Tag Archive for: Haitian immigrants

Residents Fear Small Penn. Town Won’t ‘Come Back from This’ after Biden-Harris Import Thousands of Haitian Immigrants

The small Ohio municipality of Springfield has made national headlines over the past weeks, thanks to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants being surreptitiously dumped into the city by the Biden-Harris administration over the past three years. But Springfield isn’t the only “heartland U.S.A.” town suffering after being inundated with immigrants. This week, the America 2100 non-profit organization launched its own on-the-ground investigation in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to expose how the rural town’s 2,000% increase in Haitian immigrants has impacted American residents.

Last week, America 2100 shared reports from locals and residents chronicling a steep increase in traffic accidents and a rise in violent crime, including Haitians attempting carjackings and mugging Americans outside liquor stores. The non-profit group noted, “It isn’t just Springfield. It’s happening everywhere. In Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a low-income town of just 4,000 — the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. And it’s almost all Haitians.”

In an interview with America 2100, Charleroi councilman Larry Celaschi said, “I wish I could come face to face for 60 seconds … with whoever was behind all this and bringing the immigrants into Charleroi…” He asked, “Where the hell’s the money that should be coming to Charleroi, okay? Why was it all dumped on us, and we’re not being funded with anything. Okay, and again, we can’t even make ends meet with our budget, and so now how — where are we gonna get this extra revenue to pay for them?” Celaschi concluded, “And so now we’ve got to do all these things to accommodate the immigrants. That’s bull****.”

On Monday, America 2100 visited Charleroi, saying, “The media won’t tell their story — so we will.” One resident who was “born and raised” in Charleroi told America 2100 Senior Adviser Nate Hochman that the 2,000 Haitian immigrants have clogged up the small town’s sewage system. “You can smell the raw sewage,” he said. “These 120-year-old pipes can’t handle all the sewage that’s getting pumped into them … from all the people that came in.”

Another resident also complained about the “absolutely disgusting” lack of hygiene among the immigrants and how it has impacted the town. “I feel bad for a lot of these people,” said Andrew, who does housing repairs. “And then some of these houses you go into … they live like they still live in a clay building in Port-au-Prince and they just want to keep it how it was,” he continued. Andrew explained that the houses the Haitian immigrants live in are “disgusting,” recounting that he once spent three days simply scrubbing a kitchen after Haitians vacated a house, before moving on to cleaning the rest of the house. He noted the massive increase in immigrants over the past two years, saying, “The agencies, they just keep bringing these people in and bringing people in and bringing people in.”

“This is one of the most immediately obvious aspects of the immigration crisis in Charleroi,” Hochman noted. “The big businesses are buying up homes in town and packing them with as many as 15-20 Haitians per property. It’s essentially converting the entire town into a gigantic workers’ barracks.”

Local parents reported that schools are being overwhelmed and forced to divert funds to hire multiple interpreters. “They’re having a huge problem, I think, with trying to teach,” one mom said. “There were 45 Haitians that started kindergarten this year,” she added. Another parent explained, “A kindergarten class is probably no more than 60 at most, at most.” Hochman asked, “So like the majority of the kindergarten is Haitian now? In what? Two years?” The parents nodded and replied, “Yeah.” One of the parents noted, “One of the things … about the not speaking English … middle school grades where parents are having a problem because their kids can’t advance because the teachers are having to compensate for the kids who can’t speak English.”

Parents also observed that crimes against American students have increased. “There’s been some assaults with some kids on the bus,” a Charleroi mom said. She recounted, “One student attacked another American child on the bus. … And I guess he was like 20.” The girl who was attacked, the mom said, was about 14 years old. She continued, “He told the girl to move and she said, ‘No,’ and he grabbed her — and like really grabbed her — and like wouldn’t let her go. Like they just get on the bus and like go to school, you know, with like the elementary kids, just to get a ride to school.” The mom added, “The school does nothing about it. People complain all the time about things and they do nothing.”

Delivery driver Andy explained how the immigrant influx has destroyed Charleroi’s economy and job market. “That’s what these staffing agencies are doing. … They said, ‘We can’t find people to work.’ Well, that’s a half-truth. There’s people that would work if you paid them, you know … the going wage for the work,” Andy said. He continued, “But they want to pay less and so they ended up hiring these, getting involved with these agencies that bring in these workers.” He added:

“Those jobs that they [Haitian immigrants] have, they used to be American jobs. But they [employers] decided, ‘We don’t want to pay five bucks more an hour, we’ll pay three bucks more an hour and we’ll take that off the top and we’ll keep that, and we’ll bring in Haitians with them through this work program.’ It’s a lot of jobs that have been lost by Americans. So they bring in … people from third-world countries who will do that work for poverty wages. And they think it’s a great deal — and it probably is a good deal for them.”

