The thing that really bugs me about the redirect from cats to wild ducks and geese is: What exactly is the crime here? Hunting out of season and without a license?
I've seen conservatives mock the concept of a hunting license by referring to it as "a license to feed my family." Shouldn't they celebrate someone who is hunting without a license?
I mean this with no irony: thank you for your thoughtful commentaries on so many issues, cultural and political. When I see your byline, I know I'm going to be smarter soon. Thanks!
This is a great recap. Two things I want to highlight: Mike DeWine is decent enough but still a coward by staying on the Trump train. Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs her head examined. She was courageous and correct pointing out Europe’s immigration mess. But her schtick does not apply to a mainly market-based system in the US once legal immigrants/residents are settled. This is also not the first time she is descending into conspiracies. Miss Sassy, the previously lost cat that started this mess is the only thing that came out of it half way clean.
This is a second comment. I don't quite understand why people who obviously do not have the same general perspective/orientation as "The Unpopulist" spend so much time trashing the contributors who write here. Not just disparaging comments but LENGTHY comments! Who exactly are they really addressing? Why? Normal people don't track down neo-Nazi substacks just to call the authors delusional pieces of filth. Is it a compulsion that they just can't resist? Most of these border on trolling because they are generally not offering any new insight into the conversation just the same old trite invectives and ad hominem screeds.
“It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…”
For whatever reason, our content attracts lots of haters into our comment sections. We absolutely welcome criticism, but it can't help but be frustrating when it's of the bad-faith variety.
Thanks Cathy for the article. Although I was familiar with most of what you presented there were new details and you provide a great time line.
My "like" button doesn't work when I am working on my PC (and I hate trying to write on my phone) and you are on fire in the comments! So I "like" all of your comments!
My chief complaint about all of this is that so much of this is heat is being generated on the antisocial media platforms. Imagine a world where the citizens of Springfield were left alone to work through their own "problems" without the incendiary comments from a Russian Bot Farm, amplified by a hundred influencers and disseminated endlessly in evolving variations by thousands of trolls across the internet universe.
Even if there are real problems why does the opinion of thousands of people who never even knew Springfield existed until Donald Trump blurted it out in the debate matter? Do the Klansmen strolling around armed through the streets of Springfield not have jobs and families to attend to? Why do influencers find it important to take a selfie in front of a Haitian grocery store with a sneering and snarky comment? Not only is the antisocial media addictive--- it is literally a viral disease.
My hometown in South Central Nebraska was founded as a stop on the railroad in 1882 probably by a 100 men living in tents. By 1885 there were well over 3,000 men, women and children. Huge swaths of them were immigrants from Sweden and Germany most barely able to speak English. There were stresses on housing and on what there were of public services. But the market supplies what is demanded in time. The population remained stable at around 3000 until After WWII and the baby boom. The population swelled adding about 1000 per decade until reaching almost 6000 where it has remained. There was a housing shortage but the GI Bill brought a housing boom. There weren't enough seats in the two elementary schools (K-6) and 2 more were added in one year. The grade school I went to was dedicated on the day I was born in 1953. A new Senior High School (10-12) had to be built and the old high school used just for a junior high school (7-9). The downtown business district was booming, manufacturing plants came to town, hospitals expanded and new churches built.
My point is that the citizens of the community came together to problem solve. They did not turn on each other trying to play victims or blaming others for the problems. The only media we had was 3 regional TV stations, 1 radio station, 1 daily newspaper, and two statewide newspapers, and the gossip mill. (Our version of social media.) They had more important news to report locally and around the world and did not need/want to trade in gossip.
Any legitimate media reportage from journalists and editors and publishers that is entirely based on what is happening in the antisocial media is being lazy or failing at their actual jobs.
Actually, many of us are tired of Canada sending us their geese. Not the good ones who just migrate through but the ones that stick around because they have found easy living here in the US of A. They are a nuisance species here and we should be paying Haitians to eat them!
Sorry what comes across is not that people who responded to complaints about immigration are racist, but that people who work overtime to dismiss such complaints are hostile to the Americans who complained about it. Some of the people who voiced their anger at the Springfield city council meeting were Black Americans. No one is saying some Haitians aren’t great workers. But you did not rebut the claim that 20,000 had arrived in a short time and you did not find who paid for all of them to travel there. You did not interview the Haitians or the aggrieved townpeople. You strung together rebuttals from official authorities to support a well worn smear by the same people who peddled the Jossie Smollett hoax.
These suggestions about what investigative steps Cathy needed to take are somewhat undermined by the fact that you promote Chris Rufo’s work—the same Rufo who hilariously debased himself in this very anti-Haitian discourse cycle by paying 5k for a video of chickens being grilled.
I left a related comment elsewhere but I think you guys have Rufo wrong - I remember reading his tweets and it seemed to me that he thought the cats & dogs story was ridiculous too, and was offering the bounty to prove that no such thing happened. Maybe I missed some of his tweets and got this wrong, but unless you're sure you might want to double-check.
So who paid for the Haitians to travel to Springfield? Who arranged for them to get Temporary status? What input did the residents of Springfield get in any of it? In many cases your reporting is much more thorough. Here you seem determined not to find out what the townspeople are complaining about and afraid to find out how so many Haitians ended up in that part of Ohio. Even if the Haitians are all hardworking people eager to assimilate into America culture, don’t the people of Springfield have any say. You are also missing the elite privilege aspect of this. If 200 Haitians were moved to Martha’s Vineyard, would it be more than 48 hours before the National Guard came and rounded them up?
Mr. Mars, a very sizable Haitian-American population has been living in the US for many years and is well established, particularly in Florida and New York, with considerable resources. The way US immigration has generally worked, new immigrants--some whom arrive with some resources of their own, others not--seek out family or co-national communities already here to find stability and initial support needed to bridge them to employment, which may involve support for travel to areas of job availability. This has been the pattern with the Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Muslims, and countless other groups. New immigrants network with established co-nationals and draw on their support to supplement their initial means. (This pattern also holds with many groups of internal migrants, such as both Black and White migrants from the American South a century ago, who were drawn to settle in northern communities which had both manufacturing jobs and communities of earlier migrants of shared background.)
In the case of Springfield (also replicating past patterns), Haitians who initially were able to find employment there in response to active local recruitment formed an anchor attracting more co-nationals and, as their situations stabilized, created a network providing support for new arrivals. That is how sectors of immigrant communities have traditionally "paid for" their relocation. It's a normal pattern that follows logical social and economic forces and requires no particular agent to orchestrate. The compressed time scale in Springfield was very much the result of local economic and political leaders continuing to recruit labor to support the renewed manufacturing base they were creating.
