JD Vance’s broadside against the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio is one of the uglier mask-off episodes in American politics in recent memory. It isn’t just the racism, it’s the glee with which right-wing personalities and outlets have focused a third of the country’s rage and ridicule on one vulnerable, easily-identifiable group of immigrants in a single city.

All Vance’s claims about the Haitians in Springfield are based on lazy, long-held stereotypes about immigrants, and about Haitians specifically. On some level, even debunking his claims feels like capitulation. Immigrants don’t need to justify their existence or prove their humanity. And the burden certainly isn’t on them to prove they aren’t doing whatever horrible new thing of which some shameless politician has accused them.

Yet Vance’s claims are worth debunking for one important reason — he isn’t just putting Haitian immigrants at risk, he’s now endangered the entire city of Springfield. And the long-term goal of his rhetoric is to snuff out the main thing that’s giving slowly-dying cities like Springfield life and hope — immigration.

As I write this, the MAGA right is reveling in a giddy frenzy of unabashed racism. An army of right-wing chuds and influencers have descended upon Springfield, combing the city in a desperate search for evidence that some immigrant might have once eaten something unseemly. Meanwhile, the New York Post is now publishing articles fender-benders in which no one was harmed in a city 600 miles away — because the drivers happen to be Haitian.

Professional bigot Chris Rufo offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone who could produce “proof” to back up Vance’s racist pet-eating claims. He managed to scrounge a single grainy video supposedly depicting immigrants “barbecuing cats.” Except the alleged immigrants are apparently from the Congo, not Haiti; the video was shot in Dayton, not Springfield; and the meat was probably chicken. It too has been disputed by local police.

But hey, Congolese people are black and speak funny. That’s good enough. So Vance declared victory. On with the pogrom.

Unfortunately, the campaign has now inflicted harm on the entire town — even the white people. Bomb threats have shut down Springfield schools for the last four days. Wittenberg University canceled events and hired extra security after a shooting threat that specifically mentioned Haitians. Threats also forced three city hospitals into lockdown.

One thing that is true: Tension between immigrants and some longtime residents of Springfield has been simmering for a couple years. They boiled over last year after a Haitian man caused a roadway collision that killed a young boy. Contrary to what Vance and others have claimed, this wasn’t a murder, and it didn’t involve an undocumented person. A Haitian man driving a van crossed the median and into the path of an oncoming school bus. The bus swerved to miss the van and plunged into a ditch. A boy on the bus was ejected and killed when the bus landed on top of him.

The Haitian driver was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. His attorney has said he crossed the median after he was blinded by the sun. The man had a Mexican driver’s license, but not an Ohio license, so he wasn’t legally permitted to drive. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and received an unusually harsh sentence of 9 to 13 years in prison. Importantly, the boy’s parents have repeatedly pleaded with politicians, pundits, and Springfield residents to stop using their son’s death to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. Instead, Vance put this family on blast.

Still, the boy’s death inflamed the existing tension. City council meetings erupted in anger, including furious, often racist rants against the immigrants.

Springfield now had all the necessary ingredients for a racial backlash. Start with a region facing economic hardship and all the pathologies that come with that. Add an infusion of immigrants and the resulting logistical difficulties accommodating them, then tie it all together with an incident easily distorted to capture all of the anger and fear in one tidy anecdote. All that was missing was some baiting by white supremacist groups and a politician shameless enough to exploit it all for political gain.

On cue, a Nazi group in the area took notice and held a march in the town. It was the leader of that group who first mentioned the pet-eating rumor — a tired, century-old smear — in a rant at a city council meeting. Enter JD Vance, who then ran with it. The Nazis are reportedly thrilled.

Over the weekend, the Proud Boys held their own march in Springfield, and the Ku Klux Klan distributed fliers reiterating Vance’s complaints.

On last Sunday morning politics shows, Vance feigned offense when asked if he feels any regret for the bomb threats and white supremacist antagonizing. He seemed uninterested in why, over and over again, he and his running mate find themselves receiving praise from Nazi and white nationalist groups.

