Let’s take it as a given that illegal Haitian immigrants are not eating pets in Springfield. But what actually is happening? I have heard nothing about this in the news until it came up in the debate.
So how many Haitians are there in Springfield? How and why did they come there?
From here:
The false claims about threats to pets began going viral on social media over the weekend, fueled in part by a fourth-hand story that appeared to come from a Facebook group focused on local crime in Springfield.
The group was set to private on Monday, but according to screenshots posted on X, someone in the Facebook group posted that “my neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat.” The poster went on to describe Haitians allegedly taking the cat for food.
Conservative pundit Charlie Kirk posted a screenshot of the Facebook post Sunday on X, and within 24 hours, it had received more than 3 million views.
The rumor was picked up by other right-wing commentators, including Jack Posobiec, who posted about it on X more than 30 times Sunday and Monday. Others echoed the allegations, including X owner Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Cruz wrote on X, as a caption on a photo of cats.
By midday Monday, Haitians were the No. 1 trending topic in the U.S. on X.
In his post on X, Vance attributed his information about pets to unspecified “reports” and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame for Haitian immigrants’ “generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” In 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with tackling the “root causes” of migration.
So, someone posted a story in a Facebook group they claimed their neighbor told them about the neighbor’s daughter’s friend. That’s the entirety of the actual story.
Here’s an actual good piece of journalism about Springfield and its recent influx of immigrants, from PBS Newshour. Note that the piece is from the day before the debate.
The immigrants are legal immigrant refugees from Haiti, who came to Springfield where workers were needed from the workforce. One of the people who has hired Haitians for his manufacturing plant says the workers are hard working and show up on time, insinuating that the previous Sprinfielders he hired did not have those qualities.
The city used to have 80k residents, but when manufacturing left so did 20k people. Now the city has 20k new Haitians and it needs some support from the (Republican) state and federal government to get the town’s resources back in line with its new population.
One additional detail. There’s body cam footage of a woman who was arrested for killing and chewing on a cat in Canton, Ohio. That’s about 170 miles away from Springfield. The woman in question was not Haitian or an immigrant at all, she was in fact born in Ohio.
This footage is being passed around as proof of the “Haitians in Springfield eat cats” story.
It’s not clear to me at all whether the body cam footage was what spawned these rumors, or whether once the rumors were going around someone dug up the closest thing to evidence that they could find.
Thank goodness for PBS…that was just the kind of reporting I was looking for.
Although it’s still a bit opaque as to how a Haitian immigrant winds their way to middle America. And jeez…a town that’s 20% refugee is guaranteed to have some issues.
Here’s another good story, from NPR, published August 12, 2024 - so, about a month before the debate, and all the mess about eating pets.
The Haitians have been coming since 2020, so it’s not as if they showed up overnight. By now they have established restaurants and churches and are part of the community. Everyone I see discussing this on the r/Ohio subreddit (which does lean left) who is actually from Springfield or near Springfield says that the people are not problematic, but yes some of the city resources are taxed.
I suspect the people came just like any other groups of immigrants came - a small handful found work there, and word spread quickly that opportunities remained (one of the immigrants interviewed in the above-linked story says he “heard there was work in Springfield”), and then by establishing themselves culturally in the community, it makes it desirable for others to settle there with their families.
I’ve not read extensively about immigration in America from other countries, but I have read a couple books on the topic of Slovak immigrants in Cleveland (this is how my family got to be here, in the 1920s) and it’s pretty much the same story. A few people come through, they get good jobs and like the place, they build a church, now there’s a sense of community and a base for support, and everybody from the old country trickles in.
It seems to me that American cities have always been shaped this way. And it always comes with a bunch of hate. Things are just turned up to 11 now with the ability for everyone in the world to see video of angry ranting at council meetings on video, and a presidential candidate spreading horrifying rumors on live TV.
There were jobs there, so they got there. I’d guess a bus from Florida to Ohio, but that’s a guess.
A post was split to a new topic: Haitian food
And nobody ever loses cats unless the neighbors are eating them!
– maybe the cat moved out because it couldn’t stand to live with the stupidity. Though it’s not clear to me that the person whose cat it was had anything to do with the rumors – we’re already three people in on ‘somebody told me’ about the cat having gone missing, never mind about why.
Yup. Except sometimes they build a synagogue, or a mosque, or a temple, or whatever.
But that’s exactly how it works; including, probably, in most cases with the grandparents or great grandparents of the people now bitching about immigration. Who would also have been accused of something awful by whichever inhabitants had been there a generation or two longer.
Like Harris said: “same old tired playbook.”
– if your city has lost 20% of its population within a generation or two, it’s in serious trouble. Wouldn’t you want (as apparently a lot of the population of Springfield does want) some other people to come move in?
Hate-based rumor designed to gather votes-there is no actual kernel of truth, there are NO actual story at all.
And the immigrants are legal - apparently under some form of special allowance due to the problems Haiti has had going back to the big earthquake, and now with gang violence the last few years. So not “illegals” working without authorization.
Sorry, but when the topic came up while I was watching the debate, I couldn’t help humming What’s New, Pussycat.
Or, the cat came back
Do you think telling people that it’s most likely coyotes who ate their cat would be helpful?
Or will a bunch of Trumpers start to think that Mexican border smugglers are sneaking through our country all the way to Ohio to snack on cats?
I actually first heard about this story the morning of the debate, because there were right winger talking points making the rounds on Twitter making exactly that point. Namely, “we focus too much on legal vs illegal immigration. Who cares if they’re legal if they’re coming in here and eating our cats?”.
So just totally mask off racism, happily shredding the final fig leaf.
My mother’s side of the family, her maiden name family, started with a great grandfather of mine. He was a sixteen year old German boy about to be drafted. He had a brother who had emigrated to Kansas so he stowed away on a ship and joined his brother. There were a number of other Germans locally and there was a German Lutheran church. My maternal grandmother, when she started dating my grandfather, went to her first chuch service on Christmas Eve of 1923, She said she didn’t understand a word as it was all in German. There had been stories that during WWI some of these Germans had been pressured to buy extra war bonds to prove their loyalty. By WWII my great uncles were hosting German POW’s as farm workers.
“Cat hit by car” accounts for all the known reasons for cat disappearances I’ve experienced.
Here in SoCal, the cat is lucky if it can make it to the road to be run over without being eaten by a coyote.
The difference here is that this is about a rumor spread by specific people, deliberately designed to fuel hate-based voting.
Of course it’s nothing new. I recall back over 50 years ago, the rumour even then was cats were part of Chinese food. Same stupid racism and xenophobia, just different target of opportunity.
It is totally different, because it is deliberately invented and spread by specific Republicans for the specific reason to gather hated-based votes. Please do not confuse this with old stories about simple rumors based on ignorance.
Haitian immigrant coyote, amirite?