How much do these manufacturing jobs pay? What kind of taxes are these jobs generating? How much do the people working those jobs and their families receive in government assistance?
Based on the figures presented, these people are welfare cases. They will never ever pay for their Ed’s and Meds subsidies. But most of that comes from the state and federal level and if your a local provider you can make bank at others expense.
I care more about not turning America into a shithole like Haiti then I do about whether you think I'm a scumbag. I think your a terrible person for making my country worse because you can't handle the truth.
That’s a nice story, but not necessarily an accurate one. Please provide a link to video of town leaders saying they paid for the import of 20,000 people. Please provide records of how many came each month and their mode of transport. Where did the town leaders get the money and how much did it cost? How much of the came from Federal funds or NGOs with Federal grants?
Mr. Mars, I think you are reading into my comments what you expected me to say, rather than what I did say. I did not say, "Town leaders paid to import Haitian workers," nor did they. I said, "Haitians who initially were able to find employment there in response to active local recruitment formed an anchor attracting more co-nationals and, as their situations stabilized, created a network providing support for new arrivals. That is how sectors of immigrant communities have traditionally 'paid for' their relocation." Notice that last sentence: there's nothing new or mysterious about this. This is a major reason we have uneven ethnic distributions in the US: new immigrants since the 1840s have tended to migrate to areas where jobs are available and co-nationals have established a presence that can provide support.
Springfield political leaders worked to attract new manufacturing to revive Springfield's economy, and they initiated programs to recruit workers to supply those manufacturers with labor. "Recruiting workers" does not mean "paying for workers to come": it means spending money to advertise the availability of jobs in regions where there may be particular demand for jobs among underemployed populations, something any city's Chamber of Commerce would encourage local government to do. The money spent on attracting business and labor now will be recouped in local taxes and economic growth because the Haitian community in Springfield is composed of working families with good paying jobs at the newly transplanted factories.
And, by the way, the figures I have seen from local sources are not 20,000 people but 12-15,000. The estimate range is consistent with the fact that local government would not be tracking these new arrivals, whose initial contacts would have been with employers and established members of the Springfield Haitian community.
I'm pretty sure the Haitians themselves paid to travel there. It sounds like they heard there were job, went there to find out, then loaded up a U-Haul just like everyone else does.
I think it makes sense to be hostile to the Americans who complained about it. They're a bunch of liars who made stuff up to get attention and stir up trouble. Last time I heard, "liars" was an acceptable group of people to be hostile towards.
I know you enjoy dismissing the town hall, during which citizens voiced those exact concerns, and many others. But it is not acceptable to offer TPS to illegals as low-cost laborers, especially in front of those w/merit waiting in India and many other countries.
Just about everything you say here is wrong. First off this is not illegal immigration. Second they came to Springfield to fill the many unfilled jobs and are being paid market wages, so no they're not driving down wages or stealing jobs. But I know you all don't let facts get in the way of a convenient narrative
Mr. Ross, it seems to me that you are accepting the "A" in your post as factual--that the Haitian immigrant in Springfield were indeed "shipped" in to be "modern-day slave labor." You also seem to think that people granted TPS were, prior to their receiving that status, "illegals." Neither of these ideas is in fact true.
Haitians were not shipped to Springfield. They were attracted by promotional efforts of local political and economic actors who were anxious to rebuild Springfield's manufacturing capacity--having brought new businesses into the city, there was a critical need of labor. Haitians were hired on the same wage basis as others, and wages have generally risen in the city since their arrival. Ms. Young dismissed those at the town hall who voiced these exact concerns because they are so manifestly untrue.
If you are actually open to new information on these points, I think the best exploration of the data has been done by Radley Balko, whom Ms. Young cites. I'd recommend his blog post on the subject. (https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/what-jd-vance-and-donald-trump-dont?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) If you are only eager to confirm the false rumors spread by the former president and his running mate, though, I'm afraid Balko's work will frustrate you. (Note that Ohio Governor DeWine and Springfield Mayor Rue--both Republicans--have refuted the claims made by the GOP ticket and others very forcefully.)
No one offered TPS to "illegals" as low-cost laborers. TPS status is granted because of conditions in the country of origin (Haiti), not any designated role in the US. TPS recipients have to go through an application process and pay fees, and generally individuals whose immigration status is irregular cannot receive TPS status without rectifying any unauthorized entry in the US though specific steps that are burdensome. (You may find this fact sheet of interest: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/temporary-protected-status-overview.)
You enticed a bunch of cheap labor to come over from Haiti. These people bring with them tens of thousands of dollars in Ed’s and Meds subsidies paid for by the federal and state government (if you’ve got a low wage job, you are subsidized by the government). That, not their pathetic “labor”, is what the locality really wants.
If I was running the local k-12 schools I would love to get another $15k+ tax infusion for each immigrant kid paid for by tax dollars from someplace else. If I was the person paying those tax dollars I would not be so excited. And if my kid was attending schools flooded with Haitians and I had no personal financial stake in it I’d be pissed.
Actually, FP123, I didn't entice them. The Republican leaders of the state and the city enticed them as a means of restoring the manufacturing capacity and tax base of Springfield, and it has worked. The Haitian immigrant community in Springfield is not generally subsidized. Members are not permanent residents and don't qualify for many health benefits. The comment you've posted based on the Buckeye Reporter article seems to assume that the money Haitians are paying for rent comes from the state or federal government. It comes from their earnings.
The jobs they are working are relatively well-paying (the mean wage in Springfield has been rising, not falling, as a result of Haitian migration to the city--check out the data in Balko's article). As for school costs, if the city had recruited families from West Virginia to fill the new manufacturing jobs their kids would be attending schools, like the Haitian kids, and being "subsidized" by taxpayers in just the same way (although the language issue has, certainly, created additional strain on the schools).
It's interesting that the article you cite accuses the Mayor of profiting off of government-subsidized "illegals" since the Haitian community is neither composed of "illegals" or subsidized. This is the mindset that the GOP ticket is working hard to promote and exploit. The people interviewed in the article are naturally upset. There have been downsides to Springfield's sudden expansion and they have been victims of it. The same would have been true if the influx had been West Virginians in search of higher wages and a better life. The city needs to prioritize attracting developers to construct new housing to relieve this stress--and it should make part of permitting the creation of low-income/subsidized housing, since the people who are complaining in the article are generally the folks who require government subsidies to survive, and they should be able to receive them if they qualify.
In many cases these people qualify for various state and federal provided medical insurance. For their kids it's even easier. And the emergency room is covered basically anywhere.
There are comments about housing assistance in Springfield you can find. I can speak to the experience in my own town which has two apartment complexes of subsidized rental units occupied largely by Hispanic immigrants. They also receive food assistance, you can see it being delivered by a big van.
"The jobs they are working are relatively well-paying"
According to your article, the median household income is $45k or so. That's way below the national average and severely into public support territory.
"if the city had recruited families from West Virginia to fill the new manufacturing jobs"
Nobody should be filling these subsidized welfare jobs. US citizens should move to economically vital areas and get real jobs that don't require massive government subsidy. This process was happening until you decided to turn Springfield OH into a giant Eds and Meds welfare spigot to enrich a few connected locals.
To the extent US citizens require subsidy, there will be more to go around if they don't have to share it with immigrants.
You can make anyone legal by granting an asylum or refugee claim, but such programs should not exist and these leeches should be sent home.
FP123, I appreciate your responding with a valid link. You are correct that lawfully present immigrants do qualify for some forms of subsidized medical insurance.
The low median income in Springfield is not a product of Haitian immigrants. The city was severely depressed with high poverty rate prior to their arrival. Median income has risen significantly since, as have wages. It would be difficult to maintain that the presence of Haitians has lowered the economic standard of living in Springfield.
The jobs in Springfield are not subsidized or welfare jobs. They are the products of a concerted effort by city leadership to recruit new manufacturing investment and facilities to restore the town's economic viability. (I really don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.) Haitians in Springfield are not laboring at bargain rates for employers--Springfield had a labor shortage, and that's what drew Haitians there. US citizens in Springfield were eligible to apply for the same jobs (and, of course, most are in fact working).
I think it's interesting that you refer to immigrants working lawfully in Springfield as "leeches." If that characterization were true, US history would largely be a history of leeches: leeches who immigrated under stress, moved to places where opportunity existed, worked to turn opportunity into their personal prosperity to the national benefit . . . and then some of them pointed to the next generation of themselves and called them "leeches." It's a very human dynamic, showing both good and bad elements of people. My grandparents were leeches (most arrived without means), so I suppose I'm a member of the leech community too. For me, that seems to generate some empathy for the Haitians in Springfield, but perhaps you are not a descendant of leeches and find it hard to feel anything in common with them. (Forgive the snark: I don't go for it often, but sometimes weakness of will leads me there.)
"The jobs in Springfield are not subsidized or welfare jobs."
A welfare job is a job whose wages are low enough that the worker (or their household) does not pay enough in taxes to fund the benefits they receive from the government.
Let us imagine a household of four to make things simple (mom, dad, 2 kids). I'm going to link a chart at the bottom* since the link is long. It's for a single mom of two so adjust it up slightly for a family of four compared to the chart (the medicaid threshold would be about $8k higher with the husband present).
Our society guarantees such a household around $60k of consumption. This comes in the form of various subsidies. Healthcare, childcare, food, cash, rent, etc.
On top of that K-12 state spending in Ohio is a little under $17k per student. So $34k for two kids in K-12 schools.
So we are talking around 90-100k in household consumption on say $45k of gross income (total taxes paid by such a household will likely amount to under $10k, despite receiving $50k or so in benefits from the government).
That's the definition of a welfare job.
The median income for a family of four in 2022 dollars is $113k. $44k is way down there. It takes more than having a job to be a self sufficient contributor to society. You need a decently productive job. We do not need to import people to do negative value add low skill jobs.
This is incorrect - in 2021 USG agencies funded these exceptional relocation programs that were completely out of the norm. The people of Springfield are outraged. Video compilation here:
If you have evidence that the federal government funded the relocation of Haitians to Springfield, Mr. Ross, please share it.
Your YouTube link shows two people expressing outrage and one expressing an incomplete thought. The Twitter/X link (which is just the same incomplete thought) does not relate to your point.
It is unquestionably true that a Haitian immigrant in Springfield caused a crash with a school bus that took the life of a child and injured others. As I'm sure you know, the father of the child whose life was lost has expressed outrage at the way his son's death from the acts of one man has been exploited to demonize the entire Springfield Haitian community, as you seem to be doing here.
Nobody "shipped" Haitian migrants to Springfield. They exercised their basic rights to find a job from a willing employer and rent a home from a willing owner -- enriching themselves and the rest of society in the process.
I am not willing to pay their Medicaid or educational expense for their children, etc.
Based on the figures presented, these people do not work jobs that come remotely close to paying enough in taxes to fund those things. They are welfare parasites. Importing more welfare parasites to America can be profitable for the people providing those services, but not to those of us paying for them.
You're not paying their children's educational expenses. Local property owners are, including many whose property values have gone up thanks to the migrants (including their landlords).
One of the people seen complaining about the Haitians in one of the video clips is a woman who literally said she's on welfare and got evicted because her landlord no longer provides Section 8 housing because Haitian renters (who get no housing subsidies) are profitable. But I'm sure you're fine with THAT "welfare parasite" because she's white and having white kids at public expense.
False, that isn't how school funding works. It's been a long time since local property taxes made up most of a schools funding, especially in these poorer districts.
I will use an example from Maryland that I know, but it's the same story in every state these days. Every state evens out spending in each school district by taking from some and giving to others.
In total, about 1/2 of the funding comes from the state and 1/2 from local. However, it's more like rich districts provide 2/3 or more of their own funding and poor districts 1/4 or less. Baltimore City is probably a good proxy for what the funding situation for Springfield, OH is. Most of it comes from the state and feds.
And of course "comes from the state" comes from things like state income taxes, which are coming from the same economically dynamic areas that are funding their own districts education expense.
"because she's white and having white kids at public expense."
I dislike anyone on welfare, but these are fellow citizens who played a role in building America, and thus I have certain obligations to them that I don't have to foreign invaders. It also helps that the white family probably doesn't vote for people who hate me and want to make my life worse.
I've heard this all before in Baltimore. I lived in an area in-between a white trash part of town and a ghetto black part of town. Yes, I found the white trash people infinitely less disagreeable than the ghetto blacks on a whole host of metrics.
I agree with you about hating people wanting to get people off welfare. I live in South Carolina how much my whole state is often the blue state along with so many living off the government tit. I’m going off red states like mine republicans living off. I’m sure you’re just like republicans live on welfare which is vastly more than people on public schools.
We can come together on this issue, and after we’ve talked about paying republicans paying their cause we can then talk about this.
