DAVID MARCUS: 'Permanent' temporary status is bad for refugees and worse for America
Democrats across the country are up in arms over the Supreme Court’s decision last week, in Mullin v Doe, which allows the Trump administration to follow through on its plans to send back hundreds of thousands of temporary refugees from Haiti and Syria.
The debate over temporary protected status for refugees hinges on that first first word, "temporary," and it is reasonable for Americans, who bear the brunt of caring for these refugees, to ask what it actually means.
For his part, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who appears to be the communist leader of the national Democratic Party these days, had this to say: "The Supreme Court just sparked one of the largest attacks on immigrants in modern American history. In one fell swoop, thousands of Haitians and Syrians now risk losing the right to live and work in the country they call home."
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Setting aside the question of whether any of us could just suddenly call Gracie Mansion home and move in with Zo and Rama, what exactly does "home" mean here?
What is vital to understand in thinking about these questions is the core difference between a refugee and an immigrant, and the very different impacts that these two groups have on the native populations they come to live with.
For immigrants, the desire, and even need, to assimilate into American culture is paramount. After all, their children and grandchildren will be living here. But for refugees, there is always the possibility they will return home, hence the word "temporary."
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The upshot of this temporary status, as I have seen on the ground in Springfield, Ohio, and in Minneapolis, are populations of thousands of Haitians and Somalis, respectively, who are basically given license to live as they did at home, all with taxpayer benefits.
Of course, business owners who employ the Haitians in Springfield, along with the Chamber of Commerce and the libertarian Cato Institute, think this is wonderful. They get a taxpayer-subsidized workforce, which they claim is superior to employing native-born workers.
But according to the people of Springfield I spoke with in 2024, what they actually get is an influx of 20,000 foreigners into their town of 50,000. Native-born students told me the public school became pointless for them, as they tried to accommodate the mostly French-speaking Haitians.
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Meanwhile, the parents of young adults in Springfield decried the lack of housing stock now, as Haitian refugees rent the houses where they would otherwise visit their grandkids.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, who has been a champion for these invaded communities, explained on X how the problem is even worse than we thought.
"By the way, many of the Haitians who were given TPS under Joe Biden did not come from Haiti," Gill wrote. "They were living in nations like Brazil and Chile and came here to take advantage of Biden's open border. They were sent, not to Martha's Vineyard or Sherman Oaks, but to blue-collar, midwestern towns like Springfield, Ohio. And the people there were called racist for objecting to the culture of the town they built being fundamentally changed overnight."
This really is the problem in a nutshell. Temporary status that lasts for years, or even decades, is bad for the refugees, because it discourages assimilation. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Harrisonburg, Virginia, has been an official refugee relocation site for decades and it works because they take in about 200 a year, not tens of thousands. They also offer language and job training. It is a system and it works.
In Springfield, we see not a system, but a deluge, and not for nothing, the native folks had almost no say over this drastic change to the place they call home.
Sadly, under President Joe Biden and the Democrats, temporary protective status simply became a backdoor for amnesty, but with far more government goodies. These are not, for the most part, people fearing death or punishment in their homeland. They are simply seeking a better life in ours.
It is absolutely regrettable that the Biden administration, allowed over 10 million illegal immigrants and thousands of refugees into the country, because in so doing, it made common-sense immigration reform impossible until that mess is cleaned up.
The Supreme Court was right to rule that the Trump administration can remove these temporary migrants, and Trump should act forcefully.
In Springfield in 2024, there was great anger from citizens who believe their local politicians and officials sold them out to keep the flow of cheap Haitian labor coming. They knew they had one recourse: voting for Donald Trump, which they and millions of frustrated Americans did. Now, Trump can fulfill his promise to them.