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Springfield Gets What It Deserves

Posted on | September 10, 2024 | No Comments

Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio

When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:

“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).

It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”

Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.

You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.

For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:

A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
“Four years ago we didn’t have a Haitian population,” says Pamela Shay, director of federal programs for Springfield City School District.
Now the district has about 200 students from Haitian families, many speaking Haitian Creole, French or Spanish, she says. In the past, the district has had two or three bilingual assistants who speak students’ native languages in order to help in classrooms and communicate with parents. Now the district has nine, she says.
“I think we will see growth continue for a few years,” Shay says. . . .
Estimates about the number of Springfield and Clark County residents from Haiti vary. Shay says she has been told there are about 7,500 Haitians in the area, although she suspects the number is lower based on the number of students enrolled in the school district.
Davah Germain says there were already several thousand people from Haiti when he arrived in Springfield almost two years ago, and he suspects that number might have doubled in the meantime.
“And people are still coming,” he says.
Germain left Haiti due to political issues and moved to Miami, Fla., in 1985. The 63-year-old moved to Springfield at the urging of a friend. Word is spreading about the ease in which newcomers can find jobs, particularly in manufacturing.
“They’re coming to stay,” he says. “They’re coming to make Springfield their home.” . . .
Germain . . . translates for the Springfield District Council of St. Vincent de Paul.
Peggy Johnson is a longtime volunteer with the council, and she oversees its community navigator program to help the local Haitian and Hispanic communities.
“I applied for a grant last year when I started to see a lot of Haitians moving into town,” she says.
That $10,000 grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, along with another $10,000 from a private organization in Springfield, is helping the program fund 20 hours of services each week. The organization also now has two Haitians employed who speak Haitian Creole and Spanish. The extra services started in September.

You see? According to the school system official, as recently as 2018, Springfield didn’t have any Haitians, but by 2022, the number had reached an estimated 7,500, and now it’s believed to be at least 15,000. And the city did everything to assist and support the Haitians, effectively encouraging still more to come. The Biden administration’s decision to grant TPS to all Haitians — no matter how they got into the country — means that no Haitian can be deported, and every Haitian in the country is now eligible for employment, Social Security cards, Medicaid, etc. The liberals in Springfield, the ones who made Warren Copeland the city’s mayor for nearly 30 years, voted for this policy. They approved it.

And then in 2023, a child suffered the consequences:

Aidan Clark

A Haitian man charged with causing a bus crash in which 11-year-old Aiden Clark was killed and more than two dozen other students were injured was previously caught and released at the US border.
Hermanio Joseph, 35, was driving with an invalid license when his Honda Odyssey minivan veered over the center line and collided with a Northwestern Local Schools bus on Troy Road in Lawrenceville, Ohio, on August 22. . . .
Aiden was ejected from the bus and was pronounced dead at the scene. Another student suffered life-threatening injuries and 26 children sustained minor injuries. . . .
Joseph and his passenger, Roberto Mompremier, 37, suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were taken to hospital for treatment.
He produced a Mexican driver’s license to Ohio State Highway Patrol officers at the scene but this was invalid due to his immigration status.
Joseph is registered as a Haitian immigrant in the state of Florida and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman confirmed he arrived at the US-Mexico border in August 2022.
He was given notice to appear in federal immigration court by the Department of Homeland Security before he was released under the Biden Administration’s border policies.

Hermanio Joseph

So never mind if Haitians are eating cats, because the fact is that Haitians are killing actual human beings, including this 11-year-old kid from Lawrenceville, a crossroads about 7 miles north of Springfield.

It was not Aidan Clark’s fault that the Biden administration adopted a “catch-and-release” policy for illegal immigrants. It was not Aidan Clark’s policy that the liberals in Springfield welcomed thousands of Haitians to their city. Hermanio Joseph has been sentenced to prison, but this hardly suffices to clear the blood-guilt for Aidan Clark’s death, and the people responsible are not just the residents of Springfield. Yet they have brought a curse upon their city, which I expect will soon cease to be recognizable as an American city. Springfield, Ohio, is going to turn into a cesspool of misery, bearing no resemblance to what it was when the first Haitians arrived there. This sad fate is not something I approve — were it in my power, I would prevent it– but at the same time, I cannot deny that it is what Springfield deserves. They have invited their own destruction.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

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Category: Haiti, Immigration, Ohio

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