Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. 1689.
Mr. Speaker, for 4 years, our Nation suffered the largest illegal, mass migration in history at the hands of the Democrats. The cost to our country is immense: hospitals overrun with illegals demanding care; food pantries and homeless shelters overwhelmed; classrooms packed with non-English speaking students; rampant child, sex, and labor trafficking; hundreds of thousands of Americans dead from fentanyl overdoses; suppressed wages for working families; billions in welfare costs to support this population; and, worst of all, the introduction of the most violent criminals and criminal gangs and cartels in the world into our communities.
President Trump reversed these ruinous policies simply by enforcing our existing immigration laws. Illegal border crossings immediately plunged more than 95 percent. The largest illegal mass migration in history is now being followed by the largest legal deportation in history, although the Democrats are doing everything they can to obstruct it.
One aspect of this deliberately engineered nightmare was the abuse of so-called temporary protected status. It proved Ronald Reagan's maxim that there is nothing more permanent on this Earth than a temporary government program.
Now, as its name implies, temporary protected status is supposed to provide temporary residency to legal aliens who happened to be visiting here when a disaster in their own country temporarily prevented their safe return. The Democrats turned this temporary program into an open- ended and unconditional invitation for aliens to illegally enter our country and then remain indefinitely.
Under Biden, the number of TPS beneficiaries nearly quadrupled in just 4 years as aliens illegally entered our country in order to claim this status.
The Immigration and Nationality Act not only gives the President the power to extend temporary status as Biden did, it also gives the President the power to withdraw that status when it is no longer applicable or in the interests of our country, as this President has done.
Barack Obama granted temporary protected status to Haitian nationals in this country when Haiti suffered an earthquake in 2010. For 16 years, this status has persisted in different iterations, including multiple designations, redesignations, and extensions.
During the Trump administrations, the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end this temporary status for Haiti, noting that allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to reside in our country indefinitely is counter to our national interests. The vast majority of these TPS beneficiaries under Biden did not enter the country legally only to find themselves stranded by unfortunate events, rather they entered our country illegally to claim such status, encouraged, aided, and abetted by the Democrats in power.
Indeed, as the House Judiciary Committee documented in a report early last year, of the roughly 340,000 Haitian TPS holders, 312,000, 91 percent, came to the United States illegally. Their reward for committing this crime was a work permit and indefinite protection from deportation; and, yes, illegal entry into this country is a Federal crime.
Abuses like these allowed the TPS program to balloon from roughly 410,000 when Biden took office to nearly 1.5 million aliens from 16 different countries by the day he left office.
As the number of aliens with TPS skyrocketed, American communities such as Logansport, Indiana; Springfield, Illinois; and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, cried out for help. Charleroi's population of 4,000 swelled to 7,000 almost overnight as a flood of Haitian nationals took up residence.
The little town was forced to spend $400,000 for English language instructors and $1 million overall just to support the influx of students. This was all taken from the resources that would otherwise have been available to their own students.
Our Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee took testimony last year from a local official there, who told us of severe strains on housing, medical care, education, emergency services, law enforcement services, and other social services. He testified to a dramatic increase in traffic collisions and citizens of this peaceful, small town now afraid to walk the streets.
The Trump administration has heeded the cries of the American people. Since taking office, the President has moved to withdraw TPS status for foreign nationals whose conditions no longer warrant such status. In other cases, the Trump administration has determined that these TPS designations are simply not in our Nation's self-interest.
These decisions are clearly provided for under the Immigration and Nationality Act, but today my Democratic colleagues argue that we should ignore all of this, that we should return to the Biden administration's immigration policies, starting with Haitian TPS. If this bill passes, I think we can expect TPS status to be extended to the millions more who wish to exploit our country and its taxpayers.
Americans will not soon forget the image of thousands of illegal aliens from Haiti pouring across the southwest border and crowding under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Put simply, this bill would serve as de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens from Haiti who illegally poured across our southern border. America does not need to relive that nightmare, and that is a choice.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill today, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman tells us that Haitian TPS recipients contribute to our society. Well, no doubt some do. Overall, though, nearly 53 percent of Haitian households are on at least one major welfare program. Let me repeat that so that it sinks in. More than half of Haitian households are on welfare. That means they are taking from our society, not contributing to it.
Indeed, an exhaustive study in 2017 estimated that the average illegal immigrant costs taxpayers between $87,000 and $110,000 to support over a lifetime. That is a net drain after you account for the taxes that they pay. That is a minimum $27 billion cost to American taxpayers to maintain this population.
