How an Ohio Town Landed in the Middle of the Immigration Debate

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — It has been more than a year since the fateful morning last August when, outside Springfield in southwestern Ohio, a minivan veered into oncoming traffic and rammed into a school bus on the first day of class, killing an 11-year-old boy and injuring 23 other children.

Soon, it emerged that the driver of the minivan was not a longtime resident but one of the thousands of immigrants from Haiti who had recently settled in the area. He was driving with a foreign license not valid in Ohio.

The stage was set for another fraught chapter in the debate over immigration in America, this one magnified because JD Vance, the state’s junior senator, would soon become the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Haitians were new to the region. During the last census, in 2020, a little more than 58,000 people lived in Springfield, a town at the crossroads of America that had fallen on hard times and shed population as opportunity slipped away. But it has changed dramatically in recent years, as a boom in manufacturing and warehouse jobs attracted a swelling wave of immigrants, mainly from Haiti. City officials estimate that as many as 20,000 Haitians have arrived, most of them since the pandemic.

At the first City Commission meeting after the bus crash, angry residents packed the chambers and demanded answers.

“How do you know we aren’t getting criminals, rapists?” a man in a blue Harley Davidson T-shirt asked. “Who can stop them from coming here?” someone else wanted to know. Had they been screened? Were they going to use their driver’s licenses to vote?

The city manager, Bryan Heck, explained that the Haitians were lawfully in the country. The police chief, Allison Elliott, said Haitians were not responsible for the city’s yearslong struggle with crime such as retail theft. Commissioners said they had come for job opportunities.

But nothing could quell the outrage.

The arrival of successive streams of immigrants has created friction throughout America’s history. In recent years, especially, people from all over the world have settled in places, like Springfield, unaccustomed to high levels of immigration.

The issue has become even more politicized this year, as the presidential election campaign focuses on the record number of crossings on the southern border in 2023. So it came as no surprise that the influx of Haitians to Springfield would become a talking point for Vance.

In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in July, he described Springfield as a town that was nearly a carbon copy of Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up, except that it had now been “overwhelmed” by Haitians who were pushing up housing costs and collecting benefits.

“And you don’t have to believe, of course, that the 20,000, at least most of the 20,000 newcomers, are bad people” to recognize it as a problem, he said.

By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield.

They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays, they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole.

But the speed and volume of arrivals have put pressure on housing, schools and hospitals. The community health clinic saw a 13-fold increase in Haitian patients between 2021 and 2023, from 115 to 1,500, overwhelming its staff and budget.

The bus crash, which killed Aiden Clark, the son of two teachers, touched off resentment that had been building for months or longer, many residents said.

“Aiden’s death was the match on the tinder bundle,” said Chris Cook, the Clark County health commissioner.

A City’s Revitalization

For decades, Springfield had been another shrinking Midwestern town with an uncertain future.

Manufacturing plants had shuttered, fueling an exodus. Empty Victorian mansions on Fountain Avenue, erected for industrial barons, stood as relics of the town’s heyday.

The population dwindled to less than 60,000 by 2014, from more than 80,000 in 1960.

Around that time, Springfield crafted a strategic plan to attract business. City leaders pitched the town’s affordability, its workforce development programs and its location, smack-dab between Columbus and Dayton and accessible to two interstates.

In 2017, Topre, a major Japanese auto parts manufacturer, picked Springfield for a new plant in a decaying part of town that had been the site of International Harvester, a farm equipment manufacturer that was once the biggest employer.

By 2020, Springfield had lured food-service firms, logistics companies and a microchip-maker, among others, creating an estimated 8,000 new jobs and optimism for the future.

“It was incredible to witness the transformation of our community,” said Horton Hobbs, vice president of economic development for the Greater Springfield Partnership, which executed the plan.

But soon there were not enough workers. Many young, working-age people had descended into addiction. Others shunned entry-level, rote work altogether, employers said.

Haitians who heard that the Springfield area boasted well-paying, blue-collar jobs and a low cost of living poured in, and employers were eager to hire and train the new workforce.

The Haitians had Social Security numbers and work permits, thanks to a federal program that offered them temporary protection in the United States. Some had been living for years in places like Florida, where there is a thriving Haitian community.

McGregor Metal, a family-owned business in Springfield that makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors, was short of workers after investing millions to boost production.

The business needed machine operators, forklift drivers and quality inspectors, said CEO Jamie McGregor.

“The Haitians were there to fill those positions,” he said. The immigrants now comprise about 10% of his workforce.

“They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” he said.

Among the Haitians recently on the second shift, which stretched to 1 a.m., was Daniel Campere, operating a robotic welder that makes axle components for Toyota trucks.

Campere, who arrived in the United States in 2013, for years earned his keep shuttling workers between the tomato fields in Florida and Georgia. Then some friends who had moved to Springfield urged him to give it a try.

He started at McGregor in June 2021 and now makes $19 an hour, with a 401(k) and health insurance.

He has been able to buy a house in Miami, which he rents out. In Springfield, he shares a house with three other Haitian men, who together pay $2,400 in rent.

Campere said he was aware of the criticism leveled at his community. “We can’t say anything. The Americans are chez eux,” he said, using the French words for “in their home.”

After a pause, he added, “We pay bills and taxes like everybody else.”

