invite requests for more evidence and slow the case down. Documents not in English need certified translations.

For identity and nationality, a passport works, or a birth certificate paired with photo ID.

Who Is Disqualified

Even if you meet every residency and filing requirement, some criminal or security history will block you automatically. You’re ineligible if you’ve been convicted of any felony, or of two or more misdemeanors committed in the United States.³

You’re also barred if you fall into any of the categories that disqualify someone from asylum: people who persecuted others, those convicted of a particularly serious crime and considered a danger to the community, those with serious reasons to be believed to have committed a serious nonpolitical crime abroad, individuals viewed as a security threat, and anyone connected to terrorist activity.⁴

Some inadmissibility grounds can be waived for TPS if the waiver serves humanitarian purposes, family unity, or the public interest. Others cannot be waived under any circumstances, including most convictions for crimes involving moral turpitude, drug offenses beyond simple possession of a small amount of marijuana, aggregate sentences of five years or more, drug trafficking, and all terrorism and national security grounds. Helpfully, the three- and ten-year unlawful presence bars and the bar for being present without admission or parole do not apply to TPS at all, so you don’t need to waive them.

If you have any criminal history, talk to an immigration attorney before filing. A denied application can draw enforcement attention.

How to Apply

The core application is Form I-821, Application for Temporary Protected Status. If you also want a work permit, file Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, at the same time. You can file the I-765 later, but filing them together is faster.⁵

Fees depend on whether it’s an initial application or a re-registration. For a first-time filer, the I-821 costs $510 plus a $30 biometrics fee. Adding a work permit costs $520 by paper or $470 online. That puts a full initial filing with work authorization at roughly $1,060 by paper or $1,010 online. Re-registration is cheaper: the I-821 itself is free, and you only pay biometrics and the I-765 fee if you want a renewed work permit.⁶

If you can’t afford the fees, request a waiver on Form I-912. Eligibility generally requires household income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.⁷

USCIS accepts TPS applications online through the agency portal (with fee payment through Pay.gov) or by mail to the USCIS Lockbox listed in the form instructions.⁵ After you file, you’ll get a receipt notice with a tracking number, and USCIS may schedule a biometrics appointment at a local Application Support Center for fingerprints, a photo, and a signature.⁸

Work Permits and the 2025 Rule Change

An approved Employment Authorization Document (EAD) lets you work for any employer in the United States and satisfies both the identity and employment eligibility requirements on Form I-9.⁹ With it, you can also get a Social Security number. Technically you’re authorized to work as long as you hold TPS whether or not you have a physical card, but in practice most employers want to see it.

Legislation enacted in 2025 shortened the automatic extension periods for TPS work permits. Previously, a pending renewal could extend an EAD’s validity for up to 540 days. For applications filed on or after July 22, 2025, that automatic extension is capped at one year or the remaining duration of the TPS designation, whichever is shorter. Initial and renewal EADs themselves are now valid for no longer than one year or the designation period.¹⁰

If your renewal had a receipt date of July 21, 2025, or earlier, the old 540-day extension still applies in part, but any portion running past July 22, 2025, is capped at one year from that date or the designation period, whichever is shorter. File renewals early and don’t rely on automatic extensions to close long gaps.

Re-Registering to Keep Your Status

TPS isn’t a one-and-done filing. Every time your country’s designation is extended, you have to re-register during the window USCIS announces in the Federal Register. Miss it and you lose your status, even if conditions back home are worse than ever. Re-registration means a fresh Form I-821 (no filing fee) and a new I-765 if you want to keep the work permit.¹

If you missed the re-registration deadline, USCIS can still accept a late filing when you show good cause. Acceptable reasons include serious illness or hospitalization, receiving bad advice about the deadline through no fault of your own, personal emergencies such as homelessness or a death in the family, and language barriers that kept you from understanding the rules. Submit a written explanation with supporting evidence. The longer the delay, the stronger the justification needs to be.

Traveling Outside the United States

Leaving the country without permission ends your TPS. Before any trip, file Form I-131, Application for Travel Document, and wait for approval. If your TPS has already been granted, USCIS issues a Form I-512T authorizing your travel and return. If your initial TPS application is still pending, you’ll get an advance parole document (Form I-512L) instead.¹¹

Travel carries a real risk: if USCIS sends a request for evidence or denies your case while you’re abroad, you may not be able to respond in time. It also carries a significant benefit. When you return with an approved travel document, you’re considered “inspected and admitted” at the port of entry, which can matter later if you become eligible for a green card.

What TPS Doesn’t Do

TPS by itself doesn’t create a path to permanent residency. The Supreme Court has held that receiving TPS does not count as being “admitted” to the United States, which is a threshold requirement for adjustment of status. For someone who entered without inspection, TPS alone doesn’t clear that hurdle.

There is a workaround. Since July 2022, if you travel abroad with an approved Form I-131 and return through a port of entry, USCIS treats you as “inspected and admitted.” That admission can satisfy the adjustment-of-status requirement even if you originally entered without inspection.¹¹ You still need an underlying basis for a green card, such as a petition from a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse or an employment-based petition, and unlawful presence that accrued before your TPS grant can still trigger adjustment bars unless you’re in an exempt class such as an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen.

If your country’s TPS designation is terminated, you revert to whatever immigration status you held before. If you had a valid visa that hasn’t expired, you go back to that. If you entered without authorization and have no other benefit, you become undocumented and subject to removal once the termination takes effect. TPS doesn’t erase any prior unlawful presence that accrued before you received it. Terminations historically include a transition period of at least 60 days, and past administrations have sometimes given 18 months of lead time. And as recent litigation shows, terminations are often challenged in court, and injunctions can preserve the status quo for months or years while cases play out.¹

Given how many moving pieces are in play, especially if you have any criminal history or are thinking about the long-term green card path, working with an immigration attorney is worth the cost.

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Temporary Protected Status
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1254a – Temporary Protected Status
3
eCFR. 8 CFR 244.4 – Ineligible Aliens
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1158 – Asylum
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-821, Application for Temporary Protected Status
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. G-1055, Fee Schedule
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Poverty Guidelines
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Application for Temporary Protected Status
9
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure
10
E-Verify. Update to TPS Page on EAD Automatic Extensions
11
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-131, Application for Travel Documents, Parole Documents, and Advance Permission to Travel