Here’s how President Biden can help Haitians who have fled a nation near collapse
It’s hard to overstate how dire conditions are in Haiti. Since late February, “endemic” and “cataclysmic” levels of gang violence, as a United Nations report put it, have resulted in the total collapse of government institutions. The ensuing humanitarian and security crisis left more than 1,500 people dead during the first three months of the year.
The catastrophic crisis has left about 1.4 million Haitians on the brink of famine.
More than 4 million Haitians require food assistance and sometimes they eat only once a day or nothing at all, according to the Associated Press. The UN has reported that the number of Haitians fleeing such terrible conditions went from 50,000 last July to more than 350,000 this year.
To help vulnerable Haitian citizens who have had no choice but to leave their homeland and migrate to the United States, the Biden administration should redesignate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status, the humanitarian program that grants citizens from certain countries that are facing hardships a provisional permit to live and work in the United States.
What would a new TPS designation for Haitians mean?
First, a bit of context. The Biden administration has already extended TPS to Haitians, but the current designation, which expires Aug. 3, is only available to Haitians who were present in the United States by Nov. 6, 2022. Redesignating TPS would mean that Haitians who have entered the country more recently would become eligible to apply for the humanitarian program.
Last month two members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ayanna Pressley, who is cochair of the House Haiti Caucus, led 65 of their colleagues in Congress in a letter asking the Biden administration to immediately redesignate TPS for Haitian immigrants.
“Armed gangs control much of Haiti’s territory,” the members of Congress wrote. “This exposes people living in Haiti to pervasive human rights abuses, including killings, kidnappings, and sexual violence. Returning Haitians now present in the United States would expose them to extreme danger and life-threatening conditions.”
A new TPS designation would apply only to Haitians already in the United States. Citing Biden administration sources, NBC News reported last month that the current crisis has not prompted the US government to consider granting TPS to “an additional group of undocumented Haitians,” Julia Ainsley reported.
The Biden administration might be worried that doing so would encourage Haitians to come to the United States en masse, even though a new cut-off date would mean only people already here would qualify. But it’s become very difficult for Haitians on the island to leave.
“Right now there are no flights from Haiti,” Brian Concannon told me. He’s a Bostonbased human rights lawyer and the cofounder and executive director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. “For Haitians, if they don’t have a US visa, you can’t get into the Dominican Republic.” The US Embassy is virtually closed, only operating on an emergency basis. “There’s practically no way out.”
Then there’s the “we can’t possibly absorb all the people fleeing crisis globally” argument against expanding TPS.
“If our goal was to bring everyone from around the world whenever there’s a crisis, we would have a huge problem,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council told Ainsley.
But those arguments disregard history, Concannon said. “My ancestors came here from Ireland. [Those arguments] ignore the Mariel boatlift from Cuba. And they ignore all the counterexamples where we have very easily absorbed people at a time when we didn’t have such a crisis of not being able to employ people to run our economy” like we do now, Concannon said.
Greater Boston is home to roughly 55,000 Haitians, the third-largest Haitian diaspora in the United States. They are overrepresented as workers in the health care support and transportation sectors, and as health care practitioners, according to the Immigrant Learning Center.
Granted, having a work permit doesn’t necessarily guarantee a job. The Globe recently reported on the struggles that newcomers — many of them Haitians — are facing to find jobs even after securing work authorization: language barriers, transportation challenges, and the need for soft skills training. The good news is that it seems like the state, along with nonprofit partners, is making an effort to connect new arrivals to these critical services.
Even if a job doesn’t come easy for migrants who have work permits, the area’s labor market is facing a severe shortage — Massachusetts has 42 available workers for every 100 open jobs, per the US Chamber of Commerce. The new arrivals will eventually secure some of those jobs.
Under the Biden administration, the TPS program, a relatively young policy created in 1990, has grown dramatically — and that’s a good thing. There are currently about 1.2 million immigrants — from 16 countries — who are either participating in or eligible for TPS. Incidentally, the vast majority of them are from Venezuela.
Studies have shown the great impact that the TPS program has had on the US economy, including by filling worker shortage gaps. Extending a new designation for Haitians is the right thing to do given the grave humanitarian need, but it’s also a good policy for the United States.