Singer John Legend defended the vast number of Haitian immigrants who have been transported to his native town of Springfield, Ohio, saying there might be “growing pains” from the influx and acknowledged the city might be “challenged.”
Legend lives in Beverly Hills, California, and is married to actress Chrissy Teigen. “Often featured on social media, the couple purchased their new home for $17.5 million in November of 2020. Before this purchase, they owned an 8,520-square-foot home previously owned by Rhianna, according to the New York Post,” House Digest noted.
“Hello everyone, my name is John Legend,” the star musician said in a video posted to social media. “I was born as John R. Stevens from a place called Springfield, Ohio. You may have heard of Springfield, Ohio this week. In fact, if you watched the debate, we were discussed by our presidential candidates, including a very special, interesting man named Donald J. Trump.”
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“Now, Springfield has had a large influx of Haitian immigrants who have come to our city. Now, our city had been shrinking for decades,” he continued. “We didn’t have enough jobs, we didn’t have enough opportunity so people left and went somewhere else. So when I was there, we had upwards of 75,000 people, and in the last five years, we were down to like 60,000 people, but of late, during the Biden administration, there have been more jobs that opened up, more manufacturing jobs, more plants, factories that needed employees and were ready to hire people.”
“So, we had a lot of job opportunities, and we didn’t have enough people in our town of 60,000 people to fill those jobs, and during the same time there have been upheaval and turmoil in Haiti, and the federal government granted visas and immigration status to a certain number of Haitian immigrants so they could come to our country legally and our demand in Springfield for additional labor met up with the supply of additional Haitian immigrants,” he said. “And here we are: We had about 15,000 or so immigrants move to my town of 60,000,” he stated.
“Now, you might say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of people for a town that only had 60,000 before; that is a 25% increase.’ That is correct, so you might imagine there are some challenges with, you know, integrating a new population,” he admitted. “New language, new culture, new dietary preferences, all kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains; making sure there are enough services to accommodate a new, larger population that might need bilingual service providers etc. etc.”
“So there are plenty of reasons why this might be a challenge for my hometown, but the bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them and they were willing to work,” he contended. “And they wanted to live the American Dream, just like your German ancestors, your Irish ancestors, your Italian ancestors, your Jewish ancestors, your Jamaican ancestors, your Polish ancestors, all these ancestors were moved to this country. Maybe not speaking the language that everyone else spoke, maybe not eating the same foods, maybe having to adjust, maybe having to integrate, but all coming because they saw opportunity for themselves and their families in the American Dream and they came here to do that.”
“Some facts about immigrants,” he declared. “They usually do very well here. They are hard-working, ambitious, they commit less crime than native born Americans and they will assimilate and integrate in time, but it takes time, so I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace that we would want our ancestors to have when they moved here with our Haitian brothers and sisters who moved here too.”
“Nobody’s eating cats; nobody’s eating dogs; we all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment,” he said. “How about we love one another? I grew up in the Christian tradition; it said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ. So how about we adopt that ethos when we talk about immigrants moving to our communities and don’t spread hateful, xenophobic, racist lies about them? John R. Stevens from Springfield, signing off,” he concluded.
NEW: Actor John Legend tells the people of Springfield, Ohio to love their Haitian neighbor because it’s the Christian thing to do.
The actor with a net worth of $100M has come out in defense of the Haitians moving to his hometown.
Legend says the Haitian immigrants in… pic.twitter.com/49n7zbjCru
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 13, 2024