They weren't "shipped" here. Rather, they congregated in one place. My Hoover colleague Thomas Sowell often writes about how this happens with immigrants: they want to go where they know people and so you can get a whole lot of them in one place. Think Germans and Wisconsin over a century ago.
My dad's family and almost half of the tiny island off the western Irish coast's population moved to Cleveland in the 30s - the neighborhood was like visiting extended family. No one induced them to move to Cleveland or paid them or anything - there were supposed to be jobs there, not to mention electricity and indoor plumbing.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue: "This program, this TPS program was an executive order by the White House, approved by executive order."
Springfield Ohio Haitian Immigration Presentation (July 16th, 2024): "We saw that immigration begin to increase here in 2020. We've got data to show that: These are interactions at the US Mexico border. You can see exactly when this started increasing. It's very obvious from the data, when you saw those Haitian migrant interactions at that border increase."
This is an affront to every single person following the legal immigration process. I have PhD friends who want to come here to contribute.
Instead, we're importing factory workers who make $15/hr and receive OUR government benefits.
If you're not outraged, I'm not sure what to think.
How is this responsive to Henderson's point? He's arguing that Hattians decided to come to Springfield of their own volition. Your response has nothing to do with that.
What a shockingly embarrassing episode. The thing that amazes me is that these people are doing exactly what they claim (sometimes correctly) their opponents do. If you asked Vance if he knows that there was never a "hands up -don't shoot" moment in the Michael Brown incident, or whether or not Jacob Blake had a knife, they would know the answer and slam "leftists" for spreading the fake version.
But here we are, talking about how the cat-eating may not be literally true but poetically true 🙄 embarrassing.
No doubt there's a great deal of rot on the Republican side of the ledger. But at least they're not guilty of castrating and sterilizing autistic and dysphoric children, of turning them into sexless eunuchs.
Though that is somewhat incongruous since they were the ones pushing conversion therapy. Which is basically what "gender affirming surgery" often boils down into -- "Don't want a gay son? Convince/trick him into cutting his nuts off and becoming a transwoman."
A classic case of strange bedfellows since that is the standard operating procedure of Iran's Ayatollahs. When they're not throwing gays off roof tops or hanging them.
Hard not to get the impression that transgenderism -- particularly with Democrats putting transwomen (AKA male transvestites or sexless eunuchs) into women's toilets, change rooms and sports -- is, or should be, the fatal flaw in the whole Democrat party and in much if not all of the so-called Left. Just the tip of a very large iceberg that may well if not should send both to Davey Jones' Locker.
No problemo -- we're all entitled to our opinions 😉🙂. But not our own facts -- as Daniel Moynihan once emphasized.
And while you've made a solid case that many on the Republican side are "barking mad" -- being charitable -- that is just part of a rather questionable argument as to why people shouldn't vote for Trump.
But I don't think you, and too many others, quite realize that "muh pets" is only part of a much more substantive bill of particulars against the Democrats that still makes this election into a toss-up, into anybody's game.
In particular, a rather large contingent of women -- the "real" kind, not the "Rachel" Levine kind buried like ticks in the White House and Department of Education -- are rather seriously bent out of shape, with good reason, at the depredations of that tribe, aided and abetted by Democrats.
For example, you might consider Kara Dansky's, "The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls":
And the upshot there, a well- argued and justified one, is that, as the Helens put it, transgenderism is "a civilization threatening/ending movement". Kinda think that "muh pets" pales into insignificance in the face of that rather brute fact.
Seems you need to get more "in touch with your 'feminine side' ..." 😉🙂 At least with the issues on that side of the ledger that contribute to that toss-up.
You enticed a bunch of cheap labor to come over from Haiti. These people bring with them tens of thousands of dollars in Ed’s and Meds subsidies paid for by the federal and state government (if you’ve got a low wage job, you are subsidized by the government). That, not their pathetic “labor”, is what the locality really wants.
If I was running the local k-12 schools I would love to get another $15k+ tax infusion for each immigrant kid paid for by tax dollars from someplace else. If I was the person paying those tax dollars I would not be so excited. And if my kid was attending schools flooded with Haitians and I had no personal financial stake in it I’d be pissed.
It’s no surprise that a lot of the local politicians that support this stuff also get rich off it. It’s just another by the head welfare scam paid for by the rest of us.
You obviously didn't read this article or any of the others I cited. But then, bigoted scumbags generally aren't very big on reading (other than that incredibly shoddy report you linked).
Ya. Trump says stupid things. Shocker!! Yet the regime media has hammered away at the issue relentlessly for two weeks - once again turning a nothing burger into an existential crisis. The Dems can always count on their foot soldiers in the regime media to stoke anger and polarization.
I think you're misreading Rufo. Rufo was claiming the whole "Haitians are eating cats and dogs" story was bogus and threw down $5k to prove it. The only "evidence" that surfaced was the video from Dayton.
The thing that really bugs me about the redirect from cats to wild ducks and geese is: What exactly is the crime here? Hunting out of season and without a license?
I've seen conservatives mock the concept of a hunting license by referring to it as "a license to feed my family." Shouldn't they celebrate someone who is hunting without a license?
I mean this with no irony: thank you for your thoughtful commentaries on so many issues, cultural and political. When I see your byline, I know I'm going to be smarter soon. Thanks!
Thanks so much!
This is a great recap. Two things I want to highlight: Mike DeWine is decent enough but still a coward by staying on the Trump train. Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs her head examined. She was courageous and correct pointing out Europe’s immigration mess. But her schtick does not apply to a mainly market-based system in the US once legal immigrants/residents are settled. This is also not the first time she is descending into conspiracies. Miss Sassy, the previously lost cat that started this mess is the only thing that came out of it half way clean.
This is a second comment. I don't quite understand why people who obviously do not have the same general perspective/orientation as "The Unpopulist" spend so much time trashing the contributors who write here. Not just disparaging comments but LENGTHY comments! Who exactly are they really addressing? Why? Normal people don't track down neo-Nazi substacks just to call the authors delusional pieces of filth. Is it a compulsion that they just can't resist? Most of these border on trolling because they are generally not offering any new insight into the conversation just the same old trite invectives and ad hominem screeds.
“It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…”
For whatever reason, our content attracts lots of haters into our comment sections. We absolutely welcome criticism, but it can't help but be frustrating when it's of the bad-faith variety.
Bless your heart for responding to people who argue in bad faith.
Yes, the comments on their posts is always astonishing to me. They have dedicated following off completely delusional haters
Thanks Cathy for the article. Although I was familiar with most of what you presented there were new details and you provide a great time line.
