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Wisconsin Right Now traveled to Springfield, Ohio, this month to find
the real story beyond the corporate media spin.

Springfield, Ohio – Eric Coleman Sr., 65, is a former U.S. Marine and
retired welder. He sits on a frayed stoop in Springfield, Ohio, on a
recent Sunday, in the shadow of a Trump flag flying outside his
neighbor’s house in this working-class city that is ground zero in the nation’s high-stakes immigration debate. Coleman is a Democrat who is African-American. At first, he says he’s voting for Vice President
Kamala Harris. Then, he says he was a lot better off economically four
years ago. Ultimately, Coleman says he could vote for Trump or just sit
it out.

Coleman attributes his growing economic stress to the surge of Haitian immigrants who have streamed by thousands into Springfield, an
industrial city with a once-shrinking population and manufacturing base
that was undergoing a “renaissance” that drew the influx. His life has gotten a lot harder since the Haitians got here. Companies were hungry
for low-paid workers, and Haitians were hungry for jobs. But so are the American citizens who live there.

Coleman’s rent has skyrocketed from $550 to $1,100 because some
landlords now make more money renting homes to Haitians they charge per
head to sleep on cots jammed into former single-family homes. He’s not
alone. “I know two or three (non-Haitian) families who were kicked out,
and Haitians are living in those homes today.”

The U.S. military veteran lives on social security and disability checks
that net him only about $1,600 a month. He was denied food stamps. “I’m broke,” he says. Forget cats and dogs; he can’t afford meat and survives
on donated “canned goods and juice.” He doesn’t think the Biden-Harris administration, which welcomed the Haitians in, has its priorities straight.

“That doesn’t make sense for the government to give them all of that
money and not give Americans. I think the government should
recalculate,” he says. “You’re over cluttering us. I think the
government should stop that immediately.”

This is somewhat different than the stream of illegal immigrants
flooding over the U.S.-Mexico border who took advantage of
Biden-Harris’s weak immigration policies; the Haitians flew legally into
the United States. Biden and Harris waved their magic wand and made it
so. They were granted “immigration parole” and “temporary protected status” by the Biden-Harris administration, a deliberate and calculated policy decision. They’re happening together, though, and they’re causing similar stress on communities.

Here, in Springfield, the Haitian immigration wave is causing some U.S. citizens harm. It’s a story playing out all over America, although
that’s not the story the corporate media or Harris want to tell.
Biden-Harris rolled out the welcome mat. That’s inarguable.

Once here, the Biden-Harris administration granted the Haitians
“temporary protected status” – through a program that Trump tried to
kill – which grants them a raft of government benefits and debit cards, including driver’s licenses. It’s meant to be temporary, but the
government can extend TPS indefinitely. Of course, if the Haitians have children here, those children are automatically U.S. citizens who will
someday be allowed to vote (the Haitian migrants can’t vote legally, but
two tell us they might do so anyway).

If Harris won’t promise to stop the Biden-Harris immigration policies, Coleman decides he won’t vote for her after all.

“Trump didn’t start this,” Coleman says.

Coleman doesn’t fit the media’s stereotype of an angry racist or
conspiracy theorist railing against immigrants. That’s true for most
here. In fact, he expresses empathy for the Haitians and relates to
their working-class plight. They want the same things he does. They
aren’t the villains of this story. To locals here, the government is.
And that starts at the top, with Biden and his VP.

Springfield ohio
Coleman.
The numbers are staggering. The Haitian population exploded by 15,000 to
20,000 people in a city of just under 60,000, the city manager, Bryan
Heck, wrote in a letter. Affluent Martha’s Vineyard residents
collectively freaked out over 49 arrivals not that long ago. That was
lambasted as a “cruel political stunt” in the media, although those
people were soon gone.

“It’s taxing our infrastructure. It’s taxing public safety. It’s taxing our schools. It’s taxing health care…it’s taxing our housing,” Heck said
in July, calling the housing crisis “a hundred times worse.”

“It’s setting communities like Springfield up to fail. And, we do not
have the capacity to sustain it, and, without additional federal
assistance or support, communities like Springfield will fail.”

In Springfield, hard-working lower-income folks in an already distressed
city with a poverty rate of 22.7 percent are just supposed to take it.
Worse, they’re branded as racists for not wanting to lose their rental
homes or jobs.