“You get a lot of people saying they’re illegals and everyone wants to fight about that term, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s going on and how it’s affecting everybody,” Andy summarized.

Truck driver Ernie told America 2100 how the immigration has increased the cost of living in town, while decreasing the quality of actually living in Charleroi. “This used to be just a nice, blue-collar, middle-of-nowhere town. It was affordable to live in, wasn’t a terrible neighborhood, you could raise your family here and live your life and everybody would just pretty much leave you alone,” Ernie began. He continued, “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back from this, I don’t know if we’re going to come back from this. It’s at the point now, I think they’ve just destroyed the town and they bought all these properties.”

He said that while you “might be able to buy a house cheap,” Charleroi homeowners now have to worry about what kind of neighbors they’ll have. “Right now, I’m surrounded by the immigrants, never used to be that way. They don’t care about their property, they’ll destroy it, run through, steal your stuff, break your stuff. There’s no pride anymore. Nobody cares about anything,” he said, speaking from experience. The truck driver continued, “You’re bringing in people from one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, paying them nothing because they don’t know what a dollar is, then you got this company who’s buying the houses, renting off them. I mean, it’s full all-around corruption, extortion, somebody’s lining their pockets.”

“We’re over here struggling. I make a pretty decent wage and I’m picking up a second job to try to help cover the bills, my girlfriend’s working two jobs to try to cover the bills,” Ernie said. He added, “And it never used to be like that.” Addressing the number of longtime Charleroi residents leaving town due to the immigration issues, Ernie said, “It’s killing another small town in America. … There’s a lot of fighting people around here and it takes a lot for people to quit. It’s happening. Whenever you see the natives — from this area in particular — going somewhere else, it’s bad.”

Lifelong Charleroi resident Tom talked about the cultural conflicts arising from the mass importing of 2,000 Haitians. “They don’t have anything in common with our culture. … When people say ‘the culture,’ a lot of times they say they don’t know what it means. What culture means is the way we do things around here. Worldwide, that’s what culture is,” Tom said. He continued, “What I’ve seen … since the influx has started is they have no interest in our culture, this culture. They’ve brought their culture here.”

Tom also dismissed the claim that the immigration surge somehow enriches or betters the town. “I don’t believe that argument of ‘They had to bring that population here to save Charleroi’ has any validity. We weren’t prepared for it, we don’t have the tax base for it. This is a town of 4,000 people hanging on the best they can,” he said. He continued:

“So whoever is responsible for putting them here, that is an act of negligence. And when it’s found out who directly decided that this was a good place to do this, they should be held accountable fully, their feet should be held to the fire long-term. They should never be allowed to work in the industry again, whether it’s politics or business, because what they’ve done here is despicable — and they don’t know that because, again, nobody cares about Charleroi, Pennsylvania. The 4,000 people that lived here cared about it and were doing their level best to make it a place to live and want to be.”

Tom shared that, due to the problems caused by the mass migration, he has pulled his son out of school and is selling his house. “If you told me, after all of the other garbage that has been heaped on this community since the early 80s, that this would be the denouement, I would have mortgaged my house and bet you were wrong,” he said. “But here we are,” he concluded.

So who is responsible? Hochman explained, “Charleroi — like Springfield — is a story of Republican betrayal. The people we’ve met here are just trying to survive. They deserve better leaders.” According to America 2100, the state senator representing Charleroi, Camera Bartoletta (R-Washington County), has “put out a statement attacking Trump for talking about the Haitian immigration crisis in her town.” In a statement posted to Facebook, Bartoletta said, “For some of these people saying awful things about these Haitian immigrants, I’d ask them what it might have been like for their parents or grandparents or great grandparents who might have come from another country and spoken a different language.” She added, “Many of the Haitians in Charleroi have been here for two or three years already. They escaped horrific events in Haiti, many having to travel/hide in the jungles for months or years.”

While Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) has claimed to be “fighting for the 300+ jobs at a glass manufacturing plant in Charleroi,” the small town’s mayor and a councilman said otherwise. “He needs to get his hind end out here in person and stop wasting time and stop sending aides,” one of the men said. He continued, “We need to talk to the man who holds the title United States Senator and he needs to be here in the borough of Charleroi and he needs to stop what is going to take place that is going to totally decimate this town.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Pledges to Visit Ohio Town Suffering from Immigration Crisis

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Bomb Threats Overwhelm Springfield, Ohio as Nationwide Firestorm over Migrants Continues

Americans in Springfield, Ohio, are still suffering after the Biden-Harris administration dumped tens of thousands of third-world immigrants into their once-quiet city. Springfield resident and former teacher Diana Daniels told Fox News that life has been a “dystopian nightmare” since the arrival of nearly 20,000 Haitian immigrants over the past three years. “You hope you wake up and it’s 2019 again, and then you realize it’s 2024, and it’s the same thing over and over again, day after day,” Daniels said. “It’s hard sometimes to get up in the morning and hear residents that I’ve known for years struggle. This is a paycheck-to-paycheck … kind of town … working class.”