Vickie Stevens, an American worker, overheard the conversation in the break room, and shared her two cents.

“I can tell you, Daniel’s a real good worker,” she said. “He works as many hours as he can get.” She added: “We, the Americans, are just a little jealous of them.”

The Impact on Clinics and Schools

At the Rocking Horse Community Health Center, a federally subsidized clinic that does not turn away anyone, a surge in Haitians has caused a consultation that normally took 15 minutes to take as long as 45 minutes because of the language barrier.

“We lost productivity. We had a huge burnout of staff,” said Dr. Yamini Teegala, the CEO.

Six Haitian Creole speakers were hired and trained to assist newcomers. But expenditures on translation services jumped to an estimated $436,000 this year from $43,000 in 2020, she said.

“This is not sustainable,” Teegala said, adding that her priority was not to save money but to ensure quality care.

On Aug. 14, the first day of school, the Springfield City School District’s registration department was crammed with immigrant families waiting to enroll children, so many that some had to queue up in the hallway.

Nearly 350 new students registered for elementary and middle school the first week of classes, most of them children of immigrants.

The school district has hired about two dozen teachers who are certified to teach English as a second language and several Haitian-Creole interpreters, thanks to federal and state pandemic-related funds. The immigrant students have boosted enrollment after years of decline, and enriched the learning environment, said Pam Shay, director of federal programs.

But she expressed concern about the 2025-26 academic year. “It’s going to get very tight,” she said.

Springfield, like many towns, is also struggling with a dearth of affordable housing for low-income families, and the Haitian influx has not helped.

On July 8, Heck, the city manager, cited the arrivals in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Banking Committee requesting federal help. He copied Vance.

The next day, at a committee meeting, Vance questioned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about the relationship between “high illegal immigration levels under the Biden administration” and rising housing costs.

Vance referenced Springfield, saying it “highlights a very real example of this particular concern.”

Michelle Lee-Hall, executive director of Springfield’s housing authority, said the affordability problem had been aggravated by landlords pivoting to Haitians who were willing to pay higher rent.

Landlords have withdrawn about 200 properties from a federal housing-voucher program for low-income families, she said.

“Here in Springfield, the new homeless are people who can’t afford to pay $2,000 or $3,000 a month in rent,” she said.

Gary Durst, who buys and refurbishes distressed homes, has 400 units in his portfolio, and about 80% of the tenants are Haitian.

He acknowledged that some Americans have been displaced. But on many streets, newly renovated homes are giving blighted neighborhoods a face-lift, he said. No longer delinquent on property tax, they pump revenue into Springfield’s coffers.

“I probably have $25 million invested in this town,” Durst said. “I believe in this town.”

A Fatal Crash

The accident that inflamed tensions happened last Aug. 22, when the school bus, carrying 52 students, lumbered down Route 41 outside of town. A 2010 Honda Odyssey moving in the opposite direction jumped across the center divider and into the bus’s path.

The bus driver tried to maneuver away but could not avert a collision. The bus plunged off the side of the road, and Aiden was thrown out of an emergency hatch as the bus flipped over and then landed on him. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene. More than 20 other children were taken to the hospital.

A lawyer for the minivan driver, Hermanio Joseph, 36, said at his trial in April that the sun had blinded him. Joseph, who has a spouse and four children in Haiti, had been living in Springfield for more than a year, working at a warehouse.

Police officers found no evidence of drug or alcohol consumption. But Joseph was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and he could spend nine years behind bars.

The tragedy shook Springfield residents, and it emboldened many who crowded the first City Commission meeting after the accident to air long-held suspicions and grievances about the newcomers in their midst.

In the year since the crash, hostility toward the Haitians has only intensified, with speakers at more recent commission meetings talking about an “invasion,” a description that has become a staple of right-wing immigration rhetoric.

At a meeting on July 30, residents stepped up to two podiums in a session that quickly devolved into chaos.

“Haitians are occupying our land,” declared one middle-aged woman, Glenda Bailey, warning that the immigrants would soon become the majority and run everyone else out of town. She said they had low IQs.

Speakers claimed, without evidence, that Haitians were responsible for drug trafficking, retail theft and disease.

“Not one person asked anyone in this community how we felt about them coming in here and invading our city,” said one resident, Mike Powell.

Korge Mori, the child of Japanese immigrants, was among a handful of residents who lauded the Haitians. He scolded the mayor and the city manager for “whipping up mass hysteria” during a recent appearance on “Fox & Friends” in which they had blamed President Joe Biden’s policies for the Haitians taxing their city.

“There was a time, not too long ago, when we were a dying city, hemorrhaging people and jobs to other places. And the good Lord heard our prayers, and brought us the gift of the Haitian immigrant community,” he said.

The drama has not been confined to the City Commission chambers.

On a recent Saturday, about a dozen Nazi sympathizers — masked men in matching red shirts, black pants and boots — waved swastika flags as they marched in downtown Springfield near a jazz festival. At least two of the men, who authorities said were outsiders, carried rifles.

Hobbs, from the Chamber of Commerce, said he was already hearing from company executives who are uneasy about the town’s prominence in the news, prompting him to worry that Springfield could lose some of its momentum.

“Change is tough,” he said. “We are in that painful time of adjustment.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .