The call came in about 3:30 in the morning.
The young man rang to inform me that my mother had just passed away. Peacefully. In her sleep.
He could not have been more courteous, or empathetic, in delivering the news.
The young man was Haitian. I knew this, not only from his accent, but because I had met him briefly earlier in the evening. Before going to my sister’s house for a few hours sleep.
He had assured me that he would be at my mother’s bedside until I returned in the morning.
I have since wondered what became of that caring young man. Almost certainly he is not still working the same job he held when he sat at my mother’s bedside as she breathed her last.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this week:
Florida businesses are confronting abrupt labor shortages after the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants, eliminating work authorization for thousands.
Home-care agencies have closed, nursing homes are scrambling for workers and restaurants are cutting hours. Florida has about 93,000 Haitian TPS holders in its workforce, including thousands of cooks, servers and nursing assistants.
If you listen to our more callous politicians – like the Mad King and Floriduh’s Great DeSanitizer – then it’s good riddance to those 93,000 Haitians. They don’t belong here.
Hell, they’d assure me. For all I know, the polite young man who watched over my mother in her final hours went home and ate his neighbor’s pet for breakfast.
Because that’s what those people do. We’re far better off without them.
Or at least some of us are, presumably, better off. As the WST report noted:
South Florida’s direct-care industry is especially exposed, with Haitians comprising 28% of the state’s immigrant workforce in that sector. Two home-care agencies closed after each lost more than 80 workers, while Key West restaurants are shifting bartenders, servers and oyster shuckers into kitchens to cover vacancies.
Of course, if you heed the MAGA zealots, all of the above simply means that more jobs are now available for real ‘mericans.
After all, those people were just living off the taxpayer dole, stealing our jobs and…um…oh yeah…eating our pets.
But when I think back on the three years my mother lived in memory units in two different assisted living facilities it occurs to me that a disproportionate number of her caregivers spoke with Caribbean or Latino accents.
They struck me, by and large, as warm, caring people. They were happy to be working here in this Land Of Opportunity. And for the most part, my mother seemed content to be in their care as she descended into her final childhood.
One of those people sat up with my mother in her last hours. And then he telephoned me to give me the news. And to express his sympathy.
My mother is gone. But what of all the other elders in need of care, especially those in Florida, one of the most rapidly aging states in America?
Well, according to the Home Care Association Of Florida:
Florida ranks dead last (50th) in the United States for home health and personal care aide availability. The state has only about 17 direct care workers per 1,000 adults aged 65 and older—far below the national average of 65—even though over 21% of Florida’s population is elderly.
Reasons: Low pay. High job turnover (it’s a stressful way to make a living after all). And what the Association tactfully calls “workforce disruptions.”
Recent shifts in immigration enforcement and policy changes affecting temporary protected status workers have deepened acute staffing drops at local care agencies.
But good riddance to those people. Right?
Because our Mad King (who enjoys the best elder care in America) and The Great DeSanitizer intend to build America’s new economic vitality on the strength of public-and-privately run immigrant detention camps.
That, and job opportunities opening up in the fast-growing field of ice-in-their-veins refugee nabbers.
Is this a great country or what?
I miss my mother. But I’m glad she did not live her final days in an understaffed memory unit. Attended to by overworked temp employees who never wanted to be there in the first place.
How have we come to this, America?
FreeGNV 