Springfield“This is being done in the most destructive, damaging and
divisive way possible, kicking people out of their homes to move in
people willing to live 10 people to a bedroom,” says Bill Monaghan, a
former newspaper journalist who speaks near a building with shattered
windows in downtown Springfield around the corner from an MSNBC crew.

“They want to really gut the working and middle classes,” he says. “To disrupt the whole town and tear the social fabric apart – this is not an accident. This is an effort to dismantle the working class.”

Monaghan doesn’t believe the Haitians are being treated right, either.

“They are jammed in like slave quarters, charged to get back and forth
to work. It’s a modern slavery system here, 40 people to a house or 10
people to a bedroom, just cots,” he says.

John Rice, a pastor and realtor, says a relative who is an HVAC
contractor “was in a home recently, and 19 Haitians lived on each side
of the double. Every room is a bedroom in the house. One house; 38
people.” Rice says home and rent prices have skyrocketed because
landlords make more money if they can jam Haitians into a house.

“What is the limit a community can absorb? I think we have far exceeded it,” he says.

It’s not only housing. Locals’ concerns range from hospitals and schools being overwhelmed to dangerous traffic crashes. Traffic crashes in the
county rose from 2019 to 2023, according to police data. U.S. citizens
have died, and residents described dangerous near misses with Haitians
who don’t understand the rules of the road.

One crash involving a Haitian driver took the life of an 11-year-old boy
on a school bus whose dad doesn’t want his story politicized. In another widely discussed tragedy, grandmother Kathy Heaton was killed by a
Haitian migrant who plowed into her as she put out the trash. “Kathy was struck so violently that both her socks were left behind on the pavement
as her body was thrown across the street,” the New York Post reported.
The driver wasn’t charged.

The Biden-Harris programs allow the Haitians to receive taxpayer-funded benefits and driver’s licenses. “Enrollment in Medicaid and federal food assistance and welfare programs surged,” Reuters reported. Rent rose
14.6 percent from May through December 2023 and 3.2 percent in 2024 so far.

It can be difficult to tease out the economic stresses on Springfield
residents due to immigration from the national pressures under the
Biden-Harris economy. For example, although home prices have risen,
they’ve done so less than the country as a whole. Rising grocery prices
are putting stress on families everywhere.

Springfield, ohio

Community hospitals spend $50,000 monthly for translation services, and
the school district gets 40 new students each week, many who can’t speak English. The police chief told NPR that calls for service, property
crimes, and translation needs are up, although police aren’t tying crime increases to immigrants.

Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine sent $2.5 million in taxpayer money
to Springfield to boost traffic enforcement and deal with growing
pressures on medical centers. General healthcare, not communicable
diseases, is driving the pressure on healthcare.

“The influx of Haitians to Springfield and Clark County has
significantly impacted local primary care providers due to the increased
number of patients and the need for more translation services. In
general, migrants from Haiti have had little to no healthcare services
prior to arriving in the United States, including vaccinations,” DeWine
said.

Springfield, ohio
A man is observed at a vehicle parked in a driveway of a springfield
home marked as condemned by an ‘x’
Haitians in Springfield are only part of the story. “Through the end of August 2024, nearly 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and
Venezuelans arrived lawfully on commercial flights and were granted
parole under these processes,” the U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on September 16.

“More than 110,000 Cubans, more than 210,000 Haitians, nearly 93,000 Nicaraguans, and nearly 117,000 Venezuelans arrived lawfully and were granted parole,” CBP says.

That’s occurring against the backdrop of record surges of millions of
illegal immigrants over the southern border. Even the New York Times
admits, “Border crossings were low when Donald Trump left office. But
when President Biden is in the White House, they start shooting up and
up — to numbers this country had never seen before, peaking in December 2023.”

Rice believes the United States should help Haiti through charitable
giving and humanitarian outreach instead. “Our responsibility is first
to our people,” he says. “Our church has a food pantry. We are
sheltering homeless people right now who are natural-born citizens;
people who are in horrible straits who were born here. Our economy is
bad to start with. How we can afford to fly in tens of thousands at a time?”

“Why would our government want to do such a thing?”

Dogs & Cats Dominate the Media
Springfield dogs
Springfield dog.
The national media fixated on wildlife, pets – and Trump. You can find stories about the other concerns, but they aren’t dominating the narrative.

Coleman, Rice, and Monaghan don’t care much about the pet-eating
controversy that has consumed the beltway media and dominated TikTok
since Trump accused Haitian immigrants of eating people’s cats and dogs
in a viral debate moment.

