Tag: homeowners

For more than a decade, Temporary Protected Status has allowed Marie to live and work legally in the United States. On Tuesday, that protection is set to end — even as she juggles a $2,896-a-month mortgage, raises two U.S.-born children, and drives two hours each way to her job at a South Florida casino.

“Everything depends on being able to work,” said the single mother, who asked to be identified only as Marie for fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on South Florida’s streets and highways.

Marie is among more than 300,000 Haitians whose TPS benefit is set to expire, a move by the Trump administration that immigration and Haitian advocates say ignores the reality of their crisis-wracked homeland, threatens to upend families and will send local economies into a tailspin.

Thousands of long-time residents who have paid taxes, and in some cases bought homes and raised U.S.-citizen children, now find themselves forced into an impossible choice: remain in the U.S. without legal authorization or return to a country many say they can no longer safely live in.

Florida hosts the largest concentration of Haitian TPS holders, estimated at a total of 158,000 with at least 93,000 in the workforce, according to an analysis by the policy organization FWD.us. Among them are 12,000 Florida homeowners like Marie out of an estimated 63,000 nationwide, according to Tessa Petit, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. The group has been advocating for an extension of TPS.

“I don’t know if I will drown or get a lifeline,” Marie said, explaining her sense of helplessness. “I am at a very difficult period. I can say I am going to sell the house, but I don’t know who would buy it. And if I say I’m returning to Haiti, where am I going back to? I don’t have a home to go to. I don’t have anyone to receive me.”

She worries constantly about her kids, ages 16 and 7, both born in the U.S.

“I don’t have anyone to keep them,” she said. The oldest was born during the year she traveled back and forth to Haiti buying goods for resale before the 2010 earthquake pushed her to migrate.

Immigration attorneys and advocates argue that the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the TPS designation for Haitians ignores the conditions in their homeland, including escalating gang violence that led to more than 8,000 deaths and 8,100 documented cases of sexual assaults last year.

Significant impact

Petit said if Haitian TPS holders were removed from Florida, it would lead to the loss of billions of dollars in federal, state and local taxes they currently pay.

“We are significant contributors to Florida’s many industries, including construction but particularly hospitality and restaurants,” she said. Haitians on TPS also own homes with a combined value of $19 billion nationwide, she said.

“We are not a threat to the United States. We deserve protection. We deserve to be here,” Petit said.

The impending end of TPS, she and others say, has created widespread fear and anxiety in the Haitian community because it means “sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths.”

Marie says she bought her house three years ago because purchasing made more sense than renting. At the time, the environment for Haitians wasn’t what it is now. Immigration reform was being debated in Congress, fueling hope that immigrants like her might finally get a pathway to legal residency. ICE raids were less aggressive, and TPS, first given in 2010 to Haiti after the quake, was being renewed every 18 months.

But that sense of security began changing both with Trump’s election and the notices she began receiving in December from her employer asking if she had her new work permit. “I told them I don’t have a new permit,” she said.

“It’s pressure,” Marie, who also has a monthly car payment, said. “That’s what we’re living under.”

‘We did not come here to be a burden’

For Marlene, a cleaner at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the pressure became so unbearable that she stopped driving months ago, she said.

“Every time I see a police car, I go into a panic; my heart starts beating rapidly,” she said. Overwhelmed by fear, she worries when her two adult children are outside the home.

“There are some situations that you are living, and you think to yourself you’re better off dead than living them. You don’t know where to turn, you don’t know what prayer to send up,” she said.

Arguing that TPS for Haitians should end, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said Haiti is safe for its nationals to return to. But the administration has also sought to paint Haitians as being a drain on the U.S. economy and overly dependent on government welfare services.

The image and the rhetoric are not only unfair but untrue, said Marlene.

“We have TPS, but we did not come here to be a burden on the government,” she said. “We accepted work that people in our country would call ‘humiliating’ — work not everyone here would do. As Haitians, we know why we are doing it, because we can’t return home.”

Before leaving Haiti, she was a professional with a good job and a comfortable life.

“My country pushed me out with all of my family,” she said. “God gave us the opportunity to arrive here, and we installed ourselves; we put down roots. We accepted all the humiliating conditions, and accepted work we would have not done back home so that we could live.”

Over the years she built a life in the United States, sending her two children to trade school — her son to become a dental hygienist, her daughter an electrician. Four years ago, the family bought a house with a mortgage of nearly $2,600 a month. All four family members, including her children, ages 30 and 32, and husband, are on TPS.

“They wanted to go to school, and I supported them,” she said. “My husband kept a roof over our heads and I paid their schooling. We are a family who respect the law; everything it tells us not to do we don’t do, and what it says we should, we do it. For example, paying taxes. We contribute in the country.”

Now, she says, she doesn’t know what to do or where to turn.

“I am breathing,” she said, “but I am not living.”

Uncharted territory

Advocates say Haitian immigrants have long complied with the law, paid taxes and contributed economically, and warn that the loss of TPS will reverberate across families and communities.

“There’s just no reason, no good policy anyone that anyone can provide for this happening,” said Helene O’Brien, Florida state director for 32BJ SEIU, a national union that represents service workers like custodians, security officers, doormen and maintenance staff.

The union, along with groups including the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, is backing a petition to attempt to force a vote in Congress aimed at protecting Haitians from losing their temporary protections. The measure requires 218 votes, which means all Democrats plus at least four Republicans would need to vote in favor.

“It’s an extreme long shot,” O’Brien acknowledged. “But it’s something.”

Congress, she said, is supposed to be a place where people turn to. “I’m not giving up,” she said. “We have a democracy. We’re going to use every lever we can to fight for good policy and fight for America, and America includes immigrants, these immigrants. So that’s all I can do.”

She said advocates and immigrants alike are navigating uncharted territory.

“We have no idea, really what to expect in America, day by day right now,” she said. “So we have to lean in and fight.”

That fight includes a recent vigil at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, press events and conversations aimed at helping the broader public understand the plight of Haitian immigrants whose lives are in limbo.

“It’s a tragedy of human life,” said O’Brien. “Until someone sees someone they can identify with, nothing seems real to people. It’s a terrible aspect of human nature.”

Holding onto faith

Wood, 32, a college professor and personal chef who has lived in South Florida since the 2010 earthquake, said she understands that reality all too well. She has spent more than $10,000 on legal fees trying to apply for a special visa based on her culinary skills, reaching out for support to former clients, including celebrities.

When responses came too late — or not at all — Wood, who asked that her full name not be used, missed the deadline and was forced to halt her attempt to apply for a special immigration-skills visa before Tuesday.

“It’s scary. Some days I feel very numb. I don’t even know what to think, how to feel when I think about it. We’re talking about my whole life here,” Wood said. “I get very frustrated thinking about the situation very much so, but at the same time, I have to face reality.”

A Broward County high school graduate with a business degree and culinary training, Wood teaches at a local college. Last week, she said, the school’s human resources department called her and nine other Haitian TPS holders in, and then cut off her system access even though the TPS expiration date had not yet arrived.

“People ask, ‘Why don’t you try something else?’” she said. “It’s not that simple. There aren’t a thousand other options for us. This situation is very complex.”

Still, she is holding onto her faith.

“I firmly believe that the God that I serve, my God, will do something else. There will be a turnaround. This is my belief,” she said. “However, if we’re looking at it on the human side of what’s happening, it’s madness.”