About 58,000 Haitians arrived in the US before January 12, 2011, one year after Haiti’s earthquake, and have TPS; most arrived years before it struck. They work and have community ties including US-born children; their remittances support hundreds of thousands back in Haiti. After having regularly renewed Haiti’s TPS designation in successive 18-month increments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in early 2017 threatened to end it, but a campaign in which IJDH played a key role won a grudging six-month extension, to January 22, 2018. We are coordinating and participating in renewed efforts to stave off termination and win an 18 month extension: deportations to Haiti remain unsafe due to incomplete earthquake recovery, the unchecked cholera epidemic, and the ravages of Hurricane Matthew and Haiti can’t safely assimilate 58,000 new deportees nor replace their crucial remittances.

We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens who urge our leaders to act now and ask the Department of Justice to extend or make TPS permanent.