A few weeks ago, News Americas Now received a reporting grant from URL Media that sent me down a path I thought I understood.
We proposed examining the economic impact of immigration enforcement on Black Caribbean immigrant families. I expected to find lost wages, mounting legal bills, and struggling businesses. I found all of that — but after interviewing immigrant families, advocates, attorneys, and researchers, I discovered something much bigger.
America may detain or deport one immigrant at a time, but the economic consequences are rarely confined to one person. They move through marriages and households. They reach U.S.-citizen spouses and children. They reach businesses, churches, and communities. Sometimes, they travel thousands of miles beyond America’s borders.
I saw that clearly in Minneapolis, where Haitian-born U.S. citizen Choupa Charlemagne and his American-born wife, Kelsey, are raising four children. The couple told me they are also helping to support at least 11 Haitian relatives and friends who have lost work authorization or are facing immigration proceedings.
Two young Haitian men they helped establish lives in America now face immigration court and thousands of dollars in legal fees. Kelsey returned to work. She and Choupa started a car-rental business. They launched fundraisers to help cover legal costs and prepare for the possibility that family members may have to relocate.
“We’re literally hanging by a thread here,” Kelsey told me.
Then Choupa told me something that expanded the story beyond America’s borders.
Before this financial crisis, he had been helping a cousin in Haiti attend law school. As the expenses facing his family in America mounted, that assistance had to stop, and his cousin could not continue his second year. “All of that stops now because now I have more pressing situations on my hands,” Choupa said. That stopped me.
I began this reporting thinking about the economic consequences of immigration enforcement inside America, but another consequence was unfolding in Haiti: One family’s immigration crisis in Minnesota had reached a university student thousands of miles away, and theirs is hardly the only ripple.
In Pennsylvania, Omara is now supporting herself and her two U.S.-citizen children after her husband, Haitian-born Pastor Molis Augustave, was deported to Haiti on September 24. Before his detention, she told me, he helped support her financially through nursing school and cared for their children.
“His absence has made everything very much harder,” she said.
Jossie Flor Sapunar of We Are CASA told me housing is often among the first pressures families confront. Rent that once came from two incomes suddenly must be paid with one. Then comes food, childcare, transportation, and immigration attorneys. The consequences don’t stop at the front door.
My reporting uncovered immigrant-owned businesses struggling after workers lost authorization to work, while other businesses have been affected as frightened immigrant customers stay away.
David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative, told me the damage can reach U.S.-born workers as businesses lose employees and customers reduce spending.
I began this reporting because a URL Media grant gave News Americas Now an opportunity to investigate the economic impact of immigration enforcement on Black Caribbean families. I finished it wondering whether we have been calculating that impact incorrectly.
We count the immigrant detained; we count the immigrant deported. Do we count the spouse who returns to work? The child who suddenly needs childcare? The relative absorbing another household’s bills? The business losing workers and customers? The family in Haiti losing remittances? The student who can no longer afford university?
Immigration status may belong to one person, but its economic consequences do not. That leaves a question America should be asking whenever another deportation becomes simply one more number: Who really pays when America deports an immigrant?
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.
