The Supreme Court just made millions more vulnerable, including the MAGA types who are cheering
This week’s Supreme Court decisions on immigration handed an enormous victory to the unaccountable bigots who rule this country.
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But their triumph will cost the MAGA types who support them — and the rest of us — dearly.
On Thursday, the six conservatives on the court ruled that the Trump administration can immediately end temporary protected status for people from Haiti and Syria, as well as more than a dozen other countries, essentially because the president and his goons feel like it. They also ruled that the administration can turn back asylum seekers at the border before they have a chance to make claims.
The TPS decision means that the 1.3 million people in the US who were previously shielded from deportation will lose their legal status, including permission to work here. They’ll leave, go underground, or attempt to find another legal way to remain, by petitioning a government that is openly hostile to them and has blocked off every meaningful path to immigration.
Attorneys for the TPS recipients argued that the Trump administration was motivated by racism when it revoked their status, especially when it comes to Haitians. Which is so blindingly obvious that it hardly needs arguing. But for those who insist on pretending otherwise, Justice Elena Kagan laid it all out pretty well in her dissent.
Kagan listed many “repellent and racially inflected” statements by the president, which were “shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes” and references to “filth, disease and primitiveness.” She quoted President Trump accusing Haitians of eating people’s pets, claiming they “probably have AIDS,” and that they and other immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, countered the claim of racism by citing Trump’s cancellation of TPS for other countries, too, including those in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that most immigrants from those places are also not white?
Weird, also, that, after closing our refugee program to virtually everybody else, this administration has thrown open our doors only to white people from South Africa, more than 6,000 of whom have been fast-tracked through what’s usually a years-long process.
And for those who will inevitably ask, “What part of ‘temporary’ don’t you understand?” consider this: Everybody concedes the administration has the right to end TPS for a group — but until now, they have been required to make that decision based on conditions in recipients’ home countries. There’s no evidence they did that. Haiti is still an incredibly dangerous place: Trump’s own State Department has advised Americans not to travel there “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”
And for those who continue to insist, against evidence to the contrary, that they welcome immigrants who come here “the right way,” are you seeing how few legal ways are actually left for non-white immigrants? Taking his victory lap on Thursday, a delighted Trump adviser Stephen Miller said, “America’s doors are closed, fully, to asylum seekers,” and claimed that every asylum application is “fake.” He also vowed to end birthright citizenship.
These are heady days for the millions of Americans who need to believe Black and brown people — and not the billionaires picking their pockets — are to blame for white people’s woes, and for those who seem happy to see immigrants suffer at the hands of officials unconstrained by law or decency.
It’s an empty high, though.
Because Americans depend on these people more than the hardliners appear to understand. As of early 2025, TPS holders live with 390,000 citizen children and 410,000 citizen adults, who are supported by their work, according to an analysis of census and other government data by immigrant advocacy group FWD.us. They contribute $29 billion annually to the US economy, plus $7.8 billion in taxes. Over the last 25 years, they have contributed $20 billion to Social Security, which benefits all Americans.
And they’re doing jobs that are incredibly hard to fill, in construction, hospitality, transportation, and especially in health care, where foreign-born people make up some 36 percent of the health support workforce in Massachusetts.
“You don’t have to care about the human aspect of this to see it is an economic disaster, and especially a disaster for health care,” said Angela Bovill, CEO of Ascentria Care Alliance, which both resettles refugees and runs eight nursing homes and care facilities in New England.
There are no refugees to resettle, so that side of the operation has shrunk, and Ascentria now only provides services to those lucky enough to have gotten in before Trump did his worst. There have been layoffs, and more will come.
The facilities in which her staff care for the elderly and vulnerable are in crisis because of staffing shortages.
Her workers start at $20 to $25 an hour for duties that include dressing, feeding, washing, and toileting those who cannot do it for themselves; administering medications; transporting patients; and providing companionship and emotional support. As anybody who has ever been within a mile of a nursing home knows, white, native-born Americans are hardly clamoring for those vital jobs.
The shortages have worsened since the president began targeting Haitians, and some of those caregivers have left. She expects to lose 35 to 40 more workers as a result of Thursday’s decision. Combine that with upcoming Republican cuts to Medicaid funding, and she’s looking at an existential crisis.
“You will see people go out of business,” Bovill said. “We hope to be one of the ones standing after all this, but we cannot guarantee it at every location.”
And it’s only going to get worse as baby boomers age, exploding the ranks of those needing care.
Of course, the president and his cronies will be fine when all of this blows up. They can afford the care the rest of us should be able to take for granted. It’s ordinary people who will pay the price, including the MAGA types who applaud Trump’s cruelty.
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They won’t be the only ones to suffer the consequences.
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