Springfield native John Legend speaks out on Haitian immigrants

Published: Sep 12, 2024 Duration: 00:05:17 Category: People & Blogs

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hello everyone my name is John Legend and I was born as John R Stevens from a place called Springfield Ohio oh Springfield Ohio you may have heard of Springfield Ohio this week in fact if you watched the debate we were discussed by our presidential candidates including a very special interesting man named Donald J Trump now Springfield has had a large influx of Haitian immigrants who have come to our city now our city had been shrinking for decades we didn't have enough jobs we uh didn't have enough opportunity so people left and went somewhere else so when I was there we had upwards of 75,000 people and and in the last 5 years we were down to like 60,000 people but of late during the Biden Administration there have been more jobs that opened up more manufacturing jobs more plants factories that needed employees and were ready to hire people so we had a lot of job opportunities and we didn't have enough people in our town of 60,000 people to fill those jobs and during this same time there had been upheaval and turmoil in Haiti and the federal government granted V visas and and immigration status to uh certain number of Haitian immigrants so they could come to our country legally and our demand in Springfield for additional labor met up with the supply of additional Haitian immigrants and here we are we had about 15,000 or so immigrants move to my town of 60,000 now you might say wow that's a lot of people for a town that only had 60,000 before that's a 25% increase that is correct so you might imagine there are some challenges with you know integrating a new population New [Music] Language new culture new dietary uh preferences all kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains um making sure there enough services to accommodate the new larger population that might need bilingual service providers etc etc so there are plenty of reasons why this might be a challenge for my hometown uh but but the bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them and they were willing to work and they wanted to live the American dream just like your German ancestors your Irish ancestors your Italian ancestors your Jewish ancestors your Jamaican ancestors your polish ancestors all these ancestors who have moved to this country maybe not speaking the language that everyone else spoke maybe not eating the same Foods maybe having to adjust maybe having to integrate but all coming because they saw opportunity for themselves and their families in the American dream and they came here to do that some facts about immigrants they usually do very well here they are hardworking they are ambitious they commit less crime than native born Americans and they will assimilate and integrate in time but it takes time so I think all of us need to have the same kind of Grace that we would want our ancestors to have when they moved here with our Haitian brothers and sisters will move here too and nobody's eating cats nobody's eating dogs we all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment how about we love one another I grew up in the Christian tradition we said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ so how about we adopt that ethos when we talk about immigrants moving to our communities and don't spread hateful xenophobic racist lies about them John R Stevens from Springfield signing off

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