The Trump administration is in the process of ending Temporary Protected Status of some 350,000 Haitian refugees in the United States, and thousands of Syrians are soon to be given the same rough treatment.
The Haitians are already losing their jobs, and those in Springfield, Ohio, are being fitted with ankle monitors to prevent them from evading deportation. Springfield, of course, is the city where the Haitian community not so long ago was cruelly slandered by President Donald Trump for supposedly kidnapping people’s pet dogs and cats and eating them.
Also, Haitians are mostly Black people, and Syrians are mostly Muslims. For Trump and gang, this makes them excellent targets for racist demagogy.
For the Haitians specifically, their situation has not inspired nearly enough solidarity from the rest of the U.S. population. But their imminent removal from the United States has caused consternation among the residents and staff in elder care homes, rehabilitation centers, and assisted living facilities.
Evidently, a large proportion of the TPS holders from Haiti, many of whom arrived here after the disastrous 2010 earthquake in that country, have been working as caregivers in such institutions. By all accounts, they are much appreciated, respected, and loved by the elderly and sick people they tend to.
Administrators in assisted living, home care, and senior citizens homes are horrified because they are about to lose thousands of skilled, experienced, and respected employees—and nobody, least of all the Trump administration, seems to have any idea of where to find people to replace them.
The government always says these mass deportations will make it possible for “genuine Americans” to take their jobs, but what is the plan? That kind of work is hard, poorly paid, and takes training and skill. And in cases wherein the immigrant care workers are dealing with very sick and incapacitated elderly people, disruptions of care can be dangerous.
So, new programs for recruiting and training such workers will have to be set up at warp speed, and there will have to be large expenditure of money for this purpose. Don’t hold your breath, folks. Trump and MAGA do not care about that sort of thing.
The slander about eating people’s pets has not stopped completely, either. And a further attack on the Haitian population consists of the refrain “they messed up their own country, make them go back and fix it instead of messing up ours.” This is pure unadulterated racism, of course.
“They” messed up their own country? This perspective shows the abysmal ignorance of history on the part of those who invoke it.
Haiti was the second country in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States) to win its independence from a European colonial power, freeing itself from France in 1804. Vast numbers of Haitians had been brutally exploited enslaved workers in French-owned sugar plantations, and they were only able to free themselves through a hard and bloody struggle.
And even after their victory, French Emperor Napoleon I sent a fresh army to subjugate them and restore slavery. But the Haitian fighters defeated that force, too. The newly independent United States of America did not help the Haitians to achieve their liberation, mostly because many of the U.S. leaders were also masters and exploiters of slaves and feared that the Haitian example would disturb their bottom line. Only in 1862, during the U.S. Civil War, did the United States finally establish full diplomatic relations with Haiti.
Meanwhile, in 1825, the ultra-reactionary French king Charles X sent a fleet of warships to Haiti with a demand that the Haitian government indemnify the former French owners of property in the island for all their losses, including the value of “their” slaves whom Haiti’s independent government had freed.
Facing the probable bloody bombardment and invasion of his country, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer acceded to the French demands. To pay the millions of Francs the French were demanding, Haiti had to get loans from French banks, with the interest adding to the “owed” amounts. It is estimated that for many years, 80% of Haiti’s state revenues went to pay this extortionate debt to French banks.
Eventually, the French transferred the whole debt to National City Bank of New York, corporate ancestor of today’s Citi Bank, and the plunder continued to roll in, but this time to the United States. This robbery only ended in the 1940s, during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.
Think about it. Eighty percent of Haiti’s national revenue, for about a century, ended up in the hands of French and then U.S. finance capital. So, who messed up Haiti?
The story did not end there. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson send the U.S. Marines to “pacify” Haiti, an incursion which lasted from 1915 to 1934. The Marines fought against armed Haitian peasants, and covered themselves with the blood of many atrocities, including the murder of the outstanding Haitian-Dominican patriot Charlemagne Peralte. The situation was so bad that even a ranking Marine officer, Major General Smedley Butler, had a crisis of conscience and denounced the whole horror.
During the Cold War, the United States fully supported the dictatorship of a bizarre despot, President Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, because he was seen as an ally against socialist Cuba. After Papa Doc’s death and the overthrow of his son and successor, Jean-Claude Duvalier, U.S. and sometimes French interference in Haiti continued.
In 2004, the progressive, legitimately elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown with the connivance of the U.S., France, and Canada, after he had demanded that France repay what it had stolen from Haiti after 1825.
Again, who messed up Haiti and left it so bereft of resources to keep the government functioning, let alone to meet the aspirations of the Haitian people? Seen in historical context, the racist taunt that “you messed up your own country” can be dismissed with the contempt it deserves—as can similar accusations against poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
It is no mystery who did it. It was imperialism, plainly and simply. And we in the United States have a responsibility to show solidarity, not racist and aggressive responses, to the people of Haiti and many other lands.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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