Virtually everything Vance, Trump, and the parade of MAGA politicians and influencers have claimed about the Haitian community in Springfield is either provably false or lacks any credible evidence. Most of the accusations are based on third- or fourth-hand claims and mis-contextualized photos posted on social media sites that have since been proven false.

The only evidence Vance himself has cited to support the smear about pet-eating are the calls he says that have come into his office. A little critical thinking reveals why he’s either lying about this, or the callers themselves are. If your pet is missing, you put up a flyer, reach out to neighbors, or call the local shelter. If you have reason to think your pet was abducted, you call the police. Here’s what you don’t do: Call your U.S. senator. At the very least you’d call the police first. And Springfield police have repeatedly said they’ve had no reports of abducted pets. (There was one call alleging Haitian immigrants had abducting some geese from a park — the police found no evidence to corroborate the accusation.)

Even the city’s Trump-supporting Republican politicians and Ohio’s Republican governor have now called out the lies, and pleaded with Trump and Vance to end them — to no avail.

That’s because the first rule of MAGA is to never admit you’re wrong. And Vance — who just a few years ago condemned Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric "xenophobic” and a “moral disaster” — has decided that MAGA is his path to political power. So he has embraced the same ugly, provincial chauvinism he once blamed for helping destroy the community he came from.

At a rally Friday in Wisconsin, Trump continued to perpetuate the lie that Haitians in the town are “illegal” and promised to “deport them to Venezuela.” Over the weekend, Vance then acknowledged that he’d “created a story,” but then insisted that truth doesn’t matter if your lies get the media talking.

The Haitians in Springfield have done nothing wrong. Their only “transgression” is to have come from a country whose citizens Trump, Vance, and MAGA have decided are something less than human. A responsible politician — or just a decent human being — with some knowledge of the Rust Belt (and Vance of course has that knowledge) would see this for the potential powder keg it is, dispel the myths, calm the tension, denounce the Nazis, and work to bring the community together.

But JD Vance abandoned his decency the moment he decided to run for office. As long as there’s clout to be gained by lying about the immigrants, he’ll keep lying about them. And if that means snuffing out the one trend that’s actually breathing some life into the depressed Rust Belt communities he represents and claims to love, so be it.

Why Haitian immigrants settled in Springfield

The sole claim Trump and Vance have made about Springfield that’s actually true is that since 2021, about 12,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to the city. But no one — not the Biden administration, not George Soros, and not Kamala Harris — “sent” them there.

The reason why so many Haitian immigrants ended up in Springfield lies at a point of convergence between the recent history of Haiti and the recent history of Springfield.

After the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Obama administration allowed displaced people from that country to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a policy created during the George H.W. Bush administration for refugees from countries in crisis. Thousands of Haitians took advantage of the opportunity.

Donald Trump revoked that status in 2019, infamously calling Haiti one of those “shithole countries” from which the U.S. should never accept immigrants. Trump would later add that all Haitian immigrants “probably have AIDS,” and lament that the U.S. doesn’t get more immigrants from better countries like Norway.

Trump’s TPS revocation threatened the immigration status of tens of thousands of Haitians who came after the earthquake, many of whom by then had children who were U.S. citizens. The Biden administration then reinstated TPS protection in 2021. This is why Trump and Vance blame Biden and Harris for Springfield.

At about the same time, Springfield’s political leaders were trying reverse the city’s decades-long decline. In the early-to-mid 20th century, the automobile, farm machinery, and publishing industries made Springfield a thriving hub of culture and commerce. Read any description of Springfield at the time, and you’re bound to see references to the grand Victorian homes that lined its streets back then. One local farm equipment baron even commissioned a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which is now a local landmark.

(As is often the case when we harken back to better days, not everyone benefitted from the city’s prosperity. Springfield also has an ugly history of lynchings and violent uprisings against its black residents.)

