The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in July that it will be renewing, but not expanding, the Temporary Protected Status (T.P.S.) for Venezuelans in the United States. The Biden administration announced that it will offer an 18-month extension of T.P.S. to those who arrived in the U.S. by March 8, 2021, but that the program will not be expanded to incorporate recent arrivals. This move leaves tens of thousands of recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants without access to the humanitarian program’s protections.

The T.P.S. program provides deportation relief and work permits to immigrants in the U.S. if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extra-ordinary event. The Biden administration granted T.P.S. to Venezuela in March 2021, citing economic and political turmoil and human rights abuses under President Nicolás Maduro, but Democratic lawmakers and activists have urged the administration to expand the offer to more recently arrived Venezuelans. Since January 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents have detained more than 144,000 Venezuelans at the southwest border. Meanwhile, the Biden administration remains at odds with Maduro and has kept former U.S. President Donald Trump’s strict sanctions in place. Washington has in recent months attempted to mildly soften its policy on Venezuela to convince Maduro to resume political negotiations.

A detail much of the reporting on this matter has neglected is the role that U.S. sanctions have played in Venezuela’s economic crisis. According to the Washington Office on Latin America (W.O.L.A.), there is direct evidence to suggest that the United States has directly aggravated the economic situation. U.S. sanctions have caused the Venezuelan state to lose between $17 and $31 billion in oil revenue, a revenue which has long been used to cover the import of food, fuel, medicine, and other basic goods into Venezuela. Furthermore, Venezuelan banks and financial institutions have over-complied with U.S. sanctions as risk aversion, closing human rights groups’, humanitarian organizations’, and private companies’ bank accounts and denying or freezing legitimate transactions. U.S. sanctions have not pushed Venezuela toward a peaceful, democratic solution.

To address the crisis, the U.S. must reform its sanctions to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and effectively contribute to a return to democracy. As W.O.L.A. Senior Fellow David Smilde put it, “U.S. policy-makers thought these sanctions were short-term measures that would swiftly lead to a democratic transition. But they have hurt the Venezuelan people more than the government, thereby strengthening Maduro’s hand and creating a deadlock. It’s time for the U.S. to rethink its Venezuela sanctions package.”

In the meanwhile, the United States government should expand the T.P.S. program to provide protections to the victims of a crisis it has played a strong hand in worsening. It is inhumane and nonsensical to overturn another nation’s economy in the name of protecting its citizens, then turn away those citizens when they seek security – political, economic, and personal – in your own “ideal” nation.