The criminal targeting of Haitians
We don’t live in the United States and have no say as to how they handle immigration. Also, as Europeans, we have not found the right way to do things so that we can point it out to others, seeing as we are currently in danger of losing our precious right to open borders because of member-states’ disagreements on migration. But whichever way one looks at it, Donald Trump’s targeting Haitian immigrants is a crime. The baseless accusation that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants are killing and eating pet cats and dogs is also a lesson of how even societies that are most attuned to immigration can regress under the influence of demagogues.
It is a crime that racist rumors from the dark recesses of the internet made it to politics’ center stage, thanks to their being promoted by Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Now people who have done nothing wrong are afraid for their lives, people who are living and working legally in the town. Furthermore, the cynical exploitation of a non-issue will complicate efforts to solve real problems and tension that arise when some 20,000 people of another nationality and culture suddenly join a community of 60,000. This is what happened when Springfield announced that it needed workers.
The migration battleground suits Trump in his effort to load all the problems on his rival for the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris, as the representative of the Biden administration. His actions confirm that he does not care about solutions, wanting only to exploit the problems.
Tragic victims in all this, once again, are the people who fled Haiti for the United States in search of freedom from fear and poverty. Since their ancestors rose up in 1791, in what became history’s first successful revolution of slaves, this nation has been struggling. It has faced the huge ransom placed on it by the French, being forced to pay reparations to the former slave owners, it has suffered under exorbitant loans raised to pay the reparations, and it has been misruled by corrupt officials. It paid for the bravery of its forebears with other forms of bondage. It is always worth remembering that when the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire, Haiti’s government was the first to recognize their struggle for independence.
