Haitian Immigrants Find New Foothold and a Familiar Backlash in the Midwest, South Louisiana Illuminator

Emboldened by work permits and a newfound freedom, Haitian immigrants are leaving their old strongholds in Florida and New York. They often find good jobs while remaining wary of how they will be received in new places in the Midwest and South.

This move helps explain why Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have become embroiled in the presidential election. For weeks, Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance have been spreading false rumors that Haitian immigrants in the city are eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

Until recently, “we counted Haitians in the dozens,” says Leonce Jean-Baptiste, who helped found the Haitian Association of Indiana in 2008. The association’s goal: “just to make sure that our children would know that there is such a thing as Haitian culture, that their parents come from a very strong, very rich culture and ethnic background,” he said.

Now the association has its hands full helping newcomers with housing and learning the ways of the Midwest, Jean-Baptiste said. Immigrants are coming to fill factory jobs in Indiana, a trend that began during the pandemic.

“Here in Indiana, in Ohio and in the Midwest in general, the manufacturing industry was desperate for workers and so it was a perfect kind of marriage,” Jean-Baptiste said. “Haitians were looking for jobs, they may have lost a low-paying job at a hotel in Florida, they don’t have access to government benefits because they are not citizens, and here they can do better.”

As more Haitian immigrants have the freedom to work legally anywhere because of work permits granted under the Biden administration, many have moved from unofficial jobs in Florida or New York to factory work in states like Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. .

These states saw some of the most significant increases in the Haitian immigrant population between 2019 and 2023, according to the most recent estimates available from the American Community Survey, according to an analysis by Stateline.

In that time, Indiana’s Haitian immigrant population has increased eightfold to 12,465; nearly quadrupled in North Carolina, to 7,752; in Texas more than doubled to 7,010; in Ohio more than tripled to 5,264; in Virginia more than doubled to 6,342; and almost fivefold in South Carolina, to 2,569.

Meanwhile, the more established strongholds where most Haitian immigrants live are seeing less growth: New York (up 5%), Florida (up 1%) and Massachusetts (down 1%).

“The situation in New York is that the cost of living and housing is keeping out the new Haitians. They move where there are jobs and there is housing – I know people who have gone to North Carolina, South Carolina,” said Francois Pierre-Louis, a Haitian-born professor of international migration studies at City University’s Queens College campus. of New York.

Those carving out new territory in the Midwest tend to be more established immigrants who already know enough English to get by, Pierre-Louis said.

“In order to move to the hinterland, you have to have a certain level of cultural understanding of the U.S. to feel comfortable,” he added.

‘It’s always been a struggle’

In Florida and New York, where about two-thirds of Haitian immigrants still live, more established immigrants with their own memories of discrimination are helping new immigrants settle.

Mayor Alix Desulme of North Miami, Florida – the city with the highest concentration of Haitian Americans, about 38% in recent years – remembers being taunted as a boy when he arrived in Brooklyn, New York, by people who wrongly believed that Haitians spread AIDS.

“I’m an immigrant and I’m a black man. These things are not going away,” Desulme said. “We’re in a state, Florida, where the governor wants immigrants to go somewhere else. It has always been a struggle for us as a people, but we came to this country for a better life.”

Dr. Pierre Arty, a Haitian-born psychiatrist based in Brooklyn, said politically motivated denigration of Haitians has an impact he tries to mitigate in his work with new immigrants for Housing Works, a Brooklyn nonprofit. It happened in the 1980s with AIDS and it’s happening again with false stories about eating pets, he said.

“We have social media with the rapid spread of false information, negative memes about Haitians and offensive jokes. It can promote inferiority complexes and shame, as opposed to pride in being part of this community,” Arty said.

“This furthers dehumanization and revives historical black tropes of us being less than animals,” he said. “Imagine what this can do to children’s psyches when other people make fun of them.”

The growth of Haitian immigrant communities since mid-2023 is difficult to estimate, but has clearly continued in some states.

Clark County, Ohio, where Springfield is located, saw an increase in Medicaid enrollment by people of Haitian background, based on their choice of Haitian Creole language, from about 3,000 in mid-2023 to nearly 8,000 in July 2024. numbers dropped to about 7,200 in August, according to the county’s Department of Job & Family Services.

The number of immigrants in the community is likely much higher because not all of them have Medicaid, and Medicaid numbers will likely continue to decline as more people get jobs, said the department’s director, Virginia Martycz.

In Indiana, Jean-Baptiste believes the number of Haitian Americans and other immigrants has risen to 30,000, up from the roughly 14,000 counted last year by the American Community Survey, based on contacts with his organization and social services reports based on of names.

‘A little more mobility’

In New York, as in Florida, an established community helps new immigrants settle before moving to areas with more jobs and more affordable housing.

“The work permit is a ticket to a little more mobility,” says Daniel Jean-Gilles from Nyack, New York, where he is part of a wave of previous Haitian immigrants trying to support newcomers. “I see a lot of new faces here. They come here to stay with family and friends while they wait for a work permit, after which they can move around and get that job. I hear about people moving to North Carolina, Arizona for work.

“Housing and employment are very limited here. They have to go where the jobs are,” said FritzGerald Tondreau, an immigration attorney and child of Haitian immigrants who works in Spring Valley, New York.

Tondreau showed videos of brutal beatings and executions by gangs in Haiti, posted by the gangs to intimidate enemies and families of hostages, and said gangs have set up roadblocks to demand money on major roads. “This affects every facet of life in Haiti and makes it very unsustainable,” he said.

Work authorization is available for many Haitian immigrants, either as part of federal Temporary Protected Status for unauthorized immigrants or through humanitarian parole for those awaiting asylum hearings if they crossed the border legally and do not have a serious criminal record, Julia Gelatt said , deputy director of the immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC

Many Haitian immigrants are taking advantage of a new federal program that allows them to travel directly from Haiti if they have a sponsor willing to support them during a temporary humanitarian parole.

Temporary protected status, first granted to Haitian immigrants when their country was deemed too dangerous to return due to earthquakes in 2010, is now held by an estimated 200,000 Haitian immigrants, second in number only to Venezuelans.

The status was recently extended by the Biden administration until 2026 and could theoretically end, but that’s not likely, Gelatt said. The Trump administration tried to end temporary protected status for Haiti and some other countries, but the policy was blocked by lawsuits until the Biden administration overturned it.

The bottom line, Gelatt said, is that many new Haitian immigrants are protected from deportation and can work legally for the time being, but few have a path to permanent legal residency and citizenship.

“This temporary status affects their sense of inclusion and their willingness to invest in their future in the United States,” she said. “They can never be sure that they can stay.”

In recent decades, Haitian immigrants in the United States, without a clear path to citizenship for many, have learned to make peace with uncertainty.

“It’s about waiting a long time and being good citizens and staying under the radar,” Pierre-Louis said. “And most Haitians are good citizens. They go to church and work. They want to work. They don’t beg for anything here.”