Illegals from Haiti have been temporarily permanently shielded from deportation under something called Temporary Protected Status which basically says no one can be sent back to Haiti because it’s so awful.
Trump is stepping up and shutting down some of the TPS exemptions leading to threats, lawsuits and warnings that without cheap welfare workers, our economy will crash and burn.
In a part of the country hit hard in the aftermath of the Great Recession, about 1,000 Haitians are believed to live in the Findlay area, a city 30 miles north-east of Lima, where one automotive company reportedly relies on immigrants for half its workforce.
Ninety miles to the south, in Springfield, about 15,000 Haitians have contributed to the city’s housing and financial revival. While the city’s property tax revenue was less than $800m in 2018, in 2023, it reached $1bn for the first time. Last year, it grew again, by 40%. While the property tax revenue increase has in part been fueled by rising property valuations, it also coincides with the growth in the number of tax-paying Haitians.
The Trump administration’s move to end TPS has led to worry among city officials in Springfield.
“They have strengthened our local economy by filling key roles in manufacturing and healthcare, even as their rapid arrival has strained public services and housing,” Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, a Republican, said in a statement.
As Bob Cherry previously noted, what they’re actually doing is depriving working-class Americans of jobs… at taxpayer expense.
From scarcely a few hundred in 2021, the number of Haitian immigrants in Springfield on Medicaid reached 8,000 by 2024; more than half of their population there.
While Haitians have prospered in Springfield others have not: unemployment rose from 3.7% in October 2023 to 5.1% by April 2024.
Importing migrants for cheap labor and financing that through taxation on America is like drilling a hole in a boat and then pretending that it’s flying instead of sinking.
“I’m worried for our workforces if there should be a mass exodus [of Haitian immigrants] because some of our plants and factories need them,” says Carla Thompson, a city council representative.
“People are making money from renting to them, providing services, employing them. All of that is going to go away and those were jobs that our plants and factories needed filled. If we go back to the same population that we had, how do those jobs get filled in the future?”
The same population… of Americans.
Whom does our government exist to serve exactly? The people ‘making money from renting to them’ or those making money from cheap labor… or Americans?
Ending TPS puts Americans first, but a whole bunch of folks in power want to see Americans place last.