The Facts about Springfield's Haitian Immigrants
Radley Balko's story is long but well worth reading.
I’ll get to Part IV of my Occupy Monterey talk in the next few days.
The reason is that I read a long piece by Radley Balko that lays out a number of things I hadn’t known about Springfield, Ohio and about Haitian immigrants in Springfield.
I was skeptical about some of Trump and Vance’s claims. Now I’m not. I’m almost positive that these two gentlemen are wrong.
Some highlights:
Why Haitian immigrants settled in Springfield
The reason why so many Haitian immigrants ended up in Springfield lies at a point of convergence between the recent history of Haiti and the recent history of Springfield.
After the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Obama administration allowed displaced people from that country to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a policy created during the George H.W. Bush administration for refugees from countries in crisis. Thousands of Haitians took advantage of the opportunity.
Donald Trump revoked that status in 2019, infamously calling Haiti one of those “shithole countries” from which the U.S. should never accept immigrants. Trump would later add that all Haitian immigrants “probably have AIDS,” and lament that the U.S. doesn’t get more immigrants from better countries like Norway.
Trump’s TPS revocation threatened the immigration status of tens of thousands of Haitians who came after the earthquake, many of whom by then had children who were U.S. citizens. The Biden administration then reinstated TPS protection in 2021. This is why Trump and Vance blame Biden and Harris for Springfield.
This is a recurring pattern with immigration in the U.S. Immigrants settle in geographic clusters, close to other immigrants from the same country. This allows them to establish networks, find housing, and open and patronize restaurants and businesses that offer the comforts of home. This is why Patterson, New Jersey, has a “Little Lima.” In the mid-20th century, Peruvian immigrants settled in the city after taking jobs in area textile mills. It’s why Nashville has the country’s largest Kurdish community, and Minneapolis to large Somali and Hmong populations. Terre Heute, Indiana once had a thriving Syrian population; Lowell, Massachusetts has the country’s second largest Cambodian population. Rochester; New York has a large Turkish community; and Russian immigrants settled in places like Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
Reading this paragraph above, I was reminded of a point that Thomas Sowell often makes in his work on ethnic America and immigration. People don’t locate randomly. They go where they know people who are kind of like them. Sowell has demonstrated that fact over and over with various ethnic groups.
There is a lot of good information about jobs, wages, income, unemployment, and crime. I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing.
Still, the locals are on videotape at a city council meeting saying that some of the immigrants have walked into grocery stores and taken food or eaten it inside the store, killed local livestock and left carcasses lying about, and gotten into vehicles and caused havoc, local homeless or vets being displaced and far less assistance than they have had previously.
Naturally, trump watches a video, or tv, and acts like most other low information, tv watching, quick to formulate an opinion folk and presume tv is all true.