“I have four or five families on my street, and I’ve never seen them
chase a cat or dog and eat it,” Coleman says, but he doesn’t even bring
it up until well into our conversation. Like many non-Haitians here,
including Trump supporters, the cat-and-dog controversy just isn’t what matters. It’s a shiny ball Trump kicked, and the media are chasing it.

Most Springfield residents we spoke to – including ardent Trump
supporters – think Trump overstepped. They don’t think Haitian
immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield or at least have no
evidence to prove it, although a Haitian man, Jean Pierre, informs us
that some Haitians DO eat cats back home.

Springfield residents believe Trump’s comments served a purpose, though,
by coaxing an uninterested, biased, and, frankly, lazy national media
into finally paying attention to a topic that doesn’t help Democrats (or Harris) but is hurting regular Americans.

“As far as what I took from what I saw on the clip, you know, Trump
going, ‘Well, they’re eating pet cats and dogs’ or whatever . . . I just started laughing,” says Springfield resident Al Overholser. “But the
whole important thing that I like about him saying that is he shifted everybody’s attention to Springfield, Ohio because we need everybody’s
help right now.”

“Springfield is a caring community,” he adds. “But I have a limit. This city has a limit as well. We need help and resources.” He believes
Harris and Biden scoffed at concerns.

The liberal and conservative media are wrestling each other for the
narrative, with a presidential election at stake. The cage match is
occurring in Springfield.

The legacy media repeatedly blares that Trump made false comments about Haitians that follow racist tropes. Some reporters take the word of
government as fact and don’t do original reporting on the scene. False, incendiary comments made by Harris and other Democrats don’t get blown
up this relentlessly. Corporate journalists paint the influx of Haitians
to Springfield in the glossiest terms; the story as they tell it is one
of hard-working, maligned immigrants who are doing the jobs Americans
won’t. Springfield is on the “upswing.” It’s constructed reality.

“The real story is that for 80 years we were a shrinking city, and now we’re growing,” Carl Ruby, the senior pastor at Central Christian
Church, told NBC. “There is a workforce here just waiting.” But
Springfield residents say there was no clear plan and too many people
came too fast.

Springfield

“We needed a workforce,” Amy Donahoe, director of workforce development with the Greater Springfield Partnership, told Reuters.

In contrast, some independent media and conservative pundits have
focused on trying to prove Trump’s comments had substantial truth to
rescue him from his latest hyperbole. A man produced a sickening video
he says shows people from the Congo grilling a cat in Dayton! There’s
911 audio of a man complaining Haitians were grabbing geese in
Springfield’s Snyder Park! There’s a 911 call from a woman whose cat is missing and found meat in her backyard! (But when the Wall Street
Journal went to interview her, she revealed she found “Miss Sassy” alive and unharmed, hiding in her basement.)

Those just aren’t the things locals really care about. Yet they’re the
ones painted as racists by legacy reporters who are, in some cases,
sitting on their butts in New York.

“I did pray over my city. The cat and dog thing is ridiculous. They’re spinning it out of control,” says Lisa Brannon, 47, referring to the
media. A Trump flag flies on her porch. Across the street, Haitians have
moved in.

Brannon believes Trump should have focused on something else. “There
were better topics,” she says. “Our resources are being depleted right now.”

She doesn’t agree with the corporate media’s narrative that the
immigration surge has been largely great for Springfield, either.
Brannon’s friend, a domestic violence survivor, is staying with her
because she can’t find affordable housing. Her family’s benefits were denied. Homeless people need meals, but shelters recently shut down.

Springfield ohio
Lisa brannon
“Every five houses on this block, there’s been a Haitian that’s moved in,” she says. Brannon says the Haitians have had hatred “spewed at them,” which is terrible. “I understand that the Haitians are coming
from a war-torn country, but we can’t help people unless we can help ourselves.”

The American people, she says, “can’t afford” to subsidize the Haitians. Brannon used to work at Family Dollar, and Haitians “would ask me to
help them pull their money off their” government cards. “And it wasn’t just one card,” she says.

Brannon says she’s called in many traffic accidents at the intersection
near her home caused by Haitians.

SpringfieldFundamentally, the tension isn’t over cats or dogs at all, as
it turns out; it is about a country’s allocation of, and prioritization
of, its resources.

