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BOSTON (AP) — Liberian immigrants living in New England will receive work authorization in the United States as the West African country battles an Ebola outbreak.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it will automatically extend employment authorization documents for those immigrants. The announcement comes after President Barack Obama signed a memo extending a legal protection called "deferred enforced departure" that continues a protection from deportation that has been in place for more than a decade.
The government first granted temporary protective status to Liberians during the country's bloody civil war, which started in 1991 and ended in 2003.
That original protection expired in October 2007. President George W. Bush then approved deferred enforced departure for the community.
Obama later approved the same protection. He renewed it Friday for two more years.
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