Commentary: Haitian unrest is why TPS immigration status exists – Orlando Sentinel

I was a youngster in Florida when Cuban refugees began arriving in large numbers. I still remember the unease, the rumors and the slurs. People worried about jobs, schools and crime. At 75, you learn that history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Despite all that tension, Americans overwhelmingly accepted the Cubans. We did not send them back to Castro. We understood, even then, that people fleeing danger deserved more than slogans and political convenience.

Does anyone seriously believe Haiti today is safer than Castro’s Cuba in 1961?

That question hangs over the uncertainty surrounding Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. After the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS, work authorizations were extended only in short bursts, most recently through July 27. That uncertainty is already disrupting lives and businesses across Florida, especially in South Florida, where many Haitian TPS holders work in hospitality and related fields. In Central Florida, those same workers staff hotels, restaurants and other service jobs that keep the tourism economy running. They are not abstractions. They are neighbors.

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush for a simple reason. When war, natural disaster or the collapse of civil order makes return unsafe, people already here who qualify are not forced back until conditions improve. TPS was never intended as a reward for illegal entry. It was written into immigration law as a humanitarian safeguard — part of the system, not an exception to it.

Haiti today is exactly the kind of crisis TPS was designed to address. Armed gangs control much of Port-au-Prince. Government institutions have largely collapsed. Millions face hunger and displacement. The U.S. government warns Americans not to travel there because of kidnapping, gang violence, terrorism and civil unrest. It is difficult to argue that people can safely be returned there in large numbers.

The principle is simple: you do not send people back into a house that is still on fire.

To insist otherwise ignores the purpose of the law itself. It accepts foreseeable harm to people who have lived here legally, worked, paid taxes and built lives in Florida communities from Miami to Orlando. That is not fidelity to the law. It is a refusal to apply the law’s own protections when they become politically inconvenient.

None of this means immigration laws should be ignored. Every nation has the right and responsibility to secure its borders. But TPS is part of those laws. Congress recognized that extraordinary circumstances sometimes make removal inhumane and unsafe. Honoring that judgment is not “open borders.” It is following the law as Congress wrote it.

We have done this before. In the early 1960s, Americans looked at Cuba under Castro and understood why people were risking everything to come here. Cuba was an authoritarian state, but it still had a functioning government. Haiti today is, in many respects, in worse condition, with armed gangs controlling large areas, institutions barely functioning and millions displaced. There was tension and backlash then, but the essential moral judgment held: you do not force people back into obvious danger. If we recognized that truth in 1961, it is even harder to deny it today.

The question is not whether we believe in the rule of law. It is whether we are willing to apply the law’s own protections when the facts demand it.

Looking at Haiti today, it is hard to argue the danger has passed.

The house is still burning. We should not force people back inside.

Ray Watford of Port Orange is a retired newspaper production director.