But like much of the Rust Belt, the manufacturing plants began to close in the 1980s and 1990s, and Springfield atrophied. The ornate Victorian homes that lined the city’s main streets fell into disrepair as those with means moved away. The city has lost about 25 percent of its population since 1970.

So in the mid-2010s, city officials embarked on a campaign to lure new businesses to the area, citing Springfield’s low cost of living and ideal geographical position for shipping and manufacturing. The plan worked. Factories started opening up. Other businesses followed.

But there was a problem: The population that remained in Springfield and surrounding Clark County was aging. There weren’t enough workers to fill the available jobs. So the companies looked to immigrants. This happened to be right about the time Haitians were coming to the U.S. under TPS. Word quickly spread in the Haitian immigrant community that there was a town in Ohio with a low cost of living and lots of well-paying jobs. So that’s where they went.

The companies did not turn to undocumented immigrants to pay “slave wages,” as some immigration opponents have claimed. They were documented immigrants with taxpayer ID numbers paid at a market rate (as noted below, wages have increased in Springfield since the Haitians arrived).

Haitians with TPS can live where they like. A large number settled in Springfield because that’s where they found jobs.

This is a recurring pattern with immigration in the U.S. Immigrants settle in geographic clusters, close to other immigrants from the same country. This allows them to establish networks, find housing, and open and patronize restaurants and businesses that offer the comforts of home. This is why Patterson, New Jersey, has a “Little Lima.” In the mid-20th century, Peruvian immigrants settled in the city after taking jobs in area textile mills. It’s why Nashville has the country’s largest Kurdish community, and Minneapolis to large Somali and Hmong populations. Terre Heute, Indiana once had a thriving Syrian population; Lowell, Massachusetts has the country’s second largest Cambodian population. Rochester; New York has a large Turkish community; and Russian immigrants settled in places like Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

This is how immigration works.

Haitians in the U.S. under TPS ended up in Springfield because businesses in Springfield offered them well-paying jobs.

This is how labor markets work.

Haitian immigrants haven’t made Springfield a “dystopian nightmare.” They’ve made it better.

Springfield is a city of 60,000. As you might imagine, it’s had some problems scaling city services to accommodate a surge of 12,000-15,000 new arrivals. As the New York Times reported last year, the city’s schools weren’t prepared for the surge of new students, both with staffing up teachers and administrators, and with hiring translators. The city’s health clinic was also overwhelmed, which made it difficult for both immigrants and longtime residents to get care.

The influx also created housing problems. A 30 percent population surge will do that. The newcomers also tend to share housing — three or four people making good wages will sometimes bunk up in the same home. That has helped drive up rents in the city.

Vance and others have taken these very real logistical problems, mixed them up with the very made-up claims about pet-eating, crime, and disease, and pushed a narrative that Haitian immigrants are killing a once-thriving city.

But the main problem with that narrative is that Springfield wasn’t thriving, it was dying. In 2012, a Gallup survey named Springfield the “unhappiest city in the U.S.”

Here’s a writeup at the time:

The road south from Toledo is a veritable museum of American industry. You pass the rich farm fields and local processing plants, the stately century-old homes in Findlay and Urbana, evidence of the wealth that flowed from the industries that first built automobiles and other vehicles. But many of the homes are badly in need of some paint, and the towns wanting for life.

None more so than Springfield, 70 kilometres west of the capital, Columbus. It is here that you see evidence of the full flowering of U.S. manufacturing – and its near complete collapse that today has left behind a lost generation and a bitter population that is disproportionately aged.

In 2015, another study concluded that Springfield was the “least healthy city” in the country. In 2022, Clark County was ranked among the least healthy counties in the state. And last year, yet another survey again put Springfield among the least healthy cities in the state.

Between 2015 and 2020 — so, the Trump years — Clark County ranked fifth of Ohio’s 88 counties in overdose deaths. That’s over a period in which Ohio itself either led the country or was among the top five states in overdose deaths. Again, this was well before the bulk of Haitian immigrants began arriving in 2021.

