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The seeds of controversy in Springfield were sown long before eating pets entered the contentious debate – and it can be traced to Biden
When Donald Trump claimed the cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio were falling prey to Haitian immigrants, it shone a national spotlight on the small city.
The unsubstantiated reports – which appear to be the result of frenzied rumours and half-truths – triggered a predictable reaction.
On the Left, they prompted derision and charges of racism. By some on the Right, they were taken verbatim.
But the seeds of the controversy in Springfield were sown long before household pets entered the contentious debate – and some local officials and policy analysts trace them to Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
For several years, Springfield has been struggling to contend with a large influx of Haitian immigrants. Officials say between 15,000 and 20,000 have arrived in the small city of 59,000 people in four years.
By July, the city’s manager, Bryan Heck, felt compelled to sound the alarm over the pressures on the city’s public services in a letter to Ohio’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown.
“Springfield has seen a surge in population through immigration,” Mr Heck wrote, “putting a significant strain on our resources”, in particular housing availability.
Officials pinpointed Mr Biden’s expansion of protections for immigrants as a key cause for the sudden uptick.
Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of the Midwestern state, singled out the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programme, a policy which has been massively increased under Mr Biden.
The US president acted in June to designate 300,000 Haitians already in the country eligible for temporary legal status under the programme.
It granted the group, regardless of whether they had entered the country legally or illegally, protection from deportation and the right to work because conditions in the Caribbean island were deemed too unsafe for them to return.
The Biden administration also renewed TPS for around 200,000 Haitians formerly designated under the policy.
Taken together, it marked one of the largest ever expansions of a programme that had previously only been used sparingly since its creation in the 1990s.
Nearly 900,000 people from 16 countries are estimated to be registered for TPS. People from Haiti, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras and Ukraine are the most common nationalities.
Haiti, with its political instability, high poverty and crime rates, and proximity to the US, has posed a particular challenge for the Biden administration as it has sought to distance itself from Trump’s hardline policies while at the same time discouraging illegal crossings.
The dilemma came to a head in 2021, when footage (pictured below) of a large-scale caravan of mostly Haitian migrants camped on the banks of the Rio Grande made the national news.
Mr Biden’s administration faced fury from both sides of the political spectrum over its handling of the situation.
The images of more than 12,000 people camped around a Texas bridge sparked outrage among Republicans who accused the White House of lax border policies, while the images of border agents on horseback and brandishing whips triggered a progressive backlash.
In response, the White House carried out rapid expulsions, made possible by a pandemic-era authority enacted under Trump that allowed deportations without the opportunity to seek asylum.
But by January 2023, the Biden administration had allowed those powers to expire and launched an online app, CBP One, to admit up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in the hopes of making illegal immigration less attractive.
In its first year, more than 357,000 people were granted parole and allowed to enter the country under the programme. Haitians comprised the biggest group, making up 138,000 of the total.
Migrants must apply via the app, fund their own transport to the US and have a financial sponsor in the country to be eligible. If approved, they can stay for two years and receive a work permit.
Mr Biden’s unfettered use of parole authority in the face of a gridlocked Congress has come to form a major piece of his administration’s immigration policies.
But critics have argued it circumvents immigration laws and accused Mr Biden of abusing a temporary power intended to be applied to cases involving urgent humanitarian need or significant public benefit.
Simon Hankinson, an immigration research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the “combination” of parole, TPS and rising illegal immigration had contributed to influxes in cities like Springfield.
“This approach of essentially unlimited parole is an utterly new policy,” he said, which had created a “quasi-parallel system”.
“The town of Springfield seems to have been overwhelmed… I suspect that city is not alone,” he added.
While the White House has dismissed Trump’s comments on Springfield as a “very bizarre and very hateful smear”, the state’s most prominent Democrat has taken a very different approach.
Mr Brown, the Ohio senator, has kept a cautious distance from the Biden administration as he seeks re-election in a race that may determine the balance of power in the US Senate,
He has kept a low profile in the media storm surrounding Springfield. But in a statement, his office made clear he “understands the real concerns from the community… as it deals with an influx of Haitian immigrants who are putting a strain on city infrastructure”.
Meanwhile, Marianne Williamson, a former longshot Democratic presidential candidate and self-help guru, warned that dismissing voters’ concerns over immigration would only confirm many in the belief in “the stereotype of Democrats as smug elite jerks”.