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Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski could only marvel in amusement at the stories he has heard recirculated by former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. But he was eager to speak more seriously about a moral call to hospitality for newcomers to U.S. shores.
Like generations of immigrants who have come before them, including many of the ancestors of some contemporary U.S. Catholics who now seem to consistently deplore new immigrant arrivals, Haitian immigrants simply seek to escape economically and socially desperate conditions in their homeland, he said.
“This is the story of America,” Archbishop Wenski said. “Haitians have come to work; they’ve come to succeed. They’ll go where the jobs are.”
And in the end, the archbishop is certain the communities where they land will be better off for it—just like Miami where the grandchildren of Haitian immigrants of the past are heading to college or accepting positions of civic and professional responsibility that help South Florida thrive.
For more than five decades, his archdiocese has hosted a significant Haitian population. Now many newly arriving Haitians, he said, are quickly relocating to small cities like Springfield and Indianapolis, Ind., in search of jobs and affordable housing.
Archbishop Wenski said he made some inquiries about the church in Springfield after learning that so many Haitian people had been moving there and discovered that four parishes in the community were administered by just one priest. “So this is a tremendous opportunity if the church knows how to respond appropriately,” he said. “Because if there are 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 Haitians in that area, that could revitalize one or two of those parishes and bring new life to those parishes and new life to the community.”
Other struggling American cities have experienced a revival after the new immigrant groups moved in, he said, citing a civic renaissance in Newark, N.J., that began after Newark became a destination for newly arriving Brazilian immigrants in recent years.
Springfield’s Haitian community found itself in an unexpected and no doubt unwelcome national spotlight this week when both members of the G.O.P. ticket—Mr. Vance on the campaign trail and Mr. Trump during his debate with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris—repeated stories gleaned from unverified reports on social media. The national leaders alleged that individuals within the city’s growing Haitian community were, as the former president put it during the debate on Sept.10, “eating cats; they’re eating dogs … they’re eating pets.”
Municipal officials were quick to refute the stories, noting that no credible reports of the behavior described by Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance had been brought to Springfield police or municipal officials.
At Springfield’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center the day after the debate, Rose-Thamar Joseph told The Associated Press that the city’s Haitian immigrants are feeling a rising sense of unease as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs and straining city services.
“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Ms. Joseph said. The rising tensions in the community became apparent on Sept. 12, when Springfield City Hall, a local elementary school and all Clark County offices were closed after multiple bomb threats were phoned in to municipal agencies.
Tony Stieritz, the chief executive of Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, was understandably reluctant to comment on the president’s assertions, but the wild stories and the sudden national attention have had an impact. Like other Catholic Charities agencies that work with migrant communities, he said, his office has been under attack by phone, email and over social media by angry commentators accusing Catholic Charities of contributing to, even creating the crisis in Springfield by moving the Haitian migrant community there.
Mr. Stieritz acknowledged that refugee resettlement is indeed among the services his Catholic Charities office offers in Cincinnati, but he emphasized that southwestern Ohio Catholic Charities has had no role in resettling Haitian immigrants in Springfield, describing that as an “organic” process that occurred after the city became known by word of mouth within the Haitian community as a place where jobs and affordable housing could be found.
In fact, his office has only recently become involved with municipal and civic actors in Springfield, he said, providing translation services and other minor assistance to the growing Haitian community.
The folks attacking the southwestern Ohio agency may be blindly associating it with immigrant resettlement programs sponsored by other Catholic Charities offices around the country. Many have similarly come under attack based on erroneous reporting and misinformation campaigns on social media. Catholic Charities programs along the border have also been targeted by the Texas attorney general and a small group of congressional Republicans because of their work assisting migrants and asylum applicants.
Mr. Stieritz has been alarmed to see the Springfield Haitian community transformed into a political talking point and hopes to see more of the “level headed” leadership he believes was exhibited at a press conference on Sept. 11 convened by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. The governor made clear his support of a temporary protected status declaration by the Biden administration that has allowed thousands of Haitian immigrants to legally remain in the United States. But he demanded more support from the federal government to assist communities like Springfield that abruptly found themselves confronting an array of additional civic demands because of new immigrant arrivals.
“The Haitians who are here are hardworking people,” Mr. DeWine told reporters. “They have families and they care about their families and they care about their children. They came to Springfield, Ohio, for work and many of them are working and filling positions in Springfield.”
“They left a country that is abysmally poor,” he said, a nation notable for “violence at an extremely high level, a dysfunctioning government, a dysfunctioning police, a country that is by and large controlled by very violent gangs, so it is no wonder that these individuals left Haiti and are here in the United States.”
