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Ever since the televised debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on Sept. 10, Springfield, Ohio, has become an epicenter for ferocious anti-immigrant attacks. As he struggled to regain his footing against the vice president, Trump dredged up disproved claims promoted by his running mate, J.D. Vance, who said that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating dogs and cats.
The false allegation, as New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen argued, tapped into some of the worst nativist sentiment. “There is a long and grim tradition of demonizing Haitians in the United States,” Polgreen wrote, pointing to how the claim revolved around two cherished elements of life, food and pets. Polgreen argued that the situation is a reminder of the threat a second Trump term would pose. “In his elevation of something akin to blood libel against a group of blameless legal immigrants who came to America from their strife-torn nation in search of a better life through hard work… he has proved himself a dangerous and malevolent figure.” Indeed, anti-Haitian sentiment is deeply rooted in American culture, dating back to the Haitian revolution of 1791-1804, when there was a strong reaction against the overthrow of French rule. This rhetoric has frequently included accusations of animal consumption, as well as cannabalism.
As polls demonstrate that immigration remains a top concern for many American voters, Trump’s rhetoric in recent weeks has only become more toxic. At a rally on Long Island, New York, he warned his adoring crowd: “They’re coming from the Congo. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from all over the world—Asia. A lot of it coming from Asia. What’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country. We’re not going to take it any longer. You got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot.”
Besides circulating a dangerous and toxic set of illiberal ideas that has caused Ohio officials to station guards at the Springfield schools and prompted two local colleges to go remote, Trump’s narrative erases the city’s real lesson for the United States: how immigrants are revitalizing decaying economic areas that have been left behind for decades.
Like places in many other so-called Rust Belt states, Springfield had been a city that struggled as the new high tech, financial service-centered economy took hold in the 1990s. But now, Springfield is booming. The recent history of the city shows not why immigrants are a threat to existing populations, but why they are part of the solution to economic decline and malaise.
This has been the history of immigration in the United States since the founding, and it remains just as important today as ever before.
For much of the 20th century, Springfield, Ohio, located about 45 miles from Columbus, was one of the thriving small cities of the Midwestern United States. Manufacturing had been at the heart of the economy since the late 19th century. In 1902, when the companies that produced Champion harvesters joined with several other brands in the merger that created International Harvester Co., more jobs and money came to the community with the production of agricultural machinery.
In addition to International Harvester, the local economy benefited from the presence of the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company, Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, and several other businesses. Though it was certainly not New York, Chicago, or Columbus, Springfield embodied the kind of bustling small city that was at heart of the American Century.
But like many of these cities, the area suffered greatly in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as factories closed and jobs went overseas. Between 1970 and 2020, the population fell from more than 80,000 to less than 60,000.
When Newsweek magazine sought in 1983 to capture for readers what was happening in this increasingly economically desolate section of the country, it zeroed in on Springfield; the editors said it had once been a “dream city.” The magazine published a lengthy special that used the city to tell a bigger story about national decline, and its findings were bleak. Crowell-Collier had closed its plant decades earlier, while International Harvester was reeling amid the recession. Concluding with a pessimistic message, the authors wrote: “The times have not been hospitable to dreaming.”
As he campaigned in 2015, Trump’s anti-immigration and pro-tariff agenda seemed to promise relief.
But while help finally arrived, it came from a very different direction. In 2016, through various incentives, state officials persuaded Topre, a major Japanese company that produced auto parts, to invest millions of dollars to construct a manufacturing plant that would eventually create hundreds of local jobs. In the coming years, numerous other companies followed Topre’s lead.
Attracted by the low cost of living and thriving community, somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitian immigrants would move to Springfield in the following years. The pace picked up after the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there were not enough workers in many industries. Employers lured Haitians by advertising good jobs and a decent standard of living. Companies paid for immigration lawyers, translators, and set up online portals to smooth the transition.
The Haitian immigrants, who arrived legally with temporary protected status or humanitarian parole, settled in. They quickly proved to be a valued workforce that allowed the economy to continue prospering. They boosted the once thinned-out population and brought new cultural energy to the community.
McGregor Metal plant’s CEO told NPR that he had depended on about three dozen immigrants to fill the jobs at his factory, which produces steel parts, to make the shop floor work. At the Dole Foods factory, Haitian labor has also been vital. Earning paychecks also means taxes.
