"Estimates of the number of immigrants vary, but Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that roughly 15,000 Haitians immigrated to Springfield over the past four years," The Journal reports. "They were able to immigrate legally under a Biden administration policy granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitians as part of a program created by Congress in 1990 to protect immigrants from countries deemed too dangerous to return to."
That 1990 law, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), was signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
But according to Senator Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who has a law degree from Yale, the law is illegal and so are the Haitian immigrants, which is false.
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At a small rally in North Carolina on Wednesday (full video), a Politico reporter told Senator Vance, "the majority of the Haitians in Springfield came under TPS, so they are here legally. And I know you've expressed a lot of your issues with the TPS program and wanting to change that under a Trump Vance administration, but I guess my question for you is, if you become the vice president under a Trump administration, what will you guys do about the migrants that are already there since they did arrive legally? And a follow up to that, if you plan to deport them, how would you do that legally?"
Vance did not answer any of those questions.
"Well, look," he replied, seemingly frustrated, "this is, this is a media and Kamala Harris fact-check that I want to, I want to clarify and clear up right now."
"Now the media loves to say that the Haitian migrants, hundreds of thousands of them, by the way, 20,000 in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of them all across the country, they are here legally."
"And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs, mass parole and temporary protective status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, 'we're not going to deport those people here.' Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I'm still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works."
Senator Vance is wrong.
First, that is exactly how it works.
The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) (not temporary protective status, as Vance called it) twice, given the dire circumstances in Haiti.
There is nothing "illegal" about the program, nor are the immigrants here under the program "illegal," as the Ohio freshman senator falsely insists.
Vance continued his remarks, to applause, calling the TPS program "completely bogus," and "straight out of George Orwell."
"That makes her border policy a disgrace and I'm still going to call people 'illegal aliens,'" Vance vowed, attacking Vice President Harris, as the audience cheered.
"Who in this room, who in this country, consented to allowing millions of aliens to come into this country?" he asked, as some in the audience shook their heads no.
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Vance is taking more heat over his latest comments.
"Bro needs to give his law degree back," remarked MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang.
"What a phony loser @JDVance continues to be. He used to love immigrants. Now he blood libels them. Just like how he used to call his idol Trump 'an American Hitler,'" commented The Nation's Dave Zirin.
"This is just shocking," declared former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. "Mr. Vance is blatantly calling a legal action illegal. I’ve studied my whole life how democracies break down. This is how it happens folks. I hope he really doesn’t believe this. Politicians say a lot of crazy things during elections. I fear he might."
"When you hear people refuse to make distinctions between legal and illegal immigration, it’s safe to assume they want to use the latter as a tool to go after the former," observed attorney Mark R. Yzaguirre.
"This is a straight up fascist project from JD here," exclaimed Dante Atkins, an expert in strategic communications and campaign management.
Watch below or at this link.
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