How ending TPS is squeezing workers, businesses and (soon) consumers

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0:06What happens when roughly a million people working legally in the U.S. suddenly lose the right to stay here? That is what we're in the process of finding out. The Trump administration is dismantling Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. It's a humanitarian designation that protects certain foreign nationals regardless of immigration status, from deportation because their home country isn't safe. At the start of Trump's second term, 17 countries were covered by TPS. Since then, the administration has terminated or tried to terminate 13 of them. And by the end of this year, the number of countries covered by TPS might be zero.

0:47This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And I'm Ricky Mulvey. What does terminating TPS mean for people's lives, their livelihoods, and the U.S. economy? Today on the show, we'll find out by looking to Florida, home to more Haitian TPS holders than any other state. This message comes from Edward Jones, where they believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones, member SIPC. This message comes from BetterHelp.

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2:06Listen today and subscribe at schwab.com slash oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. North Miami is home to one of the largest communities of Haitians in the U.S. Sabine Dulcio lives nearby, and she says normally it's a hub of activity. What you would normally see are parents walking their kids to school. Or if you drive down 6th Avenue, there's a bunch of markets. People walking from their home to the markets. There's a lot of food trucks. So you'll see a lot of people buying food. But that changed after the Trump administration officially terminated temporary protected status for more than 300 ,000 Haitians living in the U.S.

2:48It cited national security concerns and that the program was meant to be temporary, not permanent. As local immigration enforcement ramped up in Miami, the fallout was all over the local news. ICE is getting ready to ramp up operations targeting some in the Haitian community who business owners in Haitian neighborhoods say they're struggling for two reasons, lack of workers and lack of customers. We drove through 6th Ave and I was like, huh, I was like, where is everybody? People are staying within their homes and not leaving for safety reasons. Sabine is originally from Haiti and became a U.S.

3:25citizen about 10 years ago. Today, she runs a wedding and event planning business. She says more than a dozen of her employees were Haitian TPS holders who mostly worked setting up and breaking down events. We were proud that they were Haitian immigrants who were building a new life here, who were attending school to learn English. We had people who had started Miami-Dade College. And we were proud to say that, you know, our staff were able to help people do that by paying them a livable wage. But after TPS ended, Sabine had no choice but to lay them off. Without TPS, they're not legally authorized to work.

4:03And now they're also vulnerable to arrest and deportation. It's just like a big knot in my stomach because I can put myself in their shoes, right? If I never went through the process of becoming a citizen, I might be in their shoes planning to go back to a country that I do not know. And that country has been through a lot in recent years. In 2010, it was hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake. That's when the Obama administration first designated TPS for Haitians. Since then, that designation has been extended several times to account for new crises. In 2016, Haiti was hit by a massive hurricane. And in 2021, Haiti's president was assassinated, setting the stage for a collapse of the central government.

4:50For many of its 12 million residents, gang violence, hunger, and a lack of access to basic infrastructure has become a part of everyday life. They left for a reason, you know? So now to have to go back and kind of figure it out, it breaks my heart. It's worth noting that it's not just Haitians who benefit from TPS. When Trump took office, about 1.3 million people had temporary protected status from countries like Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, and Sudan. And about a million of them were working. But during his second term, Trump has moved to end these protections. Alex Arnon is a director of policy analysis at the Penn-Wharton Budget Model an economic think tank.

5:37He says what is happening here from a labor market perspective is kind of unprecedented. It's pretty dramatic. So we've definitely, on immigration, it's hard to think of a precedent for this where, yeah, roughly close to a million workers suddenly becoming ineligible to work. How this is felt in the U.S. economy will vary by place. Most TPS holders live in states like Florida, Texas, New York, California, and Georgia. And they work in fields like construction, warehousing, health care, cleaning and maintenance. It's clear that a lot of these workers were supporting the workforce in corners of the economy where they were really important and necessary.

6:22And here's where the termination of TPS could be felt in the broader economy. Alex says it's possible some U.S.-born workers will take the place of, say, a Haitian, Venezuelan, or Syrian TPS holder laid off from their job. But generally speaking, TPS holders were not working the kinds of jobs that U.S.-born workers actually want, at least at prevailing wages. We're talking lots of manual labor and not a lot of English-speaking skills. So Alex says employers will likely struggle to fill those openings. And Alex says this has another knock-on effect. The losses to American consumers who are benefiting from being able to get cheaper construction, cheaper health services, cheaper Lyft rides, you know, the cost to them of losing this workforce will be much greater than the benefits to other people who will be able to get the jobs that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

7:14We reached out to the White House and in a statement, spokesperson Laura Biss said they were ending a program that exploited American workers for years and that President Trump was, quote, creating opportunity for American workers and ensuring relevant sectors have the legal workforce they need to be successful. Now, one area where consumers might see repercussions sooner rather than later is in the home health care industry. Steve Puryear helps run a health care agency in Florida, which pairs nurses with clients who need help with daily activities like bathing or doing laundry. Last week, he said he had to lay off one of his employees who was a TPS holder.

7:50Monday night, 9 p.m., I'm on the phone with a caregiver having to tell her that she can't go to a client's house tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. And on the other side, I have a family who's distraught because that family has now lost a caregiver they've had for two and a half years. Steve says wages for caregivers run between 17 and 25 bucks an hour. And with TPS terminations shrinking the pool of legally available labor, those who remain will command higher wages. If you take X out of the equation, you only have Y numbers left, the rates are going to go up. And then that just goes right back to the consumer.

8:27And maybe those higher consumer costs are something that the Trump administration is willing to accept to carry out its mass deportation agenda. For Steve, it leaves him asking, why? Well, in a case heard by the Supreme Court, plaintiffs argued that terminating Haiti's TPS designation was actually motivated by racial animus. As evidence, they pointed to the president's long track record of making racist statements about Haitians and other immigrants of color. But in June, the court ruled for the Trump administration. which has argued that Haiti is so politically unstable and gang violence is so widespread that allowing Haitians to remain temporarily in the U.S.

9:05poses a national security risk. This reasoning doesn't sit so well with Steve. I believe that there is a very big difference between a gang member entering the country illegally and then a person who's been in the country for 15 years. You've put down roots. You're contributing member of society, and you're treating them the same. They're not. And it saddens me that that's what we're doing. That's poor leadership to me. Why throw them out? Create a process. Those processes have been dismantled. Without a process, hundreds of thousands of people stripped of TPS will probably end up living in the shadows.

9:57This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by An Lee Huang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Kincannon is the show's editor. The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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