The controversy intensifies in an impoverished community like
Springfield, which is pocked with foreclosed homes (locals say some
Haitians are living in them), in a nation struggling with soaring
inflation. Springfield was already a city in distress; the median income “dropped 27% between 1999 and 2014 . . . a bigger dip than any
metropolitan area in the country,” USA Today reported.

Springfield
Downtown springfield, oh
It’s a story repeating in communities throughout America, from Aurora to Chicago.

Kyle Koehler is a former state representative who is running for state
Senate in Ohio. He says the community wasn’t properly informed that the
surge was coming. Temp agencies, churches, and businesses encouraged the Haitians to come here, some profiting greatly. “We didn’t know it was happening.”

Koehler said there’s been great “stress on our education system.” The local health care center is “overwhelmed.” The traffic accident stories
are true. “People are concentrating on the cats more than the people.
The issue is the social – the government – services that are being overwhelmed.”

“In the end, it’s just overwhelmed our community,” he says.

A couple of months ago, Koehler appeared at a press conference to
highlight these concerns. Only one reporter came. But that was before
Trump started talking about cats.

Jeff and Lori Clos have lived in Springfield for 54 and 30 years,
respectively. He works in a trucking company. She was unemployed until recently. “I was actually displaced from my previous job,” she says. She was told the company was “doing away with my position.”

“After that, they started bringing in a lot of Haitians through the
local temp service,” she says.

“Ten-fifteen people were let go the same week. The next week, they were bringing in the temp service people to run it,” she says. “It makes me angry. I work hard to raise the money we need to survive. Now you can’t survive on a one household income. It’s taking me three months to find a
job. They keep saying the jobs are plentiful.” She’s done everything
from factory to office jobs.

She doesn’t believe the media narrative is true.

“No. I’ve applied at some of these places hiring all the Haitians and
never got a callback,” she says. “They hear they can bring the Haitians
in for a cheaper rate than Americans can afford to work for.”

Ryan McKinney was working as a seasonal worker for Amazon when, one day,
his key card (and others’ cards) wouldn’t work. That’s the same Amazon owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

“I looked in the training center and saw it full of people from the
Haitian community,” he says. McKinney is an admin on a Facebook page
called “Stop the Influx Into Springfield, Ohio.”

“I strongly believe we were singled out to put the Haitians in,” he
says. There are some cultural tensions. McKinney says he saw Haitians “literally washing their feet and hair in the bathroom sinks.”

Local leaders and police have pushed back hard against the pet-eating accusations, saying they’ve seen no evidence. Many reporters have taken
the word of government as gospel.

To be sure, social media has caused problems even as it also informs.
Yet without social and independent media – and especially the free
speech zone on X – we’d be left with the corporate media’s narratives on Springfield. They’re warped, politicized in one direction, and far from
the whole story. The corporate media say Trump isn’t being honest about Springfield, but are they?

The disturbing body cam video of a woman eating a cat is from Canton,
Ohio, and she’s not Haitian. The viral photos of a man carrying dead
geese were in Columbus, and they were killed by a car. The social media
post about a cat being skinned and hung in Springfield was fourth-hand information that its author has taken back.

“One of the things that I heard that bothered me very much, and I’ve actually had quite a few people contacting me lately, is some pretty
horrid things occurring to domesticated animals in the neighborhood.
We’ve had some stuff in the park,” Heck, the city manager, said on video
in March. Asked for proof, he said anonymous people had confided in him.

However, locals tell us, that’s the sideshow, not the story.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, has more recently tried
to shift the conversation toward economic and safety concerns affecting
people instead of pets. The media, however, are now focusing on the 33
bomb threats that resulted in closings throughout Springfield. Some
outright blamed Vance for them. Then, DeWine revealed all of the bomb
threats were hoaxes, with many coming from overseas.

Although our key goal wasn’t to prove or disprove the pet angle during
our two days in Springfield this September, we did ask everyone about
it. Retired hairstylist Beth Heffner produced a picture of a pig carcass
she says was left near a school. Her close friend took it, but when we
asked to speak to the friend, the friend never called. Heffner wore a
“fight, fight, fight!” T-shirt with a bloodied Donald Trump. There’s no evidence that Haitians killed the pig, which isn’t exactly an unusual
thing to eat in America anyway.

Amy heffner
Beth heffner
Locals believe the duck and goose population at Snyder Park has
suspiciously waned, especially the white Peking ducks.

Springfield
Ducks at snyder park
Springfield
Geese at snyder park
But no one can prove Haitians caused that. At Snyder Park, the ducks and
geese seemed plentiful to us.