My "like" button doesn't work when I am working on my PC (and I hate trying to write on my phone) and you are on fire in the comments! So I "like" all of your comments!
My chief complaint about all of this is that so much of this is heat is being generated on the antisocial media platforms. Imagine a world where the citizens of Springfield were left alone to work through their own "problems" without the incendiary comments from a Russian Bot Farm, amplified by a hundred influencers and disseminated endlessly in evolving variations by thousands of trolls across the internet universe.
Even if there are real problems why does the opinion of thousands of people who never even knew Springfield existed until Donald Trump blurted it out in the debate matter? Do the Klansmen strolling around armed through the streets of Springfield not have jobs and families to attend to? Why do influencers find it important to take a selfie in front of a Haitian grocery store with a sneering and snarky comment? Not only is the antisocial media addictive--- it is literally a viral disease.
My hometown in South Central Nebraska was founded as a stop on the railroad in 1882 probably by a 100 men living in tents. By 1885 there were well over 3,000 men, women and children. Huge swaths of them were immigrants from Sweden and Germany most barely able to speak English. There were stresses on housing and on what there were of public services. But the market supplies what is demanded in time. The population remained stable at around 3000 until After WWII and the baby boom. The population swelled adding about 1000 per decade until reaching almost 6000 where it has remained. There was a housing shortage but the GI Bill brought a housing boom. There weren't enough seats in the two elementary schools (K-6) and 2 more were added in one year. The grade school I went to was dedicated on the day I was born in 1953. A new Senior High School (10-12) had to be built and the old high school used just for a junior high school (7-9). The downtown business district was booming, manufacturing plants came to town, hospitals expanded and new churches built.
My point is that the citizens of the community came together to problem solve. They did not turn on each other trying to play victims or blaming others for the problems. The only media we had was 3 regional TV stations, 1 radio station, 1 daily newspaper, and two statewide newspapers, and the gossip mill. (Our version of social media.) They had more important news to report locally and around the world and did not need/want to trade in gossip.
Any legitimate media reportage from journalists and editors and publishers that is entirely based on what is happening in the antisocial media is being lazy or failing at their actual jobs.
When do we get closure on the former goose?
Have you considered a follow up headcount of Canadian geese landing on Trump golf courses that never take off again ?
As a Canadian, I'm going demand an accounting for every last one of our Canadian geese! (hic ... 😉🙂)
Actually, many of us are tired of Canada sending us their geese. Not the good ones who just migrate through but the ones that stick around because they have found easy living here in the US of A. They are a nuisance species here and we should be paying Haitians to eat them!
Sorry what comes across is not that people who responded to complaints about immigration are racist, but that people who work overtime to dismiss such complaints are hostile to the Americans who complained about it. Some of the people who voiced their anger at the Springfield city council meeting were Black Americans. No one is saying some Haitians aren’t great workers. But you did not rebut the claim that 20,000 had arrived in a short time and you did not find who paid for all of them to travel there. You did not interview the Haitians or the aggrieved townpeople. You strung together rebuttals from official authorities to support a well worn smear by the same people who peddled the Jossie Smollett hoax.
Terrible comment, as usual.
These suggestions about what investigative steps Cathy needed to take are somewhat undermined by the fact that you promote Chris Rufo’s work—the same Rufo who hilariously debased himself in this very anti-Haitian discourse cycle by paying 5k for a video of chickens being grilled.
I left a related comment elsewhere but I think you guys have Rufo wrong - I remember reading his tweets and it seemed to me that he thought the cats & dogs story was ridiculous too, and was offering the bounty to prove that no such thing happened. Maybe I missed some of his tweets and got this wrong, but unless you're sure you might want to double-check.
LOL. So the people rebutting a hoax are the ones similar to the perpetrators of the Jussie (not "Jossie") Smollett hoax. Okay then.
(By the way, I do show that it's not 20,000. As for "who paid them to travel there," LOL. Yes, everything is a conspiracy, I get it.)
So who paid for the Haitians to travel to Springfield? Who arranged for them to get Temporary status? What input did the residents of Springfield get in any of it? In many cases your reporting is much more thorough. Here you seem determined not to find out what the townspeople are complaining about and afraid to find out how so many Haitians ended up in that part of Ohio. Even if the Haitians are all hardworking people eager to assimilate into America culture, don’t the people of Springfield have any say. You are also missing the elite privilege aspect of this. If 200 Haitians were moved to Martha’s Vineyard, would it be more than 48 hours before the National Guard came and rounded them up?
Mr. Mars, a very sizable Haitian-American population has been living in the US for many years and is well established, particularly in Florida and New York, with considerable resources. The way US immigration has generally worked, new immigrants--some whom arrive with some resources of their own, others not--seek out family or co-national communities already here to find stability and initial support needed to bridge them to employment, which may involve support for travel to areas of job availability. This has been the pattern with the Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Muslims, and countless other groups. New immigrants network with established co-nationals and draw on their support to supplement their initial means. (This pattern also holds with many groups of internal migrants, such as both Black and White migrants from the American South a century ago, who were drawn to settle in northern communities which had both manufacturing jobs and communities of earlier migrants of shared background.)
In the case of Springfield (also replicating past patterns), Haitians who initially were able to find employment there in response to active local recruitment formed an anchor attracting more co-nationals and, as their situations stabilized, created a network providing support for new arrivals. That is how sectors of immigrant communities have traditionally "paid for" their relocation. It's a normal pattern that follows logical social and economic forces and requires no particular agent to orchestrate. The compressed time scale in Springfield was very much the result of local economic and political leaders continuing to recruit labor to support the renewed manufacturing base they were creating.
“Renewed manufacturing base”?
How much do these manufacturing jobs pay? What kind of taxes are these jobs generating? How much do the people working those jobs and their families receive in government assistance?
Based on the figures presented, these people are welfare cases. They will never ever pay for their Ed’s and Meds subsidies. But most of that comes from the state and federal level and if your a local provider you can make bank at others expense.
Referring to working people -- ones who may be working two jobs in many cases -- as "welfare cases" makes you a scumbag. Fuck off.
I care more about not turning America into a shithole like Haiti then I do about whether you think I'm a scumbag. I think your a terrible person for making my country worse because you can't handle the truth.
Ms. Young, please don't go there.
Sometimes there is just nowhere else to go.
That’s a nice story, but not necessarily an accurate one. Please provide a link to video of town leaders saying they paid for the import of 20,000 people. Please provide records of how many came each month and their mode of transport. Where did the town leaders get the money and how much did it cost? How much of the came from Federal funds or NGOs with Federal grants?
