(NewsNation) — Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield, Ohio, in recent years, seeing an opportunity to rebuild in the area after escaping mass violence and poverty back home in Haiti.
This week, the community was unwittingly flung into the national spotlight after former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance repeated unsubstantiated claims that some immigrants in the Ohio town are eating neighbors’ pets.
The claim has been refuted by local authorities, who said there are “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community” in a statement.
The Haitian population is estimated to be between 15,000 to 20,000 in the area and has provided a boost to the nearly dying city, which had lost both industry and population over the last decade, reported Dayton Daily News.
What is ‘Temporary Protected Status’ for migrants?
Haiti is among 15 countries that qualify for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a federal immigration designation that allows immigrants to legally live and work in the country for up to 18 months.
It allows individuals to come to the U.S. legally and immediately apply for a work permit. Many who come under TPS also apply for asylum, which takes a considerably longer time due to nationwide backlogs.
President Joe Biden’s administration announced an 18-month extension and redesignation to TPS for Haitians living in the country this year due to the ongoing instability of the nation.
Why are Haitians going to Ohio?
Criminal gangs have pillaged their way through the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, killing, raping and kidnapping thousands of people in recent years and leaving hundreds of thousands of others homeless and unemployed, which in turn has deepened poverty.
Haitians first started arriving around 2018 and chose Springfield because of job opportunities and affordable housing, Lucken Merzius, a Haitian immigrant living in the area, told PBS News.
“I got a decent job when I was in Haiti, and then had to make a difficult decision to leave. It wasn’t easy,” he told the outlet.
Once the first delegation arrived, they told family members and friends back home to join them, and from there, the community steadily grew, he said.
“The first motivation was job and work opportunities,” Rose Joseph, an Amazon warehouse worker who also does seasonal tax preparation work, told Reuters.
Joseph came to Springfield in 2022 after arriving in Florida two years prior to escape violence in Haiti. Like many others, he made his way north on word of good job prospects, the outlet reported.
The immigrants’ arrival brought an economic revival to the city, which was once a manufacturing hub but started to crumble once factories shuttered in the last decades.
The city shrank from a population of 80,000 to 60,000 by 2014. That number has since grown due to the increase in Haitian immigrants, reported The New York Times.
Haitians’ arrival causes mixed reactions among locals
While the immigrants were welcomed by many longtime residents, their arrival has also caused concern and even animosity among others who say the newcomers are taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.
“It’s causing sharp increases in rent and home prices, which is forcing people out of their homes,” Bill Monaghan, a former journalist in Springfield, told NewsNation.
“It’s causing delays in public safety response like police, fire or even emergency services. You go out to a site, and no one speaks English,” Monaghan also said.
The number of affordable housing vouchers fell as landlords moved to market-based rents that were rising in the face of higher demand, a blow to existing residents relying on them, reported Reuters.
These sentiments were exacerbated last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who had recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license.
During a city commission meeting Tuesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to further political points.
For others, the immigrants have felt like a lifeline.
“We want more jobs in our community, and in order to fill those jobs, some jobs need to be people who are not originally from here,” Jaime McGregor, who owns the manufacturing factory McGregor Metals in Springfield, told PBS.
McGregor told the outlet that about 10% of his workforce, about 30 employees, is Haitian.
“I wish I had 30 more,” he said. “Our Haitian associates come to work every day. They don’t have a drug problem. They’ll stay at their machine. They’ll achieve their numbers. They are here to work. And so in general, that’s a stark difference from what we’re used to in our community.”
NewsNation’s Rich McHugh and the Associated Press contributed to this story.