Debit Cards & Plans to Vote

SpringfieldA few houses down the street from Coleman, we find Jean
Pierre, a Haitian immigrant who speaks in halting English as other Creole-speaking Haitian men spill out of the modest home. He’s been in
the U.S. for about a year, coming from Florida after he heard from
Haitians that it was easy to find work here.

Other Haitians echo the same themes.

They came here to work. They work hard. It was pretty easy (although one
family had to traverse through Brazil and then Mexico). Others just
filled out an application and boom! They were in. They weren’t bused to Springfield; they started somewhere else (Georgia, Florida), and
Haitians told them to go to Springfield because it was easy to get a
job. Yes, they get debit cards. Yes, they get driver’s licenses. And
even though it’s illegal, some plan to vote.

“It’s very hard for the immigrant,” Pierre says. He is grateful for the chance to add his voice and is very aware of the controversies on social
media and Trump’s comments.

The national media have painted the cat-and-dog comments as provoking
violence, even ludicrously tying them to the 2nd assassination attempt
of Trump in Florida, which was allegedly committed by a Hawaiian
Democratic donor with a Biden-Harris bumper sticker and an obsession
over Ukraine.

The harm Pierre describes, though, is emotional. His feelings are hurt.
He’s hurt when some people in Springfield won’t greet him in stores.
He’s hurt that Trump thinks Haitians are here to cause “trouble.” At least in Haiti, he is treated with respect.

“We coming here to do the bad thing? That’s not true,” Pierre says.

Pierre intends to go back to Haiti when his temporary protective status expires, but he’s barely making enough to get ahead here, where the
wages range from $18 to $22 an hour, a measly amount quickly eaten up by
rent, food, and other costs. He’s separated from his family. Although immigration can be big business, that’s not true for him.

Pierre tells us matter-of-factly that some people in Haiti DO eat cats,
but he insists no one is doing that here. “Yes, in Haiti, yes – you can
do it. Maybe in Haiti, you can find someone who eats a cat because you
can do it in Haiti. But when you come here, you can’t do it, so you have respect for that. We know you cannot eat a cat when you are in the
United States, and the Haitian people are very afraid to do something in
a country that says you can’t do that,” he says.

“The Haitian people have a good heart. They love everyone. We don’t come here to make trouble with the American people. We come to help. We come
to work hard.”

No one eats dogs anywhere, he insists. “Eat the dogs, I never see that.”

Pierre is considering voting. He knows Haitians who plan to vote for
Harris even though they aren’t U.S. citizens – “a lot of people,” he reveals. That would be illegal, which is a point that he doesn’t seem to realize. Ohio has implemented a law that puts a small non-citizen label
on the back of people’s driver’s licenses, however.

“I don’t know if I’m going to do it,” he says. He shows us a valid Ohio driver’s license that lists his hometown as Dayton. It was easy to get.

“A lot of people, Haitian people, they prefer Kamala Harris than Trump.
They think that Trump has a trouble with them,” he says.

There seems to be meager if any effort to educate the new Haitian
population about voting laws. A now-nixed voting registration form in
Creole is the talk of the town. “A false Ohio voter registration form
created in Haitian Creole was not approved or created by the Clark
County Department of Job and Family Services,” the county says.

“We come here to work. I don’t want to give anyone any trouble here. If Haitians do something wrong, I say, ‘Forgive them,’” he says, molding
his hands as if in prayer. “I say sorry for anything the Haitian people
do wrong in this city.”

Pierre, who was a truck driver in Haiti, has a State of Ohio debit card.
“To give me food,” he says. Pierre says the government put about $200 on the card monthly for a few months.

Yves Pierre Louis, another Haitian immigrant a few blocks over, says he
came to the United States in 2020 because Haiti is “very dangerous for
me,” and he wants to “send money to my family” of 12 kids.

At first, he worked in a hotel in Georgia. When COVID hit, he came to Springfield because another Haitian told Louis, a forklift driver: “It’s easy to find a job.”

“We come here for help and family. I hear Trump tell Haitian do this,
Haitian do that. I live here with my dog here.” He opens the door and
ushers out a menacing-looking pit bull. “Why I no eat that? Because the
dog is important for anybody.”

Yves louis
Yves louis.
He says he’s never seen people eat cats or dogs in Haiti or here. “Some chicken, goat, beef.” To come here, he filled out an application and
worked with a company from Taiwan, since you need a sponsor.