The false allegations swerving around Haitian immigrants ignore all of this demand. The fearmongering grows out of a common “they keep coming” myth about immigration, as Harvard University historian Erika Lee argued in Myth America, that wipes away the nation’s own role in “coercing, recruiting, cajoling, and incentivizing foreigners to come to the country to serve its own economic needs.”
Legal immigrants didn’t only provide labor in Springfield, but also boosted the vitality of downtown. Caribbean food trucks and restaurants brought new energy to sleepy streets. Haitian Flag Day became a popular annual event. On Sundays, the prayers and song from the St. Raphael Church, where there has been a regular afternoon Haitian Creole Mass, filled the air. Until recent months, immigrants were understood locally to be integral to the fact that Springfield was standing strong once again. CultureFest, recently canceled because of safety threats, has been a well-attended annual two-day celebration of the city’s vibrant and diverse cultural offerings.
During an interview with NBC News, one Springfield pastor said, “The real story is that for 80 years we were a shrinking city, and now we’re growing.”
With growing populations come problems. These are not imagined and have received ample coverage. As the population climbed back to previous numbers as a result of immigration and a more prosperous economy, emergency services, health care centers, schools, and city services were strained. As the housing stock declined, rent increased. It often became more difficult to secure appointments to key government offices and schools, which—once under threat of shutting down when the population was disappearing—were now trying to keep up with growing student bodies.
Tensions spilled over last year when an 11-year-old boy was killed in a school bus crash that involved a Haitian immigrant. The tragic death unleashed the type of nativist vitriol that Trump has helped to elevate to the highest levels of political power.
These kinds of problems, however, grew out of success, not crisis. They require commonsense, rational government solutions—not the kind of wall-building and deportation measures that would rob the city of a Haitian population that has brought it back to life. Federal support, for instance, could help shore up basic services. New measures to assist with affordable housing could bring down costs for homeowners and renters.
None of these policies would be easy to achieve, and they require spending, but they are well worth it. Rather than offering elixirs that would end up hurting the very communities they promise to save, including the white working-class residents who the Republican Party has depended on, rational policies that address the actual issues can strengthen the infrastructure of cities such as Springfield and allow them to remain great.
One of the most striking developments of recent years has been the way that a far-right nativist rhetoric has taken over the way that Americans discuss immigration.
While Republicans champion the imperative of exclusion and warn of the dangers of replacement, too many Democrats have responded in a defensive fashion by accepting the conservative terms of the debate. During that Sept. 10 debate, Harris’s main response to a question on the topic was to remind voters that Trump had convinced congressional Republicans to vote against a harsh bipartisan border bill. Harris promised that if she was president, she would sign the bill. Trump vacillated. This fit a recent pattern where Democrats have been scrambling to the center, if not to the right of center, to try to win back support on this issue.
Nathan Clark, the father of the 11-year-old who died in the crash in Springfield, recently blasted the Republicans trying to capitalize on his son’s death, which he reminded a Springfield City Commission was an “accident” rather than a “murder.”
Begging the GOP to stop, Clark said: “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”
Regardless of the politics, Americans need politicians to also keep reminding the electorate of what great things immigration has done and continues to do for the nation. And there is no better place to start than Springfield, Ohio.
Writing in the New York Times, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who was born in the city, put pen to paper to remind readers that “the city hit tough times in the 1980s and 1990s, falling into serious decline as manufacturing, rail commerce and good-paying jobs dwindled. Now, however, Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs. They are there legally. They are there to work.”
After praising the immigrants for their character and value, DeWine reported how one business owner in the city had informed the governor that “his business would not have been able to stay open after the pandemic but for the Haitians who filled the jobs.”
There is a lesson here for all other communities seeking to do the same. Rather than villainizing newcomers, it might be better—as so many Republicans have done until recent years—to concentrate on policies that would help to integrate legal immigrants who arrive to blighted areas seeking to work, spend, and play. Not long ago, when George W. Bush was president, a substantial number of Republicans and Democrats worked together on a grand bargain that would combine rationalizing the immigration system, including creating a legal path to citizenship for millions of people already in the United States, with tougher border and deportation policies.
Over the past decade, the first part of that bargain has disappeared. Most Republicans focused on the second part of the deal, while many Democrats abandoned hope for the first. Springfield is an important reminder that the politics of exclusion will erode the very people who have been a backbone to the nation’s economy and culture.