“I do not object to the temporary protected status program,” the governor added. “I do object to the fact that there’s really no plan that’s been put forward [by the federal government] for the settlement of these individuals.”
Some degree of tension has become evident in the city between longtime residents and its growing Haitian community. The city of about 60,000 people has seen as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants become new residents in just a few years. That rapid influx has created significant new demands on the city’s school and health systems, and local people complain that they cannot get through long lines to appeal for their own services at municipal and state aid offices. The exploding population has increased competition for affordable housing.
“The federal government simply has to be part of the solution,” Mr. DeWine told reporters. “They have to step up. It is their policies that have created these surges, [and] the federal government needs to assist these communities with real dollars.”
In a letter to Congress in July, City Manager Bryan Herk wrote that the burgeoning Haitian population puts “a significant strain on our resources and ability to provide ample housing for all of our residents. Despite 2000 additional housing units set to come online over the next three to five years, this is still not enough.”
Other complaints have surfaced about increasing automobile accidents as new drivers within the Haitian community take to the road.
Announcing $2.5 million in emergency state assistance to shore up Springfield’s public health services, the governor acknowledged those concerns and said they could be expected given the lack of experienced drivers within the Haitian immigrant community. He promised to send additional state troopers to the community to monitor traffic safety. The increasing number of car accidents in Springfield became especially highlighted after the death of an 11-year-old child. Aiden Clark was killed in August 2023 in a bus rollover incident caused by reckless driving by a Haitian immigrant.
In an especially poignant moment this week, Aiden’s father, Nathan Clark, standing with his wife, Danielle, at a packed municipal meeting in Springfield, demanded that politicians and social media personalities cease exploiting his family’s tragedy.
“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man,” he said. “I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”
Archbishop Wenski speculates that the Haitian community of Springfield has become “collateral damage” to the “border policy or lack of the border policy” of the Biden administration. In grappling with record border arrivals last year, numbers that have since diminished dramatically, the administration attempted to create more opportunities for regular channels of legal immigration from especially dysfunctional nations in the hemisphere, including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have now been protected from deportation through temporary protected status and allowed into the United States legally under humanitarian parole and other programs while new arrivals pursue asylum claims.
While that process, which can take years to resolve, proceeds, the new arrivals need to find work and support themselves and their families. The sudden influx has caused its share of local disruption, Mr. Stieritz acknowledged, adding, that Catholic Charities hopes to be part of the solution to Springfield’s new challenges.
He said his office was responding with “critical services like interpretation, legal assistance, job placement and English language classes to help the Haitian community integrate and thrive.”
Mr. Stieritz urged U.S. Catholics to assess viral stories and the election’s season’s sometimes unhinged rhetoric with a discerning eye. “We are called by our faith to always ask ourselves how God’s love needs to be put into motion in this world and how we can be the hands and feet of Christ, particularly to those who are most vulnerable,” he said. “That calling can be challenged significantly when it is disrupted by the noise and disinformation and often just lack of critical thinking that can be so prevalent across social media.”
Archbishop Wenski, for his part, hopes contemporary U.S. Catholics, now secure in their place in American society, would do more to counter xenophobic tensions that are stoked for political gain, reminding them they were once part of an outsider class of “Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, Polish Catholics” themselves. “We all suffered discrimination because we were outsiders. You would think that we would have a better memory about that and take that into account for the newcomers because we were once newcomers ourselves.”
Since the 19th century’s “know nothings,” “anti-immigrant sentiment has always been tied to anti-Catholicism in this country,” Archbishop Wenski said, “and those ties have not been severed yet.”
How does that explain the attitude and public comments of a Catholic convert like Mr. Vance? “Well, anyone can call themselves a practicing Catholic,” Archbishop Wenski said, “but we all have to practice until we get it right.”
More from America
- Racism, migration and exploitation: the bitter history of Haitian workers in the D.R.
- ‘Nobody wants to stay in this hell’: The moral call of Haiti
- Is the Biden administration ready to respond to a Haitian immigration emergency?
- Heat will drive the next wave of migrants. Pope Francis thinks it’s a grave sin to ignore their plight.
- Immigration and Catholic social teaching: how Trump and Harris’s platforms stack up
A Deeper Dive
- Springfield city officials refute viral migrant claims amplified by JD Vance and other top Republicans
- Aiden Clark’s dad begs Springfield, politicians: Stop using son to hate Haitians
- Springfield immigration FAQs
- Statement on migrant services in Springfield
- How to Manage the Border Without Sacrificing Human Rights