Vance has also claimed that the Haitians contributed to a surge in poverty and unemployment. That isn’t true, either. Here’s the recent unemployment data for Springfield. It’s lower now (4.7 percent) than it was before the Haitians arrived (5.0 percent).

The poverty rate in Springfield hasn’t changed much either way. It was 23 percent in 2020 and is now at 22.7.

Income has gone up. In 2020, the median annual household income in the city was $39,344. Two years later — and the last year for which the U.S. Census has data — it was at $45,113.

Immigration opponents also claim that immigrants depress wages. But again contra Vance, that hasn’t happened in Springfield. The mean hourly wage jumped 18 percent between 2020 and 2023, from $21.33 to $25.16. That’s well above the 13 percent that wages increased nationally over the same period.

Vance has claimed the Haitians brought crime to the city. But Springfield has had a high crime rate for decades. Here’s a pre-Haitian immigrant graph of violent crime in Springfield compared to Ohio and the rest of the country.

And here’s the trend for property crime:

Violent crime in Springfield did spike between 2020 and 2021, as it did in much of the country, while property crime fell. But as Reuters reported after interviewing city and county officials, “What didn’t happen . . . was any general rise in violent or property crime” that corresponds with the arrival of the immigrants.

Finally, Vance has claimed that Haitians are spreading disease in Springfield, specifically HIV and tuberculosis. Public health data says this too is false. Clark County has a comparatively low rate of HIV infection, and it had three total cases of tuberculosis in 2022.

But as with the pet-eating lie, the smear that migrants spread disease is an old and ugly trope. And more broadly, it’s a trope not only unsupported by evidence, the evidence we do have pretty thoroughly refutes it.

Here’s a Reddit thread from about nine months ago in which Ohioans discuss Springfield’s woes. Just a few of the 126 comments mention Haitian immigrants at all, and only one is critical. Here’s another thread from a few months ago, in which Springfield residents praise the Haitian immigrants and blame the city’s problems on corrupt and inept political leadership.

Haitians have grown Springfield’s tax base. Because of TPS, they have Social Security or taxpayer ID numbers, so they pay all the same taxes any other resident pays. Those who have made enough money to buy a home now pay property taxes. Those who don’t own a home pay rent, which their landlords then use to pay property taxes.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times profile of the situation a couple weeks ago, before Vance’s tweet blew this story up.

McGregor Metal, a family-owned business in Springfield that makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors, was short of workers after investing millions to boost production.

The business needed machine operators, forklift drivers and quality inspectors, said Jamie McGregor, the chief executive.

“The Haitians were there to fill those positions,” he said. The immigrants now comprise about 10 percent of his work force.

“They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” he said.

Among the Haitians recently on the second shift, which stretched to 1 a.m., was Daniel Campere, operating a robotic welder that makes axle components for Toyota trucks.

Mr. Campere, who arrived in the United States in 2013, for years earned his keep shuttling workers between the tomato fields in Florida and Georgia. Then some friends who had moved to Springfield urged him to give it a try.

He started at McGregor in June 2021 and now makes $19 an hour, with a 401(k) and health insurance.

He has been able to buy a house in Miami, which he rents out. In Springfield, he shares a house with three other Haitian men, who together pay $2,400 in rent.

Mr. Campere said that he was aware of the criticism leveled at his community. “We can’t say anything. The Americans are chez eux,” he said, using the French words for “in their home.”

After a pause, he added, “We pay bills and taxes like everybody else.”

Vickie Stevens, an American worker, overheard the conversation in the break room, and shared her two cents.

“I can tell you, Daniel’s a real good worker,” she said. “He works as many hours as he can get.” She added: “We, the Americans, are just a little jealous of them.”

McGregor’s comments, by the way, have triggered harassment and death threats against his company. MAGA influencers met this news with the compassion we’ve come to expect from them, with some accusing him of betraying his race.

The good news is that unless voters give Trump, Vance, and Stephen Miller the chance to ruin it all, immigrants are having a similar effect on other struggling communities across the United States. They’re breathing new life into blighted neighborhoods in cities like Detroit and Baltimore, as they’ve always done. But they’ve been revitalizing smaller cities, towns, and rural areas, too.