Mr. Mars, I think you are reading into my comments what you expected me to say, rather than what I did say. I did not say, "Town leaders paid to import Haitian workers," nor did they. I said, "Haitians who initially were able to find employment there in response to active local recruitment formed an anchor attracting more co-nationals and, as their situations stabilized, created a network providing support for new arrivals. That is how sectors of immigrant communities have traditionally 'paid for' their relocation." Notice that last sentence: there's nothing new or mysterious about this. This is a major reason we have uneven ethnic distributions in the US: new immigrants since the 1840s have tended to migrate to areas where jobs are available and co-nationals have established a presence that can provide support.
Springfield political leaders worked to attract new manufacturing to revive Springfield's economy, and they initiated programs to recruit workers to supply those manufacturers with labor. "Recruiting workers" does not mean "paying for workers to come": it means spending money to advertise the availability of jobs in regions where there may be particular demand for jobs among underemployed populations, something any city's Chamber of Commerce would encourage local government to do. The money spent on attracting business and labor now will be recouped in local taxes and economic growth because the Haitian community in Springfield is composed of working families with good paying jobs at the newly transplanted factories.
And, by the way, the figures I have seen from local sources are not 20,000 people but 12-15,000. The estimate range is consistent with the fact that local government would not be tracking these new arrivals, whose initial contacts would have been with employers and established members of the Springfield Haitian community.
I'm pretty sure the Haitians themselves paid to travel there. It sounds like they heard there were job, went there to find out, then loaded up a U-Haul just like everyone else does.
I think it makes sense to be hostile to the Americans who complained about it. They're a bunch of liars who made stuff up to get attention and stir up trouble. Last time I heard, "liars" was an acceptable group of people to be hostile towards.
Q: why were they shipped here?
A: modern-day slave labor for factory work.
I know you enjoy dismissing the town hall, during which citizens voiced those exact concerns, and many others. But it is not acceptable to offer TPS to illegals as low-cost laborers, especially in front of those w/merit waiting in India and many other countries.
Just about everything you say here is wrong. First off this is not illegal immigration. Second they came to Springfield to fill the many unfilled jobs and are being paid market wages, so no they're not driving down wages or stealing jobs. But I know you all don't let facts get in the way of a convenient narrative
Lol look at what a whack job Doug is.
https://substack.com/@directorblue?r=auz4n&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
Mr. Ross, it seems to me that you are accepting the "A" in your post as factual--that the Haitian immigrant in Springfield were indeed "shipped" in to be "modern-day slave labor." You also seem to think that people granted TPS were, prior to their receiving that status, "illegals." Neither of these ideas is in fact true.
Haitians were not shipped to Springfield. They were attracted by promotional efforts of local political and economic actors who were anxious to rebuild Springfield's manufacturing capacity--having brought new businesses into the city, there was a critical need of labor. Haitians were hired on the same wage basis as others, and wages have generally risen in the city since their arrival. Ms. Young dismissed those at the town hall who voiced these exact concerns because they are so manifestly untrue.
If you are actually open to new information on these points, I think the best exploration of the data has been done by Radley Balko, whom Ms. Young cites. I'd recommend his blog post on the subject. (https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/what-jd-vance-and-donald-trump-dont?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) If you are only eager to confirm the false rumors spread by the former president and his running mate, though, I'm afraid Balko's work will frustrate you. (Note that Ohio Governor DeWine and Springfield Mayor Rue--both Republicans--have refuted the claims made by the GOP ticket and others very forcefully.)
No one offered TPS to "illegals" as low-cost laborers. TPS status is granted because of conditions in the country of origin (Haiti), not any designated role in the US. TPS recipients have to go through an application process and pay fees, and generally individuals whose immigration status is irregular cannot receive TPS status without rectifying any unauthorized entry in the US though specific steps that are burdensome. (You may find this fact sheet of interest: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/temporary-protected-status-overview.)
TPS shouldn’t exist.
You enticed a bunch of cheap labor to come over from Haiti. These people bring with them tens of thousands of dollars in Ed’s and Meds subsidies paid for by the federal and state government (if you’ve got a low wage job, you are subsidized by the government). That, not their pathetic “labor”, is what the locality really wants.
If I was running the local k-12 schools I would love to get another $15k+ tax infusion for each immigrant kid paid for by tax dollars from someplace else. If I was the person paying those tax dollars I would not be so excited. And if my kid was attending schools flooded with Haitians and I had no personal financial stake in it I’d be pissed.
https://buckeyereporter.com/stories/664310242-special-report-renting-apartments-to-haitians-is-big-business-for-springfield-mayor-rob-rue-others
It’s no surprise that a lot of the local politicians that support this stuff also get rich off it.
Actually, FP123, I didn't entice them. The Republican leaders of the state and the city enticed them as a means of restoring the manufacturing capacity and tax base of Springfield, and it has worked. The Haitian immigrant community in Springfield is not generally subsidized. Members are not permanent residents and don't qualify for many health benefits. The comment you've posted based on the Buckeye Reporter article seems to assume that the money Haitians are paying for rent comes from the state or federal government. It comes from their earnings.
The jobs they are working are relatively well-paying (the mean wage in Springfield has been rising, not falling, as a result of Haitian migration to the city--check out the data in Balko's article). As for school costs, if the city had recruited families from West Virginia to fill the new manufacturing jobs their kids would be attending schools, like the Haitian kids, and being "subsidized" by taxpayers in just the same way (although the language issue has, certainly, created additional strain on the schools).
It's interesting that the article you cite accuses the Mayor of profiting off of government-subsidized "illegals" since the Haitian community is neither composed of "illegals" or subsidized. This is the mindset that the GOP ticket is working hard to promote and exploit. The people interviewed in the article are naturally upset. There have been downsides to Springfield's sudden expansion and they have been victims of it. The same would have been true if the influx had been West Virginians in search of higher wages and a better life. The city needs to prioritize attracting developers to construct new housing to relieve this stress--and it should make part of permitting the creation of low-income/subsidized housing, since the people who are complaining in the article are generally the folks who require government subsidies to survive, and they should be able to receive them if they qualify.
"Members are not permanent residents and don't qualify for many health benefits."
This is blatantly false.
https://www.healthcare.gov/immigrants/lawfully-present-immigrants/
In many cases these people qualify for various state and federal provided medical insurance. For their kids it's even easier. And the emergency room is covered basically anywhere.
There are comments about housing assistance in Springfield you can find. I can speak to the experience in my own town which has two apartment complexes of subsidized rental units occupied largely by Hispanic immigrants. They also receive food assistance, you can see it being delivered by a big van.
