Constituent Testimony During the Congressional Field Hearing on Haitian Tps Termination

Floor Speech

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Ms. PRESSLEY. Mr. Speaker, as part of the Congressional Field Hearing on Haitian TPS Termination held in the Massachusetts 7th Congressional District, constituents from the community were invited to discuss the importance of extending TPS for Haitian nationals. Therefore, I include in the Record their testimonies:

Thank you, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Senator Ed Markey, for holding this public forum to hear directly from TPS holders like myself.

My name is Jose Urias, and I am a TPS holder from El Salvador. I am also one of the Co-Coordinators of the Massachusetts TPS Committee and a member of the National TPS Alliance.

I have lived in Malden, Massachusetts for over 20 years with my wife and two U.S. citizen children. I work hard every day to provide for my family and to be a productive member of my community in Malden. I am very proud of my two children. My oldest is 19 years old and is in the second year of college. I would love to be able to go to his graduation. My youngest is 13 and is in middle school in the Malden schools.

Like nearly 15% of other TPS holders, I've started a business, employing others and generating economic activity for my local community. I run a construction and real estate business that is helping to rebuild and revitalize housing throughout my community. Over the past few years, my company has worked on 56 houses. I'm proud of my team's ability to fix up homes and provide high-quality housing to new homeowners in my community.

Across the country, TPS holders like me generate $21 billion for the U.S. economy each year. But it's incredibly hard doing that, especially now with so much uncertainty about our status. Bank financing is very important to my business. I need loans to purchase properties and to help finance the upgrades and repairs I make to those properties. How can I get a loan to finance one of my development projects when I don't know what my legal status will be in a year?

If TPS is canceled, I would be forced to close my business. This would not only have a negative impact on my family, it would have a negative impact on my local community. My employees would no longer have work. Most of my vendors are other local businesses, and they would no longer have my business. The closing of my small business would have hundreds of thousands of dollars of negative economic impact on my local community.

I have lived in the United States for over 30 years. There is nothing ``temporary'' about the life I have built here. I have set down roots, grown a family, and built a business. Instead of canceling TPS, we need a legislative solution that creates a path to permanent residency for families like mine.

Immigrants like myself have been the economic engine of the United States since its founding. Please help me continue to do that by protecting TPS and creating a permanent path to residency in this country.

Thank you for your time, Jose Urias

Business Owner & Co-Coordinator of the Massachusetts TPS Committee __________

Hello, my name is W.V., and in 2009 my life changed unexpectedly.

I traveled to Florida for a brief vacation. During that time, a family member living in New Jersey became seriously ill, and I traveled there to assist her. Before I was able to return to my home country of Haiti, a devastating earthquake struck. The place where I lived collapsed, and the building where I worked was completely destroyed. I could not return home. When Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was designated for Haiti, it brought me immense relief during an incredibly painful and uncertain time.

While mourning the loss of so many family members and friends, I knew I had to find a way to move forward. In 2011, a close family friend helped pay for my nursing assistant training. This opportunity allowed me to begin working in a nursing home, where I provided care to elderly Americans. Through this experience, I realized how many workers in the caregiving field are immigrants who dedicate themselves to serving others.

I later worked in an adult day care setting, assisting veterans diagnosed with schizophrenia and ensuring they received compassionate, dignified, and respectful care. This work has been more than a job--it has been my way of giving back and contributing meaningfully to the country that offered me protection.

In 2018, conditions in Haiti worsened significantly following the assassination of the president. Gang violence and widespread kidnappings escalated, making everyday life unsafe. The level of insecurity has made it impossible for me to return, leaving no realistic hope of safely going back. As a result, I have remained in the United States--continuing to work, pay taxes, and provide daily living assistance to Americans with disabilities, while contributing positively to my community.

I have now lived in the United States for 16 years as a TPS recipient. I have no home to return to because of ongoing gang violence and political instability in Haiti. I do not know where to turn if TPS is ended. I currently rent an apartment in Boston and purchased a car so I can get to work.

My community here is all that I have built over the years.

I am deeply worried about the possibility of losing my ability to work if my work permit expires with the termination of TPS. The thought of losing everything I have worked so hard for is overwhelming. I am worried about my patients who love me so much because I take good care of them.

I pray that the Supreme Court will consider the plight of all TPS recipients across the United States--people like me who have built lives here, serve our communities, and have nowhere safe to return.

Thank you so much for your support. __________

I am a Haitian national living legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). I was forced to leave Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake and the extreme rise in kidnappings and violence that made daily life unsafe.

