I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My wife, Fran, and I have lived our entire lives less than 10 miles from this city.
When we were dating in high school, we would go there to see movies at the Regent or State Theater or to eat fried clams at Howard Johnson’s. I remember Fran taking the bus about eight miles from our hometown, Yellow Springs, to Springfield to shop at Wren’s Department Store. Over the years, we’ve eaten countless doughnuts from Schuler’s Bakery, worshiped at St. Raphael Catholic Church and we logged many work hours there when I represented Springfield in the U.S. House and Senate.
Springfield has a rich history of providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity. As a stop on the Underground Railroad, the Gammon House, which still stands, was a safe haven for escaped slaves seeking freedom. And, as a stop on the Old National Road, America’s first east/west federal highway, Springfield attracted many settlers both before and after the Civil War. Immigrants from Ireland, Greece, Germany, Italy and other countries helped build the city into what it is today.
For a long time, commerce and manufacturing flourished in Springfield, which earned the title “Champion City” after the founding there of the agriculture implement giant Champion Machine Company.
But the city hit tough times in the 1980s and 1990s, falling into serious economic decline as manufacturing, rail commerce and good-paying jobs dwindled. Now, however, Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs.
They are there legally. They are there to work.
It is disappointing to me that Springfield has become the epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy, because it has long been a community of great diversity. Fran and I were reminded of this when we attended Mass at St. Raphael this past Sunday and stopped at the nearby Groceryland on our way home. We talked with community members from many backgrounds who are understandably concerned about the negative things being said about their city in news reports and on social media.
Bomb threats — all hoaxes — continue and temporarily closed at least two schools, put the hospital on lockdown and shuttered City Hall. The two local colleges have gone remote. I have posted Ohio Highway Patrol troopers in each school building in Springfield so the schools can remain open, teachers and children can feel safe and students can continue to learn. On the troopers’ first day in the schools, Fran and I visited Simon Kenton Elementary, where reassured teachers told us: “Yesterday was rough. Today was a good day.”
As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.
The Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border is a very important issue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are talking about and one that the American people are rightfully deeply concerned about. But their verbal attacks against these Haitians — who are legally present in the United States — dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.
The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers — both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because, back in their birthplace, Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for cheering on the wrong team in a soccer match.
Only about a two-hour flight from U.S. shores, Haiti is one of the poorest, most dangerous places on earth. The government is in shambles, with machete-wielding, machine-gun-toting gang members taking over 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Fran and I first traveled to Haiti almost 30 years ago as part of a congressional delegation when I was serving on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. We have since been there over 20 times and have supported a Catholic priest who runs a tuition-free school in a slum in Port-au-Prince.
We have always been amazed when, even in the poorest areas of Haiti, we see children coming out of homes made of rusting corrugated metal and cardboard with shoes shined and clothes neat and pressed. We know that the Haitian people want the same things we all want — a good job, the chance to get a quality education and the ability to raise a family in a safe and secure environment. Haitian migrants have gone to Springfield because of the jobs and chance for a better life there.
On Monday, I met with Springfield manufacturing business owners who employ Haitians. As one of them told me, his business would not have been able to stay open after the pandemic but for the Haitians who filled the jobs.
There have been language barriers and cultural differences, but these Haitians come to work every day, are fitting in with co-workers and have become valuable employees. As a teenager working in my parents’ seed company, I worked with the guys loading seed bags onto trucks and boxcars. Their acceptance of a co-worker depended on if they thought the person was pulling his own weight. What is happening today in these companies in Springfield with the Haitian employees is no different.
At the same time, the sudden surge in population has created challenges that no city could anticipate or prepare for. The health care system, housing market and school classrooms have been strained. There is a desperate need for more Haitian Creole translators. And ensuring that Haitians learn how to drive safely and understand our driving customs and traffic laws remains a top priority.
These are the real challenges. Mayor Rob Rue; the City Council; the county commission president, Melanie Flax Wilt; and others have been working tirelessly on these issues, and we are assisting them at the state level.
Fran and I have met with so many other dedicated people in Springfield, many of them teachers or volunteers from nonprofits and the faith-based community, who are doing the Lord’s work each day, teaching English to children who speak only Creole or Spanish or helping those who need health care, whether a new Haitian immigrant or someone whose family has been in Springfield for generations.
Their work will continue long after this fall’s election is over and the national spotlight turns away from Springfield. But in the meantime, our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed.
This isn’t just personal for a lot of us; it’s about our pride in America. When four of the nation’s biggest railroads built the Big Four Train Depot in Springfield, the city became a hub for passenger and express rail, with an average of 3,000 freight cars and 40 passenger trains speeding through the city daily in the mid-1920s. Located downtown, the Depot became the perfect campaign whistle stop for politicians. In 1960, when I was 13 years old, my parents and I went to see the Republican candidate for president, Richard Nixon, when his train came through Springfield, and four years later to see Barry Goldwater as his train also stopped in the middle of Springfield as he traveled across the Midwest. They both talked about the prospects for the future.
Springfield today has a very bright future. The people who live there love their families, value education, work hard, care about one another and tackle the challenges they face head-on, just as they have done for over 200 years.
I am proud of this community, and America should be, too.
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