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More than 800 Harvard affiliates signed a petition urging the University to offer legal assistance to Venezuelan staff members who lost their authorization to live and work in the United States after the Temporary Protected Status program for Venezuelan nationals expired this month.
The petition — jointly organized by a list of Harvard student groups and the Massachusetts TPS Alliance — calls on Harvard to sponsor visas for noncitizen staff, ensure legal representation for staff members who face deportation, distance itself from firms “actively profiting” from work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The petition also asked Harvard, which has neared record spending on lobbying in Washington this year, to invest in lobbying “at the same rate” to challenge the TPS termination as it does to protect its ability to enroll international students.
The Harvard Law School chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the International Scholars Working Group of the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers, and the Student Labor Action Movement cosponsored the petition.
TPS is a humanitarian program that grants migrants temporary protection from deportation if returning to their home countries would be unsafe due to “extraordinary” conditions, such as armed conflict or environmental disaster. The designation, which is conferred on countries in 6-18 month intervals and often renewed, has lapsed in recent months for eight countries under the Trump administration, including Venezuela. The termination of Venezuela’s designation — which went into effect on on Nov. 7 — has been challenged in court.
The day Venezuelan TPS designation expired, Harvard emailed affiliates requesting that all employees refile the I-9 employment authorization form, according to Zahra A. Saifi, an organizer of the petition and third-year law student and Masters of Public Policy student. Harvard previously notified managers that they would ask for new I-9 forms from impacted employees, according to an email obtained by The Crimson.
“It was really hard to see our university taking such a brutal stance against these folks who had just heard that their status had expired immediately — saying, ‘prove to us that you’re legal here, because we know that some of you no longer are,’” Saifi said.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the petition.
As of 2020, a Massachusetts TPS Alliance organizer told The Crimson that nearly 200 Harvard affiliates held TPS, though advocates said many are reluctant to publicly identify themselves for fear of jeopardizing their immigration standing. Eighty-five percent of workers represented by the Service Employees International Union 32BJ, which represents custodians and security guards, are immigrants, according to the petition organizers.
Organizers shared the petition with the deans of 10 of Harvard’s 13 degree-granting schools. Saifi said that several administrators who responded wrote that they have no control over the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end TPS for Venezuelans.
But Saifi said she hopes the petition will push Harvard to take action.
“If 10 deans walked into the president’s office and said, ‘hey, this is a thing that our students care about, can we talk about it’ — likely that meeting would take place,” she said.
Saifi also said that several deans redirected organizers to the Harvard Representation Initiative, a program that provides free legal immigration resources and consultations for Harvard affiliates. But Saifi said that the program’s small staff of lawyers cannot accommodate everyone who might seek out their services.
Saifi and Justin P. McMahan ’21, another organizer of the petition and a third-year student at HLS, said they thought Harvard was inconsistent for waging court battles on behalf of its international students while remaining largely silent as TPS recipients risk losing their rights to live and work in the U.S.
“When the Trump administration was threatening the University’s ability to enroll international students, all of a sudden, Harvard started really kind of moving its wheels and getting things going,” McMahan said.
But when TPS holders became under threat, McMahan said, Harvard “was not standing up on behalf of students or on behalf of workers in the same way that it at least appeared to stand up on behalf of international students.”
“I think that as students, we felt moved to try to stand up on behalf of these folks who put in tireless amounts of work, day in and day out year round, that allows the school to function,” he added.
—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.
—Staff writer Sidhi Dhanda can be reached at sidhi.dhanda@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sidhidhanda.
