What the end of TPS for Haitians means for the U.S. economy
More than 330,000 people from Haiti are set to lose their Temporary Protected Status on Monday, barring a last minute court order. Without TPS, they lose the right to both live and work in the U.S.
Many of the Haitians who are losing TPS have been living and working here for 16 years, ever since the devastating 2010 earthquake.
“It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen. We are in uncharted territory,” said Alex Arnon, the director of policy analysis at the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania.
About 70% of people who have TPS work, he said, which means the labor market is about to lose more than 200,000 people all at once.
“It’s important to note that the Temporary Protected Status population is very concentrated both geographically and in terms of the industries they work in. So, you know, it is really a challenge for particular industries in particular places,” Arnon said.
Florida is one of those places, and healthcare is one of those industries. Many Haitians with TPS work as home health aides.
“I think it’s going to be very hard for the people to whom they give care to suddenly lose their caregiver, and it’s going to be hard for their employers to replace them,” said Madeline Zavodny, a professor of economics at the University of North Florida.
To attract new workers, companies often need to raise wages, she noted. “But this is an industry where wages are largely set by Medicaid or Medicare, and so I think that employers have somewhat limited ability to raise wages.”
As big as the loss of these workers will be for certain industries and communities, Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. program at the Migration Policy Institute, said that 200,000 is a relatively small number for the 160-million-worker U.S. economy.
”That said, most of the growth in our workforce is coming from immigration,” she said. “Taking together these moves on TPS and on other pathways to the United States, and ramped up deportations, that could really threaten the growth of our workforce.”