Georgia mother’s plea: Restore temporary protective status for Haitians

Over the next year and a half, I returned to the orphanage repeatedly, and each visit created a stronger bond between S. and myself. Eventually, I longed to provide him with a chance for a future filled with hope and opportunity.

That meant bringing him to the United States to pursue an education.

The logistics of getting this handsome and charming young man home were challenging. Of course, Haiti had recently passed new laws making adoption lengthy and often impossible.

I, therefore, turned my efforts to the arduous process of obtaining a student visa; in November 2013, he and I sat side by side on an airplane and received a “Welcome to the United States” greeting from immigration officers.

He attended a small high school that welcomed international students, and with the help of dedicated teachers and a “mom” that tutored him every night, he adjusted well and quickly became a typical American teenager.

We did all that we could legally do

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

By 2015, our bond had grown and strengthened. As a recent widow with grown children, caring for S. gave me renewed purpose, while being embraced as a son helped him with some personal healing.

We went to an immigration lawyer to determine if there could be any paths to citizenship for him, given his current student visa status, and asked about adoption.

The answer, sadly, was that he was already, at 17, too old to change his status through adoption. Nevertheless, we both wanted to formalize the bond we already shared, so we moved forward with the adoption.

In 2017, as S. was nearing high school graduation, we visited another immigration lawyer as we navigated the transition to college and asked if any new pathways for changing his immigration status had opened up.

Again, the answer was discouraging. S.’s legal status remained dependent on being enrolled in school.

The summer of 2021, just before S.’s final year of college, a window for change of status opened up. The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse led to such a surge of gang violence that the U.S. government reopened TPS for Haitians living here.

TPS is an immigration status that provides a means by which individuals from a designated country can live and work here in the U.S. without fear of deportation due to extraordinarily dire conditions in that country. All TPS recipients have applied, been vetted and paid significant fees to obtain their status.

We completed the application process, paid the required fees and S. received his new work permit and change of status. Since 2021, he has faithfully completed the required renewals and paid each fee.

Addressing the critics’ concerns

Credit: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Credit: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

I’ve heard all the objections: “temporary means temporary,” “are they just too lazy to file for citizenship?” and “they’re all on welfare.” I can assure you that my son has received no benefits from the U.S. government, and, in fact, had to pay exorbitant tuition fees in both high school and college because of his status. And I can assure you that we would gladly complete any amount of paperwork required to file for citizenship if there were only a way to do that.

People who hear our story shake their head in bewilderment and say “Wait, you adopted him, but he’s not a citizen? How can that be?”

My son has a business, a career and a family here. The idea of my son being forced to return to a country that is not able to support and protect the people that live there now is devastating.

I am in regular contact with families in Haiti, and they are in constant survival mode — navigating food scarcity, a nonexistent job market and gang violence that has displaced over a million people from their homes.

Over 16,000 have died from gang violence since 2022; over 2,000 this year alone. I followed texts in real time as friends and family lost their neighborhoods and villages to gangs, gathering meager belongings and escaping for their lives. This is not a situation I want my son to return to. Should he have to return to Haiti, there is a high likelihood of him being a target for kidnapping, with the perception that his American family would pay dearly for his safety.

Our TPS story is one of thousands, each deeply personal. I implore our administration to restore TPS for Haiti, if not for the obvious humanitarian reasons, then for the contributions made by Haitians in so many essential areas of our economy, including the $5.5 billion they contribute annually.

I ask that the Senate immediately bring to a vote and pass S. 4814, a companion to the bill already passed by the House (H.R. 1689) that would extend TPS for Haiti for three years.

TPS is not the long term answer. But an extension gives us time as a nation to revamp our immigration system into one that honors and restores our longstanding position as “the land of opportunity.”

Until that happens, I hope that we as a nation will choose compassion over expediency. For families like ours, this is not an abstract policy debate — it is about whether people who have built lives, careers and communities here will be allowed to continue contributing to the nation they have worked so hard to strengthen.

Kathy Barrett is a Georgia educator and adoptive mother whose Haitian-born son faces an uncertain future if Temporary Protected Status for Haiti is allowed to end.

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