"The jobs they are working are relatively well-paying"
According to your article, the median household income is $45k or so. That's way below the national average and severely into public support territory.
"if the city had recruited families from West Virginia to fill the new manufacturing jobs"
Nobody should be filling these subsidized welfare jobs. US citizens should move to economically vital areas and get real jobs that don't require massive government subsidy. This process was happening until you decided to turn Springfield OH into a giant Eds and Meds welfare spigot to enrich a few connected locals.
To the extent US citizens require subsidy, there will be more to go around if they don't have to share it with immigrants.
You can make anyone legal by granting an asylum or refugee claim, but such programs should not exist and these leeches should be sent home.
FP123, I appreciate your responding with a valid link. You are correct that lawfully present immigrants do qualify for some forms of subsidized medical insurance.
The low median income in Springfield is not a product of Haitian immigrants. The city was severely depressed with high poverty rate prior to their arrival. Median income has risen significantly since, as have wages. It would be difficult to maintain that the presence of Haitians has lowered the economic standard of living in Springfield.
The jobs in Springfield are not subsidized or welfare jobs. They are the products of a concerted effort by city leadership to recruit new manufacturing investment and facilities to restore the town's economic viability. (I really don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.) Haitians in Springfield are not laboring at bargain rates for employers--Springfield had a labor shortage, and that's what drew Haitians there. US citizens in Springfield were eligible to apply for the same jobs (and, of course, most are in fact working).
I think it's interesting that you refer to immigrants working lawfully in Springfield as "leeches." If that characterization were true, US history would largely be a history of leeches: leeches who immigrated under stress, moved to places where opportunity existed, worked to turn opportunity into their personal prosperity to the national benefit . . . and then some of them pointed to the next generation of themselves and called them "leeches." It's a very human dynamic, showing both good and bad elements of people. My grandparents were leeches (most arrived without means), so I suppose I'm a member of the leech community too. For me, that seems to generate some empathy for the Haitians in Springfield, but perhaps you are not a descendant of leeches and find it hard to feel anything in common with them. (Forgive the snark: I don't go for it often, but sometimes weakness of will leads me there.)
"The jobs in Springfield are not subsidized or welfare jobs."
A welfare job is a job whose wages are low enough that the worker (or their household) does not pay enough in taxes to fund the benefits they receive from the government.
Let us imagine a household of four to make things simple (mom, dad, 2 kids). I'm going to link a chart at the bottom* since the link is long. It's for a single mom of two so adjust it up slightly for a family of four compared to the chart (the medicaid threshold would be about $8k higher with the husband present).
Our society guarantees such a household around $60k of consumption. This comes in the form of various subsidies. Healthcare, childcare, food, cash, rent, etc.
On top of that K-12 state spending in Ohio is a little under $17k per student. So $34k for two kids in K-12 schools.
So we are talking around 90-100k in household consumption on say $45k of gross income (total taxes paid by such a household will likely amount to under $10k, despite receiving $50k or so in benefits from the government).
That's the definition of a welfare job.
The median income for a family of four in 2022 dollars is $113k. $44k is way down there. It takes more than having a job to be a self sufficient contributor to society. You need a decently productive job. We do not need to import people to do negative value add low skill jobs.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOCZW_tOYgahaqxKHm4_fZRCCiYJQt543PRNb5jhcuUNIKcLWKUtjjcgJWAERqlOx1hyphenhyphenFCeUBB2w5qzqfz1VJjVPX5Oy3AB0VaNzQwxTTDzkL-V1bS_PJwS6ngDOMfV7aMP-5mHyNBXE/s640/marginal-tax_6.PNG
This is incorrect - in 2021 USG agencies funded these exceptional relocation programs that were completely out of the norm. The people of Springfield are outraged. Video compilation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8rmH5IfB1E
Please note that _children_ have died and been critically injured by Haitian drivers without valid licenses. A specific poignant reminder here.
https://x.com/johncardillo/status/1838233462534242323
This is an outrage and an affront to every legal immigrant following the process.
If you have evidence that the federal government funded the relocation of Haitians to Springfield, Mr. Ross, please share it.
Your YouTube link shows two people expressing outrage and one expressing an incomplete thought. The Twitter/X link (which is just the same incomplete thought) does not relate to your point.
It is unquestionably true that a Haitian immigrant in Springfield caused a crash with a school bus that took the life of a child and injured others. As I'm sure you know, the father of the child whose life was lost has expressed outrage at the way his son's death from the acts of one man has been exploited to demonize the entire Springfield Haitian community, as you seem to be doing here.
Nobody "shipped" Haitian migrants to Springfield. They exercised their basic rights to find a job from a willing employer and rent a home from a willing owner -- enriching themselves and the rest of society in the process.
I am not willing to pay their Medicaid or educational expense for their children, etc.
Based on the figures presented, these people do not work jobs that come remotely close to paying enough in taxes to fund those things. They are welfare parasites. Importing more welfare parasites to America can be profitable for the people providing those services, but not to those of us paying for them.
You're not paying their children's educational expenses. Local property owners are, including many whose property values have gone up thanks to the migrants (including their landlords).
One of the people seen complaining about the Haitians in one of the video clips is a woman who literally said she's on welfare and got evicted because her landlord no longer provides Section 8 housing because Haitian renters (who get no housing subsidies) are profitable. But I'm sure you're fine with THAT "welfare parasite" because she's white and having white kids at public expense.
"Local property owners are"
False, that isn't how school funding works. It's been a long time since local property taxes made up most of a schools funding, especially in these poorer districts.
I will use an example from Maryland that I know, but it's the same story in every state these days. Every state evens out spending in each school district by taking from some and giving to others.
https://i0.wp.com/conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screenshot-2019-02-19-19.37.24-1.png?fit=998%2C647&ssl=1
In total, about 1/2 of the funding comes from the state and 1/2 from local. However, it's more like rich districts provide 2/3 or more of their own funding and poor districts 1/4 or less. Baltimore City is probably a good proxy for what the funding situation for Springfield, OH is. Most of it comes from the state and feds.
And of course "comes from the state" comes from things like state income taxes, which are coming from the same economically dynamic areas that are funding their own districts education expense.
"because she's white and having white kids at public expense."
I dislike anyone on welfare, but these are fellow citizens who played a role in building America, and thus I have certain obligations to them that I don't have to foreign invaders. It also helps that the white family probably doesn't vote for people who hate me and want to make my life worse.
