Campaign Action
Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Elaine Duke announced the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 50,000 Haitians in the United States, giving them until July 2019 to either find a way to adjust their immigration status or leave. The program was established under President George H.W. Bush for “immigrants who cannot return to their homes due to violence, natural disasters, or other conditions,” and advocates have repeatedly stated that conditions in Haiti have not yet improved enough to justify the return of tens of thousands of TPS recipients. They were ignored:
“Haiti is not ready to absorb 58,000,” said Marleine Bastien, a South Florida Haitian activist who has pushed for at least an 18-month extension of TPS. “It’s going to be a disaster for the 58,000 families in the U.S. and a disaster for Haiti. Clearly they are not making decisions based on facts on the ground, but rather politics. This is purely unacceptable.”
Members of Congress from South Florida reacted with dismay. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, called the decision “unconscionable,” urging the administration to reconsider. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat, both vowed to look for legislative solutions.
“This is a cruel decision, and a stupid decision,” said America’s Voice executive director Frank Sharry. “It's cruel to the tens of thousands of Haitians who work in critical industries, care for U.S. citizen children and contribute so much to the country that has welcomed them. It's a stupid decision because if 50,000 Haitians are forced to return to Haiti in 18 months, it would further destabilize a nation wracked by natural disasters and epidemics.”
“The administration’s agenda is clear,” tweeted United We Dream co-founder and immigrant rights leader Cristina Jimenez. “Deport immigrant communities of color in mass. Another assault to people of color right before Thanksgiving. Congress must act by passing legislation this year.”
The administration’s action represents the largest population yet of TPS recipients that have been stripped of their protections during the past few weeks, recently announcing the end of TPS for about 1,000 Sudanese and 2,500 Nicaraguans. Within the next few weeks, decisions on El Salvador and Honduras are also expected. In all, some 300,000 people in the U.S. depend on TPS to work and live here, which is probably why the administration keeps hiding these announcements until late at night.
“This decision is not an abstraction for SEIU,” said Rocio Saenz, the union’s vice president. “It affects thousands of Haitian SEIU members and their families who stand to lose not only their jobs but also the lives they have worked so hard to build since they left their home countries”:
These are good people, stable workers who have paid their taxes, formed families and often own homes here. They were trapped here when one of the worst earthquakes ravaged the island killing thousands and have been legally re-registering with the U.S. government regularly, each time paying about $500 in registration fees and each time undergoing a new FBI background check. TPS holders have more than 270,000 U.S. born children and thousands of grandchildren. After all of this time, no conceivable purpose is served by upending all of that and ordering them to return to some of the most dangerous and precarious countries on earth.
In a statement, the UndocuBlack Network said that “Haitians ... work, study and live in the United States. They have built homes, engaged with their communities as health care providers, construction, hospitality workers and range from the youth to the elderly.” According to the Center for Migration Studies, ”Haitians protected under TPS are deeply imbedded in US society”:
According to a recent study by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the average length of residence in the United States for the affected population is 13 years. They have 27,000 US-citizen children, while 81 percent of them are employed and 6,200 have a mortgage. The majority live in Florida (32,500), New York (5,200), New Jersey (3,400), and Massachusetts (2,700).
Deporting them back to Haiti would separate them from their families and harm some of the industries and companies in which they work – construction, landscaping, child-care, not to mention corporations like Disney.
“I am one of the many people who will be affected by this decision,” Peterson Exais, a high school junior from Miami, said during an America’s Voice press call. “I was lucky for the help we received from America, and, because of this help, I am here today. But, Haiti is still not a safe place for my family to be.”
Other Haitian TPS recipients have expressed similar fears about losing their humanitarian protections. “I do not believe I will survive one month in Haiti,” Paula Vilme, a single mother of three U.S. citizens, told the Miami Herald. She arrived to the U.S. when she was just nine years old. “I’ve been here for so long. My whole life is here … this is home, so when they tell you to go back, where am I going to?”
Bipartisan members of Congress have introduced legislation to protect TPS recipients, including the American Promise Act, which must be taken up soon or families with deep roots here stand to get torn apart. “Nicaraguans, Hondurans, now Haitians,” tweeted Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. “Detained. Deported. They have helped our community grow in diversity and character. Their loss would be a tragedy for Miami. Let’s pass law to stop family divisions.”