You might have seen these unfounded accusations that JD Vance and others are spreading, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are killing ducks and people’s cats for food. Now, there is no evidence this is happening. Local officials tell us they’ve received no reports of this. So what’s going on here?
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Springfield, Ohio, a city that used to have a declining population, has in recent years seen an over 20% population boom, and that has largely been driven by the arrival of Haitian immigrants. Producer Mary Fecteau and I recently went and did a story.
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Lucas Merzus is one of those Haitians, and he told us that he made the very difficult decision to leave his home country because his country is imploding. Haiti is in political crisis. Its president was assassinated a few years ago, armed gangs now patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince, and tens of thousands of Haitians have been forced to flee their homes.
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Many came to the US and were granted what’s called temporary protected status, which means they’re here legally, they’re not being threatened with deportation, and they are allowed to work.
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One local employer, Jamie McGregor, who’s the CEO of McGregor Metals told us about 10% of his workforce is Haitian, about 30 workers. He says he wished he had 30 more, describing them as diligent, hard-working, no drama.
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This isn’t to say that the Haitians’ arrival has been totally smooth. The mayor of Springfield is Rob Rue, and he told us that the city’s services and infrastructure have been stressed. The local schools have seen a quadrupling in the number of students who need English language help, the local health center spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in translation services, and the fire and EMS departments are seeing rising numbers of calls.
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But what really brought the issue to ahead was a terrible accident that happened last year.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Right now, multiple law enforcement agencies are on the scene of a deadly school bus crash.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
A Haitian driver without a US license hit a school bus and injured several children and killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark. After that accident, anger at the Haitian community in Springfield erupted. At city commission meetings, people vented their fury.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
The majority of the Haitians here are low-skilled and they’re illiterate.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Some people made overtly racist comments about the Haitians, others accused city officials and the mayor of actively inviting and encouraging more and more Haitians to come to Springfield.
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William Monaghan runs a Facebook group in Springfield that’s become a kind of a clearing house for concerns about the Haitians. We sat down with William and a group of people from that group, and they argue that their criticisms of this circumstance have nothing to do with race. They say that rents in the city have gone up, insurance rates have gone up. They don’t feel safe on the streets or in the stores. They say that reckless driving and car accidents have gone up. And they argue that local officials simply brush their concerns aside.
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We also spoke with a man named Viles Dorsonville. He runs a local community organization that helps Haitians integrate, and he says, “On one hand, it’s understandable that so many new arrivals who don’t speak English into an established community could cause conflict.” But he says the vast majority of Haitians he has worked with simply want to integrate, work hard, raise their families, and live in peace. But he says it’s understandable that not everyone sees it that way. And so it’s in that environment in the middle of a heated presidential campaign that this inflammatory accusation that Haitians are stealing people’s pets for food gets aired and gets spread across the internet.
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JD Vance put out a statement today stating that his office had received numerous complaints of this happening, but he acknowledged that they all could turn out to be rumors. Again, the police in Springfield have said that there has been no uptick in crime related to the Haitians, and very specifically, no reports they’ve received of people’s pets being abducted.