An estimated 1,300 to 2,000 Haitian children reside in Springfield, although the exact number of those born in the country and who are therefore United States citizens is unknown. (The U.S. Supreme Court will decide this year whether President Trump can end birthright citizenship, currently protected under the 14th Amendment, of the Constitution.)
Social service agencies have been working with the Haitian community for months, advocating that children born here get passports so they can travel with their parents to whatever country they settle in. One group has helped at least 150 children obtain the documents they need.
Without a passport, the children can’t travel out of the country. As American citizens, they can’t legally be deported or detained, though courts have ruled that it has happened.
Agencies have been trying to encourage families to fill out power of attorney and guardianship forms so the children who stay here have someone to legally make decisions for them, like enrolling them in school or approving medical care.
But parents have been reluctant to make those plans.
“They truly believe there will be a Hail Mary moment, and they won’t have to go. They think it’ll be OK,” Casey Rollins, the executive director of St. Vincent De Paul in Springfield.
“We’re starting to see cases in which the parents are now gone, and children are with extended family, but what happens when that extended family potentially gets deported? Where are those children going to go?” she asked.
Moreover, state agencies are trying to figure out what happens if children become dependency cases.
“We’re not really sure,” said a spokesman for the Clark County Department of Job and Family Services. “We’re trying to figure that out, and that’s a lot of kids to figure out.”
Locally, discussion has centered on how businesses that employ Haitians will be hurt, the impact on the city’s economy, and whether ICE agents will descend on the city.
But what about the children?
It’s one of the immigration issues that doesn’t get much attention. Some will stay behind at an undetermined cost, emotionally and financially. So instead of mom and dad working here and supporting their child, the child could become a ward of the state, supported by taxpayers.
Beyond the passport problem, there’s a safety issue. Parents who go back to Haiti will return to a country that’s so unsafe the U.S. State Department says Americans shouldn’t travel there. Haiti has the third-highest crime rate in the world. More than 5,000 people have died in gang violence over a nine-month period, and armed gangs control much of the capital.
Economically, nearly 60% of the country’s nine million people live in poverty, many in dilapidated structures with no plumbing, and more than one in three Haitians live on $2.15 a day.
So parents have a gut-wrenching choice: Take their children to a violence-torn and poverty-stricken island or give them a chance at a better life.
That’s some choice.
I’m not making the case to change the terms of TPS, a program that’s “temporary” and gives U.S. presidents the right to extend (Biden) or end (Trump) it. That’s the law, and those without legal status have to leave.
But the government’s decades-long inability to develop a workable immigration system has consequences that go beyond the obvious.
Children are one of those consequences, and Springfield is about to find that out.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday.