The legal status for around half a million Haitians living in the U.S. will end Feb. 3, at the order of the Trump administration. That includes more than 10,000 Haitians living in western Ohio, many of whom are working in and near Springfield. If that happens, Ohio’s Republican governor is warning about a possible economic crisis in that area.
In March, the Trump administration said it would revoke the temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands who came to the U.S. to escape violence in Haiti. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Haiti no longer meets the statutory requirements for TPS, so the status ends on Feb. 3. A federal judge blocked Trump's order to revoke TPS status for Haitians in September at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
Gov. Mike DeWine, whose support of Haitians has included a school he set up in Port-au-Prince named for his late daughter Becky, said he hasn’t heard from the federal government on what the plans are for those Haitians. He said he'll continue to talk with Springfield mayor Rob Rue, the Clark County commissioners and other people in the community.
"The facts are things individuals are contributing to economy of the local community," DeWine told reporters last week. "When you talk to business men and women who are employing them, what they tell me has not changed. It continues to be, 'we need them to work. They are reliable. Yes, there are language challenges. Yes, there are cultural challenges. But they show up. They work, they want overtime, they're reliable and they pass drug tests.'"
DeWine said he's concerned about what will happen to the overall Springfield area as well.
“You're going to have a lot of unfilled jobs. You're going to have whatever the consequences is of 10,000 or who knows how many—no one knows really—people who are no longer being able to be employed," DeWine said. "They want to work. Many of them are raising families. Some of them have children who are citizens. So, yeah, this is not a good situation."
DeWine pushed back on Trump’s false and racist claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield in last year’s campaign, but also said he would vote for Trump.
When he was running for president, Trump promised to revoke TPS status for Haitians, an idea also backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) just after he was elected to the U.S. Senate. During the presidential campaign DeWine said revoking TPS status for Haitians would result in "some of the economic progress that we have made, that Springfield has made, would go away." And DeWine disagrees with the assessment of conditions in Haiti now. DeWine said in June that Haiti is "one of the most dangerous places in the world,” and that it's a horribly, horribly violent place today, and things have not gotten better. They’ve actually gotten worse."
