Florida employers are confronting a sudden staffing problem after thousands of Haitian workers lost authorization to work in the United States due to the Haitian TPS protections ending, with businesses from Key West restaurants to South Florida home-care providers scrambling to fill jobs.
“We’re drowning,” North Miami business owner Sabine Dulcio told The Wall Street Journal after saying she had to let 15 employees go from her event-planning company, nearly half of her crew.
The disruption follows the July 27 termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians affected by the federal action, which also ended TPS-based employment authorization for beneficiaries who had no other valid permission to work. USCIS confirmed that Haitian TPS was terminated effective July 27.
Florida has more at stake than most states.
An estimated 93,000 Haitian TPS holders were part of Florida’s workforce before the change, according to figures cited by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. The association had already warned federal officials that abruptly ending their work authorization could remove a meaningful share of the state’s hospitality workforce with little time for employers to adjust, according to WUSF.
The workers were spread across some of Florida’s most labor-dependent industries. An analysis by immigration advocacy group FWD.us estimated the state’s Haitian TPS workforce included roughly 16,000 cooks and servers, 12,000 agricultural workers, 8,000 stockers and packers and 4,000 nursing assistants.
Restaurants and Care Providers Are Feeling the Loss
In Key West, Half Shell Raw Bar general manager Bobby Kuchinsky had to remove six Haitian employees from the schedule after they lost authorization to work.
Some had spent years at the restaurant, working as prep cooks, bussers and other back-of-house staff.
Finding replacements has not been simple.
“It’s impossible to fill those positions because everybody in Key West and South Florida are looking for those employees right now,” Kuchinsky told The Wall Street Journal. He said servers, bartenders and oyster shuckers were being pulled into the kitchen to wash dishes.
The labor shock reaches well beyond restaurants.
Jewish Community Services of South Florida had to let go of 18 Haitian TPS workers, including home health aides who had served the organization for more than two decades. The organization provides home care to roughly 400 Holocaust survivors, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, two home-care agencies shut down after each lost more than 80 Haitian TPS employees, according to the Home Care Association of Florida, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Senior-living operators have also been hit. Moorings Park Communities in Naples recently lost seven TPS workers, after another 17 had already departed amid uncertainty surrounding the program.
For residents who had developed relationships with longtime caregivers, CEO Daniel Lavender described their departures as “a personal, devastating loss” in comments reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The workforce impact had been predicted before the deadline.
Florida’s hospitality industry joined groups from other states in asking the Department of Homeland Security for an “orderly runway” that would give businesses more time to prepare for losing TPS employees. The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association said employers faced the prospect of abruptly losing trained workers during the busy summer season.
There is also a competing argument over what the change could mean for American workers.
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration levels, told The Wall Street Journal that removing TPS workers could create opportunities for less-educated U.S.-born workers.
Whether enough workers are available—or willing to take the open jobs quickly—is now being tested in real time across Florida.
The immediate result at some businesses has instead been vacancies, staffing-agency searches and existing employees taking on jobs outside their normal roles. Some restaurants have scaled back operations, while employers in home care, senior living, hotels, retail and other sectors are looking for replacements, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For Florida, the issue has moved beyond a Washington immigration fight.
It is now showing up in restaurant kitchens, nursing facilities and businesses trying to figure out who will be there for the next shift.
