Amnesty Advocates Denounce Trump’s Decision to End Haitian TPS

Haitians
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The decision by the Department of Homeland Security to end Temporary Protected Status for 59,000 Haitian migrants in June 2019 triggered a wave of hostile reactions from left-wing groups and their business allies.

The department is guilty of racism for telling the Haitians — many of whom entered the country before 2010 as illegal immigrants — that they must return home after spending at least nine years in the United States, said two groups that favor amnesty and continued illegal immigration.

Establishment progressive groups skipped the racism claims but declared “disgust” and the offered the routine celebration of divide-and-rule “diversity.” Americans’ Voice described the Haitians as “settled immigrants” even though the migrants have been allowed to stay in the United States under the “Temporary Protected Status” rule, which does not provide a legal pathway to legal immigration.

The Democratic National Committee described Trump’s enforcement of the law as “cruelty,” and ignored the interests of Americans voters who have seen their wages flatline for the last several decades in a high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Tom Jawetz, the vice president for immigration policy at the far-left Center for American Progress, complained that DHS officials should not return the Haitians because post-2010 disasters have also damaged the nation.

Business-backed advocates complained about the loss of cheap labor and welfare-aided consumers.

For example, Ali Noorani, the executive director of the business-backed National Immigration Forum, claimed the return of Haitians to their home country would shrink the Florida economy, but had nothing to say about how Americans and legal immigrants would gain from the departure of the Haitian migrant workers. Noorani’s group is supported by agriculture-industry and blue-collar employers, so the loss of cheap Haitian labor is a clear loss to his supporters.

Todd Schulte runs the FWD.US lobby group for Silicon Valley investors. His chief priority is raising the annual inflow of white-collar guest-workers, so he opposes any actions that increase President Donald Trump’s ability to push his low-immigration, high-wage, pro-American policies through Congress. Currently, Trump is pushing the popular RAISE Act. The RAISE Act, which would halve annual immigration inflows by ending chain-migration, so pressuring employers — including Schulte’s board of directors —  to raise Americans’ wages.

The Chamber also complained about the loss of workers. The complaints came from Jon Baselice, a former staffer for Sen. Marco Rubio, who lost his presidential run by pushing the unpopular “Gang of Eight” amnesty-and-cheap-labor legislation in 2013, which would have flooded the labor market with roughly 33 million new legal workers over ten years.

Florida Republicans also complained about the enforcement of the TPS law, which is likely opposed by Florida employers.

But pro-American immigration reformers — including Jessica Vaughan the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies — are skeptical about the DHS decision because they fear it might just become another extension, following a series of extensions that have kept the Haitians in the country since 2010. The 18-month delay before the Haitian’s documents expire provides Democrats with a lot of time to push and pull for yet another extension.

 

 

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