We are told many Haitian nationals fill healthcare jobs. Well, yes, they take healthcare jobs that would otherwise be filled by Americans. If Americans aren't taking those jobs, it is because cheap, migrant labor is suppressing wages in those sectors. That is why working families lost ground under the Biden administration.
As our immigration laws are enforced, wages for working families are again beginning to rise. This bill takes us a giant step backward for Americans, and that shouldn't surprise anyone who saw the Democrats' reaction on this floor when President Trump suggested that the first responsibility of this government should be to help Americans, not illegal immigrants.
Mr. Speaker, I am now honored and pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman said that Haitian TPS holders all entered this country through the front door legally. That is simply untrue. Yes, about 9 percent entered legally on visas; 91 percent entered illegally.
She tells us that Haiti is a dangerous place, and, therefore, our country must accept every Haitian who can illegally enter our country and then stay indefinitely.
Haiti isn't the only dangerous country in the world. Do the Democrats seriously argue that this is grounds for TPS for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in dangerous environments? This is absurd.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman tells us that we have no choice as a matter of humaneness but to accept these refugees into our country who are fleeing danger. This is the only refuge that they have.
That is simply not true. Bill Melugin of FOX News was at the border in 2021 when 15,000 Haitians bum-rushed our border. He just tweeted out his recollection of the events, and let me read them to you:
``Many of them later discarded their IDs and paperwork showing they had been living and working in South American countries for years (mostly Chile) as they prepared to make fraudulent asylum claims. Their documents were all over the ground. We collected many of them.''
They are not seeking refuge in the United States because they had already found refuge in other countries. They came here to exploit our system, an exploitation that the Democrats insist on aiding, abetting, and encouraging.
Again, the Democrats tell us that Haiti is a dangerous place, and I have news for them: Most of the world's population lives in dangerous places.
Do the Democrats seriously argue that Americans are obligated to admit hundreds of millions of people living in those dangerous places into the United States and then support them?
That appears to be their policy, and that certainly is what we have seen from them whenever they have taken power. It is what happens when governments become corrupt and refuse to protect innocent citizens from violent predators who roam the streets.
This should come as no surprise to Americans living in blue cities where leftist DAs refuse to prosecute dangerous criminals and prefer to release dangerous, criminal illegal aliens back onto our streets rather than turn them over to ICE to be removed from our country.
That is what comes when you allow hundreds of thousands of unvetted illegal aliens into our country from violent and lawless societies like Haiti.
Yes, many of these people are fleeing these conditions. Many others are creating them. Why would you allow the latter into our country to create the same violence and lawlessness?
That is why we have immigration laws: to separate out the good from the bad. There are good and bad in every community, but we need to keep the bad out. That is what the Democrats seek constantly to undermine.
This argument not only flies in the face of common sense, but it makes a mockery of the entire temporary protected status provisions of our immigration law. The law was designed to ensure that foreign nationals legally in our country, who are prevented from returning home because of temporary conditions, could remain here until those conditions have abated.
That law was never envisioned to allow aliens fleeing those conditions to seek permanent residence in America by illegally entering our country. Yet, that is precisely what the Democrats are turning this program into with this bill today.
If we don't enforce our immigration laws, we have no immigration laws. If we have no immigration laws, we have no border. If we have no border, then we have no country.
This bill makes a mockery of a program meant to provide temporary refuge for legal residents. This temporary status for Haitians has now gone on for 16 years. Ninety-one percent of these TPS holders are not legal visitors temporarily stranded in our country. Rather, they are illegal aliens who broke our laws specifically to benefit from TPS status.
The vast majority entered illegally during the Biden era of open borders. They overwhelmed local communities. Among this population came violent criminals who we can only count as they commit heinous atrocities like the one we saw in Fort Myers just 9 days ago.
When the President asked the Democrats to stand if they agreed that the first duty of the American Government is to protect the American people and not illegal aliens, not one of them stood. It shouldn't surprise us that they now bring this bill as the first step toward returning to the open-border policies of the Biden administration.
America, take heed. As this debate has once again made painfully clear, if the Democrats return to power, their first order of business will be to reopen our borders and allow the illegal mass migration into this country to continue. We can expect temporary protected status to become permanent protected status for every nationality the Democrats favor on the thinnest of pretexts. They have repeatedly made their intentions clear: to continue the ruinous open-border policies of the Biden administration.
I, for one, reject that bleak, lawless, impoverished, and violent future. I ask the House to reject it as well by rejecting this, the first in a long line of Democrat open-border bills.
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