Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is set to expire in a year for people from Haiti. These are people who were given refuge in the United States after the devastating earthquake of 2010. They were given the right to work, their children were able to attend school, and thousands of TPS families in Florida hold mortgages on homes. The end of Temporary Protected status was set by President Donald Trump for July 22, 2019, meaning in one year, thousands of people living in Southwest Florida will have to leave. We’re spending the hour learning more about Haiti -- how it came to be, and how it is now, eight years after that earthquake. And throughout the year, we’ll talk with Haitians in our community about how they’re planning for the end of TPS, in our project called "Where is Home- Haitians Counting Down.”
Our guests are: Dr. Philippe Girard, professor of Caribbean history at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and author of “The Memoir(s) of Toussaint Louverture.” Professor Girard has studied and published extensively about the life and impact of Toussaint Louverture, who led that successful 1791 slave rebellion in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue; and Skyler Badenoch, CEO of Naples-based Hope for Haiti.
