While Residents of Springfield, Ohio, Reel from the Impact of Mass Immigration, Officials Turn a Blind Eye
FAIR Take | September 2024
Springfield, Ohio, is the latest city in America to be making headlines due to the Biden-Harris immigration crisis. This city, home to about 58,000 people, has experienced an influx of about 15,000 migrants – many of whom are Haitian nationals — over the past several years.
A 25 percent population spike in four years would strain the resources of any city. However, the influx has been particularly onerous for Springfield, where the median household income is just over $45,000 a year – barely half of the national median of $80,610. To compound the problem, most of the migrants arrive destitute, with poor job skills, many in poor health and a cultural abyss between them and the established residents of Springfield.
Haitians have been one of the largest nationality groups arriving in the United States illegally under the Biden-Harris administration. Since President Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered over 475,000 Haitians illegally entering the U.S. Of that number, approximately 211,000 Haitians have flown into the U.S. and been released on parole, even though they are inadmissible, not eligible for visas, and have no legal status upon entering.
In the early days of the Biden-Harris administration, many Haitians joined caravans of other migrants who made their way north from Central America to the U.S. border. To make the problem less visible to the American public, the administration created a special parole program that allows Haitian (along with Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans) illegal aliens to fly directly to the United States. And, even though massive fraud in that program was recently uncovered by FAIR, the program is still operating. Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration recently extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian nationals illegally in the U.S. who already had it for another 18 months, and “re-designated” those protections to cover an estimated 309,000 more recently arrived Haitians.
The problem is anything but obscure to the people of Springfield (and other communities around the country), who are living with the consequences of the policies put in place by the administration. In just the past three weeks, Springfield residents have shown up at two city council meetings to express their anger and frustration about the impact the mass migration on their community.
The sudden influx has left needy Springfield residents to compete with migrants for housing and social services. It also has strained state and local budgets, as Haitian parolees are immediately eligible for all major federal benefits programs (and thus most state programs) on the same terms as legal permanent residents. That means they may receive benefits under Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Federal Student Aid—assuming they otherwise qualify.
The arrival of thousands of Haitians in such a short period of time has also created a clash of cultures between long-time residents and newly-arrived Haitians. Last week, Gov. Mike DeWine announced $2.5 million in state assistance to help Springfield cope with the migrant crisis – an amount that is woefully insufficient to meet the needs of the community. That $2.5 million in taxpayer funding will support health screenings, vaccinations, English learning, translation services, and driver education classes.
Governor DeWine also dispatched the Ohio State Highway Patrol to Springfield to help address a public safety crisis resulting from TPS beneficiaries and parolees who have been issued licenses, but nevertheless seem unfamiliar with the rules of the road (even though they presumably passed both a knowledge and a road test). The arrival of Haitian migrants has resulted in a spike in road accidents, most notably one in 2023 that involved a school bus, resulting in many serious injuries and the death of an eleven-year-old boy. “To address the increase in dangerous driving in Springfield by inexperienced Haitian drivers and all others who disregard traffic laws, Governor DeWine directed the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) to support the Springfield Police Department with traffic enforcement,” stated a press release issued by the governor’s office last week.
Glaringly absent from the response to the crisis from both local and state officials is an unequivocal demand that the Biden-Harris administration halt the influx of migrants entering the country illegally. Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck candidly admits that the city has more than it can handle. “It’s taxing our infrastructure. It’s taxing public safety. It’s taxing our schools. It’s taxing health care…it’s taxing our housing,” he told Fox News. His solution does not involve stopping it, but rather more money from the federal government to cover the mounting costs. “Federal funding has actually been reduced over the last couple of years…we need additional support, we need additional resources,” he complained.
Likewise, Ohio’s Republican governor, expressed little concern about federal policies that unleashed the wave of migrants settling in Springfield. Speaking on Fox News TV last Thursday, Gov. DeWine lauded what he sees as the benefits of migrant influx and affirmed his support for the much-abused TPS program, followed almost immediately by a plea for more federal money to cover the costs.
“You talk to the employers, they’ll tell you [the Haitians] are very hard workers. One employer said, ‘I wish I could hire a hundred others,’” DeWine said. Despite this supposed benefit to his state, the governor argued that “the federal government has an obligation…to give Springfield some help” as it attempts to provide for the migrants’ health care needs and even to provide driver education courses to people Ohio has already licensed.
Understandably, residents of Springfield have grown weary of bearing the social and fiscal burdens of uncontrolled illegal immigration, and political leaders at all levels of government who ignore or demean their pleas for it to stop. As BJ Newman, a pastor at a local church, noted, immigration policy must take into consideration the interests of the American people if we are to avoid similar tense situations from playing out. “[T]here’s a larger narrative…that says the only compassionate response in a situation like this is you accept all of these immigrants and shut up. Any sense of raising our hand and saying ‘wait a second, we weren’t considered, we’re suffering her too.’ And the response is something like…you’re racist or you’re a bigot, why are you so anti-immigrant,” Pastor Newman said.
Fortunately, instead of simply asking for money, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost appears to be interested in addressing the root of the problem. Last week, Yost directed his staff to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.” In a statement, Yost said that Springfield and other communities have been “inundated and overwhelmed” by increasing migrant populations, citing strain on economy, medical and school systems. “This is absurd – Springfield has swollen by more than a third due to migrants,” Yost said. “How many people can they be expected to take? What are the limits to the federal government’s power? Could the federal government simply funnel into Ohio all the millions of migrants flooding in under the current administration’s watch?”
As the 17th Century philosopher John Locke noted, the social contract that allows governments function effectively requires the consent of the governed. In Springfield and countless other communities across the country, it is increasingly evident that our immigration policies are being imposed without that consent.