I am a compassionate, reliable, and hardworking individual. Since arriving in the United States, I have worked consistently to support myself. I do not rely on government assistance such as food stamps or public benefits. I pay taxes on my earnings and contribute fully through all required payroll deductions.

My work is centered on caring for American citizens who need support with daily living activities. I help individuals with tasks such as bathing, personal hygiene, dressing, meal preparation, and mobility. I perform this work with compassion and dignity, ensuring that those I care for feel safe, respected, and comfortable.

Many of the people I assist live with serious conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, stroke, multiple sclerosis, physical disabilities, depression, or advanced age. Caregiving work like this is demanding, yet it is often carried out by immigrants--people who did not grow up in this country--who take care of homes, yards, children, and the most vulnerable members of society.

This work is not easy, but I am proud to do it. I am proud to help improve the quality of life for vulnerable individuals, and I am proud to contribute to the well-being of my community and to the values that make America strong.

I hope that one day my country will improve. However, current conditions in Haiti remain dangerous, and even the U.S. government has stated that it is not safe for Americans to travel there. For this reason, I have chosen to remain in the United States to protect my life.

God bless America. __________

My name is Rebecca Zama, and I serve as Legal Services Coordinator and Immigration Policy Analyst with SOIA. As a proud first-generation Haitian-American, an immigration attorney, and the Legal Service Coordinator and Immigration Policy Analyst for the City of Somerville, I submit this written testimony to address the devastating impact that terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian individuals and families would have on our communities in Somerville, across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and throughout our nation.

The Haitian community in Somerville and across Massachusetts is vibrant, thriving, and essential to who we are as a Commonwealth. Since 2010, TPS has been a lifeline that allowed Haitian families to find safety in the United States during times when conditions in Haiti have been, and continue to be, unstable and unable to facilitate the safe return of Haitians living in the United States. TPS has enabled Haitians across the country to contribute to the fabric of our cities, states, and country as a whole. They have planted roots here and sown seeds of community, culture, and connection.

Some may point to the word ``temporary'' in Temporary Protected Status and suggest that termination was always inevitable. However, the guidelines are clear as to what the law says. TPS exists precisely because conditions in certain countries make safe return impossible. The statute grants the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to designate countries for TPS when there are conditions such as ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent safe return. The program is designed to be responsive to facts on the ground, not to operate on arbitrary timelines, quotas, and motives that ignore documented country conditions. The Haitian community has been granted TPS because Haiti has faced continuous, documented instability that meets the statutory criteria. That instability has not disappeared, but rather, it has intensified. To terminate protection now would contradict the very purpose of the program and violate the humanitarian spirit of the law that created it.

It is critical to understand that people who have TPS have done things the ``right way.'' They followed the law and applied for this relief, which has allowed them to live and work lawfully in the United States for over 15 years. They have registered with the government, undergone background checks, paid fees, and maintained their status through regular renewals. They have complied with the requirements placed upon them. The termination of TPS is not simply the expiration of a benefit, it is stripping individuals of their lawful status and forcibly rendering them undocumented. People who have been authorized to work, pay taxes, contribute to Social Security, and build their lives legally would overnight become subject to deportation through no fault of their own.

Haiti currently faces tremendous hardship. Political instability, humanitarian crisis, natural disasters, and economic collapse have created conditions that make return not just difficult, but dangerous. To terminate TPS now, at this moment of unprecedented crisis, would be to ignore reality and abandon the moral and legal framework of TPS. We would be sending children, mothers, fathers, workers, students, and community members back to circumstances where their safety cannot be guaranteed.

In addition, TPS termination would have catastrophic consequences for mixed-status families; households where parents hold TPS, but their children are U.S. citizens. The termination of their parents' protected status would force parents to weigh impossible choices: Do they uproot their children and take them to a country they may have never known, away from the only home they've ever had? Or do families face separation, with children growing up without their parents, their stability shattered, and their futures uncertain? This is not a theoretical issue. These are the very real questions that our residents and community members are asking themselves as TPS for Haiti is set to expire on February 3rd. For our children, what is next for them if this protection is stripped away? Separating families in this way undermines everything we claim to value about family unity, community stability, and opportunity.

When we protect TPS, we protect families. We uphold a fundamental human value, a value that implores us to not turn our backs on people in their time of need. This is not merely an ``immigrant'' issue, the termination of TPS impacts all of us, citizens and noncitizens alike. This issue is about whether we will honor our commitments, protect vulnerable families, and recognize the immeasurable contributions of our Haitian neighbors. The path forward is clear: we must preserve and protect TPS for Haitians.

Thank you for your consideration of this testimony.

Respectfully submitted,

Rebecca Zama

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