In a sobering reminder of the national attention Springfield has received, multiple bomb threats have forced the evacuation of the town’s city hall, two schools, and the DMV in the last few days. On Saturday, the terror spread to local hospitals as both Kettering and Mercy Health Springfield were put on lockdown while authorities scoured the floors with security teams. As of Saturday afternoon, there was no indication who was behind the threats, though city officials say they are working with the FBI to track down the culprits.  On Sunday, local community college Clark State announced that, “due to recent events,” all classes and activities would be conducted virtually for the coming week.

Meanwhile, Springfield’s most famous native, singer John Legend, appealed to his hometown to embrace the overwhelming migrant population. The hard-core Democrat posted a video addressing the nationwide news. “We had about 15,000 or so immigrants move to my town of 60,000,” he explained. “Now you might say, ‘Wow that’s a lot of people for a town that only had 60,000 before. That’s a 25% increase.’ That is correct.” He goes on to urge locals to accept the inconveniences without protest. “You might imagine there are some challenges with, you know, integrating a new population. New language, new culture, new dietary preferences. All kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains.”

“How about we love one another?” Legend urged. “I grew up in the Christian tradition. We said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ.”

His admonition sparked immediate backlash from residents, who fired back, “He’s just like you. Except he doesn’t live in Springfield. He lives in a multi-million-dollar mansion in Beverly Hills,” one person wrote on social media. Others couldn’t believe his nonchalance about the upheaval in the Champion City. “You should totally listen to John Legend lecture you on his hometown of Springfield, and how 15,000 Haitian immigrants into a town of 60,000 is totally normal,” another user replied, attaching a video of Legend and Teigen showing off their “lavish palace.”

“Why don’t you house some of [these] illegal immigrants in your huge privileged mansion?” one person fumed. “…You cool with that? Come on big guy. Take care of these migrants.” Not to mention, another argued, Legend believes the people of Springfield “should just accept the Haitians and their weird ‘dietary preferences,’” referring to the headlines that Haitians are eating geese and ducks.

Despite the legacy media’s attempt to discredit the story, investigative reporter Christopher Rufo posted Saturday morning that he believes the reports of migrants eating pets are true. “EXCLUSIVE,” he writes with photo evidence. “We have discovered that migrants are, in fact, eating cats in Ohio. We have verified, with multiple witnesses and visual cross-references, that African migrants in Dayton, the next city over from Springfield, barbecued these cats last summer.”

Residents and other news outlets, including The Federalist and The Daily Mail, have corroborated the stories that even captured the attention of the September 10 presidential debate. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump exclaimed, “and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

Since Springfield has come into the national spotlight, reports have also surfaced of Haitians showering and bathing in Walmart bathrooms and Haitian men engaging in sex acts on the street.

In addition to weighing down the community’s social services, the immigrants have also caused a significant number of traffic accidents. “The driving in town is horrendous. We do have a really abnormal number of car accidents that are happening,” former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler told Fox News. “And it’s not only the number, but the severity of them. When you go on a street that is a 35-mile-an-hour speed limit and there’s a car sitting on its hood, and I’m not talking about one, I’m talking about five or six accidents a week like that, you begin to wonder.”

Douglass Mackey, who had been targeted and jailed by the Biden-Harris administration for sharing political memes, explained that struggling businesses in the area may be giving immigrants preference for jobs over Americans. “An American citizen gets paid $16.50 per hour. No food stamps. No Social Security. No cash assistance. No rent assistance. No free car. No free car insurance,” Mackey said. “A Haitian gets paid $9 per hour and they get everything else paid for. After considering all the federal benefits, it’s likely that the Haitian is making double, or perhaps much more than that, of what an American worker would make.”

Ohio native Senator J.D. Vance (R), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, wrote on social media, “In Springfield, Ohio, there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime. This is what happens when you drop 20,000 people into a small community. Kamala Harris’s immigration policy aims to do this to every town in our country.” He added, “Don’t let biased media shame you into not discussing this slow moving humanitarian crisis in a small Ohio town. We should talk about it every single day. Kamala Harris did this. And she’ll keep doing it unless we stop her.”

On Friday, Trump reiterated his plans to deport most of the 10 million illegals imported under Biden. “We’re going to start with Springfield,” the former president insisted, adding the town had been “destroyed” by immigration.

Asked about the firestorm engulfing his small town, Mayor Rob Rue (R) shook his head. “Springfield is a community that needs help,” he told The Washington Post. “We are hurting.”

AUTHORS

S.A. McCarthy

September 14, 2024

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ohio sheriff asks residents to ‘write down’ Harris supporter addresses for migrant housing

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.