Louis insists, though: “I don’t have a problem with Trump. Trump is a person I am not supposed to like him, the woman too. I like everybody.”
We ask if he is planning to vote. “Yes,” he says.

When we pressed and asked whether he’s a citizen and allowed to vote, he shifts. “If I try . . . what I think, we are not supposed to do that.”

The Ku Klux Klan Rears Its Ugly Head
Springfield
Ku klux klan flyers found on a springfield, oh street
Some ugliness has descended on the town, mainly from the outside, and
it’s not only the bomb threats.

A Ku Klux Klan group from Kentucky papered some neighborhoods with
recruitment flyers. We were shown the flyer by Trump supporters who were
so angry about it that they reported it to the police.

We later came across several of the flyers folded up on the street.

Springfield
Folded ku klux klan flyers littered a springfield, oh street
It’s a different vibe at Rose Goute Creole Restaurant, though, where a diverse crowd shows up for goat, chicken, turkey, plantains, and
spaghetti. When we went there, the chicken was sold out, the crowd was
happy, and everyone seemed to be getting along. The city says there are
two Haitian restaurants, seven Haitian grocery stores, and one Haitian
food truck in Springfield.

Rose goute creole restaurant
Rose goute creole restaurant
We ate turkey, rice, and beans as an Associated Press photographer
bopped around taking pictures. A television crew from New York did
interviews in the back.

Rose goute restaurant
Inside the restaurant.
The kind Haitian owner thanked us profusely for coming. But we didn’t interview people there, like everyone else. We headed into the
neighborhoods.

Biden-Harris: ‘They’re the Disgrace’

Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, is
closing the gap with incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, by sounding a
Trump-like immigration theme. Moreno is a Colombian immigrant and
Cleveland businessman who came to America legally at age 5.

“This is not the fault of the Haitian refugees,” Moreno tells a crowd outside the Stella Bleu Bistro in Springfield. “Unfortunately, it took
memes on the internet to get the attention of the media, but this has
been going on for three years.”

“This is not the fault of the people of Springfield, Ohio. This is the
fault of corrupt government politicians like Sherrod Brown and Joe Biden
who have allowed that to happen. They put these people in this
situation.” He included Harris on the list.

“They’re the disgrace. They’re the people that will be fired on Nov. 5.”

The Biden-Harris administration’s decision to grant “temporary
protective status” and “immigration parole” to Haitians nationally was little explained to the public.

“The Secretary of Homeland Security may designate a foreign country for
TPS due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the
country’s nationals from returning safely,” the government says.

It’s completely incoherent; people from Central American countries are drowning in the Rio Grande but if you’re Haitian, you’re in.

In 2010, Haitians started getting TPS after a devastating earthquake,
according to a May 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service.
In 2017, the Trump administration, after briefly extending the
designation, rescinded it, although that bogged down in endless
ACLU-fueled legal battles.

On May 22, 2021, Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas
ended those when he “announced a new, 18-month TPS designation for Haiti based on extraordinary and temporary conditions” that included “social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack
of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Haitians are in Ohio through the “Immigration Parole Program,” Springfield’s website says. “The U.S. government may grant advance
travel authorization to up to 30,000 noncitizens each month to seek
parole on a case-by-case basis under the processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans,” the government’s website says. TPS is granted after you get here.

“Immigrants with TPS are legally qualified to receive financial
assistance, health and nutrition services, employment and education
services, and housing services,” the city says.

People with TPS status, a program dating to a 1990 act of Congress, “are
not removable from the United States,” and are allowed to work, the government says, adding that they are screened. It lists 16 countries
with TPS status. Some make sense (saving interpreters from Afghanistan).
Others raise questions – Yemen, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti.

As of March 31, 2024, approximately 863,880 foreign nationals had TPS
status in the U.S. Of that, 200,005 Haitians who arrived after 2022 have
TPS.

Trump terminated TPS status for multiple countries, including Haiti. The
ACLU of California helped TPS recipients sue, some with U.S. citizen
children. The latter is, of course, where new problems creep in (now
they argue that kids are being separated from their parents! And of
course, those kids will be voters someday.) The plaintiffs’ argument
focused on the Trump administration adopting a “new narrow process” that doesn’t “consider all current conditions” in the involved countries.
They accused Trump of racism. The case bogged down in California’s
liberal courts.

The Biden-Harris administration swiftly restored the TPS after taking
office, rendering the court case moot before it could land on the desk
of SCOTUS.


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