“Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said Haitian TPS holders are vital to local communities and businesses and called for extending TPS for Haiti.
Pressley posted on X:
Haitian TPS holders are not abstract policy debates.
They’re our neighbors, restauranteurs, and community members who are like family.
We must extend TPS for Haiti and protect the workers who make our communities feel like home.
Pressley also shared a video in which the speaker said:
Haitian TPS holders are not abstract policy debates. They are cooks, dishwashers, servers, managers and owners. They’re experienced reliable, legally authorized workers, and they’ve become our family. Many are parents to us, citizen children. Many care for elders. Many have worked in the same restaurants for years, some for decades, paying taxes and doing everything right under the promise TPS made to them.
If TPS is terminated, the damage will be immediate.
This isn’t just a labor issue. It’s a supply chain issue that hits consumers, small businesses and local economies all at once. When those workers disappear, the food chain doesn’t bend, it snaps. This is a humanitarian issue, and it’s also an economic one. You cannot remove a vital workforce and expect small businesses or communities to survive the shock.
Pressley’s comments come as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in late April over whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for about 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians after lower courts blocked the move.
A January report by the New York Times said at least 50,000 migrants with protected status work in health care, and that Haitians held about 111,000 health care jobs in the United States in 2023.
The report highlighted Springfield, Ohio, where more than 10,000 Haitians have settled in recent years and where Haitian migrants work in hospitals, clinics, warehouses, and factories.
The New York Times also reported that nursing homes and senior care centers in states with large Haitian populations, including Florida, New York, and Massachusetts, have warned that they could lose longtime workers if TPS is terminated.
According to the State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report cited by Breitbart News, about 3,000 Haitian police officers departed Haiti since 2022, with the majority anecdotally leaving through the U.S. government’s visa processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and the humanitarian parole program that included Haitians beginning in January 2023.
Breitbart News also referenced a Miami Herald report stating that an estimated 30 percent of Haiti’s teachers have migrated to the United States and elsewhere. Gang violence and political instability in Haiti have fueled the broader “brain drain” described by Breitbart News.
