MIAMI — As the deadline approached for the end of Temporary Protected Status, Haitian workers, along with their supporters and a number of unions, rallied here to call for an extension.
TPS allows workers from countries designated by the federal government to temporarily live and work in the U.S. when wars or other life-threatening conditions exist in the countries they come from.
Some 250 people rallied in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood July 9, and UNITE HERE Local 355 organized a rally of 50 people the next day at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
At the July 9 rally, Margarette Nerette, a Haitian immigrant and leader of 1199SEIU Florida, answered the slanders that immigrants are living off government handouts. “We work hard. Some of us are doing two, three jobs to survive,” she said. “What the heck is going on in America? The government that is supposed to protect people is destroying lives.”
Government officials claim the dangerous conditions in Haiti, which led to granting TPS to Haitians in 2010 after a massive earthquake devastated the country, no longer exist. But today “every city in Haiti is occupied by gangs, killing us, kidnapping us,” Nerette said. “Sending us to Haiti means you want us to die!”
Helen Chaset, from Jewish Community Services of South Florida, brought solidarity to the rally. “For me, this is deeply personal. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I came to this country from a displaced persons camp in Germany,” she said. “We call for an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals.”
The next day the U.S. government granted a two-week extension of the deadline for TPS protection. But bosses at the AREAS company at the airport had already begun firing workers from Haiti.
“They jumped the gun to terminate people when they don’t have to be doing that,” Wendi Walsh, secretary-treasurer of Local 355, told the rally. In the healthcare and hospitality industries, large numbers of immigrants with TPS protection work some of the lowest paid and most difficult jobs.