Here, for example is what’s happening elsewhere Ohio, in Akron:

A study, “New Americans in Akron,” released in 2021 by the New American Economy, found that foreign-born residents contributed $2.1 billion to the economy of the Akron region.

New American Economy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan immigration research and advocacy organization.

Last year that same group found that 4,765 immigrants live in the Pittsburgh metro area and that immigrants are 26.8% more likely to be entrepreneurs than U.S.-born residents.

In the North Hill of Akron, Nepali clothing shops, Asian restaurants and international markets dot the neighborhood known as Akron’s international district.

The community benefits, too, says Scott Piepho, interim executive director of Asian Services in Action in Akron.

“There’s a certain energy of somebody who has landed here,” he says. “The rates of small-business formation are really high, partly because that’s a thing that they can do and especially if they were able to create a business that serves their community.”

The Bhutanese who settled in the North Hill brought that vitality to the neighborhood. “When people started getting settled in North Hill, I noticed the vibe in North Hill changing before we started having conversations about what was happening in North Hill…,” Piepho says. “I think there’s a lot of energy that comes of it.”

Before that, it was a part of the city that people were leaving, he says.

There are similar stories throughout the Rust Belt, as immigrant arrivals have revitalized places like Austin, Minnesota; Hazelton, Pennsylvania; and Utica and Greenport, New York.

The Center for American Progress published a report on this last year. Here’s what it found:

• Among the 2,767 rural places identified in this report, the adult population declined 4 percent—a combination of a 12 percent decline in the native-born population and a 130 percent growth among immigrants.

• Of these places, 1,894, or 68 percent, saw their population decline between 1990 and 2012–2016. (see methodological appendix for full explanation)

• In 78 percent of the rural places studied that experienced population decline, the decline would have been even more pronounced if not for the growth of the foreign-born population. Without immigrants, the population in these places would have contracted by 30 percent, even more staggering than the 24 percent they experienced.

• In the 873 rural places that experienced population growth, more than 1 in 5, or 21 percent, can attribute the entirety of population growth to immigrants.

Immigrants are keeping these communities alive, and in some cases reversing their decline.

• As immigrants and their families move to rural communities in pursuit of economic opportunity, they often bring vitality to these places.

• Immigrants provide an indispensable workforce to support communities whose local economies rely on industries such as meat processing plants, dairy farms, or fruits and vegetables farms.

• Immigrants and their families also help local economies in rural communities expand—particularly by opening grocery stores and other businesses that keep their main streets alive and thriving. Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, for example, has prospered with its large population of immigrants, who work primarily in the community’s large mushroom industry and have opened bustling businesses and restaurants.

• By helping to stave off population decline, a growing immigrant population in rural areas also helps keep schools open and, in some cases, even grows school enrollment.

• Immigrant health care professionals such as physicians and specialists provide vital care in rural communities that are generally grappling with a shortage of doctors. In many instances, foreign-trained doctors are the only ones providing care in their area, and even then, many travel long distances to see them.

That last point seems especially important, given that hospitals are vanishing from rural areas.

These are the very communities Vance claims to care about. They’re the communities Trump claims to care about. But it is immigration, not vintage MAGA racism, that’s making these parts of America great again.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Vance said, “If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country — the most prosperous city in the world. America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”

As with much of what Vance has said since his abrupt MAGA conversion, almost nothing in that quote is correct. There are nowhere near 25 million undocumented people in the U.S. in total. Kamala Harris doesn’t set the Biden administration’s immigration policy. And all the data suggest immigrants have made Springfield more prosperous, not less.

About the only thing Vance gets right here is that the United States has typically been the most welcoming country in the world when it comes to foreign workers. But as Phillip Bump at the Washington Post points out, for all his faux patriotism, Vance seems to think the United States is no longer the most prosperous country in the world.

We are, by a wide margin. And immigrants are a big reason why.