I've heard this all before in Baltimore. I lived in an area in-between a white trash part of town and a ghetto black part of town. Yes, I found the white trash people infinitely less disagreeable than the ghetto blacks on a whole host of metrics.
I agree with you about hating people wanting to get people off welfare. I live in South Carolina how much my whole state is often the blue state along with so many living off the government tit. I’m going off red states like mine republicans living off. I’m sure you’re just like republicans live on welfare which is vastly more than people on public schools.
We can come together on this issue, and after we’ve talked about paying republicans paying their cause we can then talk about this.
It all makes simple sense if you invent a conspiracy theory, Mr. Downey. Fortunately, the web is filled with tutorials to help!
So many of these figures out how to tell these stories you can’t post of them.
lol 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
They weren't "shipped" here. Rather, they congregated in one place. My Hoover colleague Thomas Sowell often writes about how this happens with immigrants: they want to go where they know people and so you can get a whole lot of them in one place. Think Germans and Wisconsin over a century ago.
My dad's family and almost half of the tiny island off the western Irish coast's population moved to Cleveland in the 30s - the neighborhood was like visiting extended family. No one induced them to move to Cleveland or paid them or anything - there were supposed to be jobs there, not to mention electricity and indoor plumbing.
Great story! Similar to so many that Sowell tells in his books.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue: "This program, this TPS program was an executive order by the White House, approved by executive order."
Springfield Ohio Haitian Immigration Presentation (July 16th, 2024): "We saw that immigration begin to increase here in 2020. We've got data to show that: These are interactions at the US Mexico border. You can see exactly when this started increasing. It's very obvious from the data, when you saw those Haitian migrant interactions at that border increase."
This is an affront to every single person following the legal immigration process. I have PhD friends who want to come here to contribute.
Instead, we're importing factory workers who make $15/hr and receive OUR government benefits.
If you're not outraged, I'm not sure what to think.
I'm semi-outraged. I want your Ph.D. friends to be allowed in also.
How is this responsive to Henderson's point? He's arguing that Hattians decided to come to Springfield of their own volition. Your response has nothing to do with that.
What a shockingly embarrassing episode. The thing that amazes me is that these people are doing exactly what they claim (sometimes correctly) their opponents do. If you asked Vance if he knows that there was never a "hands up -don't shoot" moment in the Michael Brown incident, or whether or not Jacob Blake had a knife, they would know the answer and slam "leftists" for spreading the fake version.
But here we are, talking about how the cat-eating may not be literally true but poetically true 🙄 embarrassing.
Great piece but Wesley Yang was never a serious journalist, he’s always been what he is
When folks engage in name-calling and other forms of attacks on commenters' character, they undercut arguments that they make.
I stopped reading this essay when Young denigrated Dr Wolf instead of her comments.
Yes and it exposes the lefts hatred and bigotry toward working class whites. There is plenty of hate to go around.
No doubt there's a great deal of rot on the Republican side of the ledger. But at least they're not guilty of castrating and sterilizing autistic and dysphoric children, of turning them into sexless eunuchs.
Though that is somewhat incongruous since they were the ones pushing conversion therapy. Which is basically what "gender affirming surgery" often boils down into -- "Don't want a gay son? Convince/trick him into cutting his nuts off and becoming a transwoman."
A classic case of strange bedfellows since that is the standard operating procedure of Iran's Ayatollahs. When they're not throwing gays off roof tops or hanging them.
Hard not to get the impression that transgenderism -- particularly with Democrats putting transwomen (AKA male transvestites or sexless eunuchs) into women's toilets, change rooms and sports -- is, or should be, the fatal flaw in the whole Democrat party and in much if not all of the so-called Left. Just the tip of a very large iceberg that may well if not should send both to Davey Jones' Locker.
Sorry, not a fan of dragging an entirely unrelated issue into a discussion.
No problemo -- we're all entitled to our opinions 😉🙂. But not our own facts -- as Daniel Moynihan once emphasized.
And while you've made a solid case that many on the Republican side are "barking mad" -- being charitable -- that is just part of a rather questionable argument as to why people shouldn't vote for Trump.
But I don't think you, and too many others, quite realize that "muh pets" is only part of a much more substantive bill of particulars against the Democrats that still makes this election into a toss-up, into anybody's game.
In particular, a rather large contingent of women -- the "real" kind, not the "Rachel" Levine kind buried like ticks in the White House and Department of Education -- are rather seriously bent out of shape, with good reason, at the depredations of that tribe, aided and abetted by Democrats.
For example, you might consider Kara Dansky's, "The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls":
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CN32BXC2/ref=cbw_us_ca_dp_narx_gl_book
And Aussie/UK lawyer & author Helen Dale's interview with Economist author Helen Joyce and with lawyer Maya Forstater:
"When Does Sex Matter?"
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/
And the upshot there, a well- argued and justified one, is that, as the Helens put it, transgenderism is "a civilization threatening/ending movement". Kinda think that "muh pets" pales into insignificance in the face of that rather brute fact.
Seems you need to get more "in touch with your 'feminine side' ..." 😉🙂 At least with the issues on that side of the ledger that contribute to that toss-up.
TPS shouldn’t exist.
You enticed a bunch of cheap labor to come over from Haiti. These people bring with them tens of thousands of dollars in Ed’s and Meds subsidies paid for by the federal and state government (if you’ve got a low wage job, you are subsidized by the government). That, not their pathetic “labor”, is what the locality really wants.
If I was running the local k-12 schools I would love to get another $15k+ tax infusion for each immigrant kid paid for by tax dollars from someplace else. If I was the person paying those tax dollars I would not be so excited. And if my kid was attending schools flooded with Haitians and I had no personal financial stake in it I’d be pissed.
https://buckeyereporter.com/stories/664310242-special-report-renting-apartments-to-haitians-is-big-business-for-springfield-mayor-rob-rue-others
It’s no surprise that a lot of the local politicians that support this stuff also get rich off it. It’s just another by the head welfare scam paid for by the rest of us.
You obviously didn't read this article or any of the others I cited. But then, bigoted scumbags generally aren't very big on reading (other than that incredibly shoddy report you linked).
Ya. Trump says stupid things. Shocker!! Yet the regime media has hammered away at the issue relentlessly for two weeks - once again turning a nothing burger into an existential crisis. The Dems can always count on their foot soldiers in the regime media to stoke anger and polarization.
I think you're misreading Rufo. Rufo was claiming the whole "Haitians are eating cats and dogs" story was bogus and threw down $5k to prove it. The only "evidence" that surfaced was the video from Dayton.