Trump Ends Protection Program for Haitians; Many Have Lived Here Most Their Life

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake hit the island nation of Haiti near its capital Port-au-Prince.  An estimated 220,000 lives were ended and at least 300,000 more injured.  A reported 105,000 houses were destroyed and another 200,000 houses were badly damaged.  The nation was essentially in ruins and has struggled to recover over the past nearly 8 years.

....59,000 Haitians live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010, Homeland Security officials said on Monday.  [They] benefit from the Temporary Protected Status program, which was signed into law by President George Bush in 1990

Last week, Trump ended Haitians protection under this program with a mandate to leave the U.S. by July 2019 or face deportation.

The decision on Monday by Elaine Duke, the acting [Department of Homeland Security] secretary, set a termination date of July 2019 to give people time to make arrangements to leave.

The United States offered the protection to Haitians after the earthquake in January 2010 that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced more than a million and led to a cholera outbreak. Haitians who entered the United States within a year of the disaster qualified for the status.

Haitians are the second-largest group of foreigners with temporary status. The protection is extended to people already in the United States who have come from countries crippled by natural disasters or armed conflict that prevents their citizens from returning or prevents their country from adequately receiving them.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is still struggling to recover from the earthquake and relies heavily on money its expatriates send to relatives back home. The Haitian government had asked the Trump administration to extend the protected status.

Many groups, including conservative ones, have asked the Trump administration not to deport Haitians.

...the Congressional Black Caucus, the United States Chamber of Commerce and immigrant advocacy organizations had urged the Trump administration to extend the protections again. On Monday, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, called the decision “unconscionable.”  “There is no reason to send 60,000 Haitians back to a country that cannot provide for them,” he wrote. “I am strongly urging the administration to reconsider.”

Sources:

https://www.dec.org.uk/articles/haiti-earthquake-facts-and-figures

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/us/haitians-temporary-status.html