Dear Representative:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, I write to urge you to sign on to Discharge Petition 15 and pass H.R. 1689, a bill which would extend the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti until April 2029.
Over the past year, nearly 2 million people with TPS or other statuses, union members among them, have received notice that their status is being revoked. This amounts to a massive layoff forced onto the private sector by the federal government, and it is already causing severe workforce disruption within a number of industries, like construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and food processing. The economic harms of this systematic termination of TPS are wide-ranging.
TPS exists under statute to address situations in which returning people to their home countries would put them at serious risk due to ongoing violence, humanitarian crises, or environmental disasters. Nonetheless, the Administration has terminated TPS for nearly 350,000 Haitians, despite the fact that Haiti has been designated by the Department of State as a “Level 4 - Do Not Travel” country and continues to face unprecedented political and economic devastation, crime, and violence. Ending this program while those threats persist will force families to make impossible decisions between returning to an unsafe environment where their lives are at risk, or remaining in the U.S. under threat of deportation and forced into the shadow economy where they will be vulnerable to abusive employers, low wages, and dangerous working conditions. Conversely, preserving and expanding TPS protections would help stabilize families and industries, while preventing exploitation in our workplaces so we
can lift standards and wages for all.
Time is of the essence. While District Court rulings have stayed the Haiti TPS termination, the Administration has appealed, with Supreme Court arguments scheduled for April. In the meantime, Haitian TPS holders face uncertainty and instability while their lives and livelihoods hang in the balance. Congress can move now via this discharge petition and reverse anti-immigrant and anti-worker policies that put working people in danger and our economy at risk.
Nearly two hundred members of both parties have already signed Discharge Petition 15. Please join them and force a floor vote on a bill that would extend Haiti’s TPS designation until 2029, granting hundreds of thousands of working families the protections and stability that they deserve while shoring up conditions in workplaces around the country.
Needlessly stripping people of TPS is causing grave harm to workers, unions, jobs, and our economy. We urge you to stem this damage by signing Discharge Petition 15 and supporting H.R. 1689.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs