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Members of the Capital Region\u2019s Haitian community have been impacted by the termination of temporary protected status, costing thousands their work authorization. Above, Haitians gather for the first Haitian Heritage & Flag Day Festival on May 23 at the Washington Park Lakehouse in Albany.<\/p>\n
Jim Franco\/Times Union<\/p>\n
Home care agencies across the Capital Region and Hudson Valley are losing workers and scrambling to maintain care for vulnerable patients after temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian nationals ended Monday.<\/p>\n
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Providers say the termination of work authorization is forcing them to remove employees from longtime caregiving roles, worsening an already severe labor shortage in home care and long-term care settings.<\/p>\n
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The greatest impact will be felt by the patients, said Kevin Thomas, president and CEO of the New York State Association of Health Care Providers, which represents home- and community-based care providers across the state.\u00a0The organization has heard from several member agencies that have had to pull employees from their jobs because they no longer have work authorization.<\/p>\n
The nature of care work is highly relationship-based, and many of the workers who have lost authorization have cared for the same patients for years. Thomas pointed to small but deeply learned aspects of those relationships.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatients lose someone they\u2019ve been talking to every single day,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cSomebody who knows how to make your tea, who knows your children\u2019s names. And now someone new has to relearn it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The changes took effect Monday following a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision<\/a> in June, the culmination of several legal proceedings after former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last fall that she would move to terminate TPS for Haitian and Syrian nationals.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n TPS is a legal immigration designation granted in increments of six to 18 months to people from countries experiencing armed conflict, environmental disasters or other extraordinary conditions. The designation provides work authorization and protects from deportation but is not a pathway to citizenship.<\/p>\n In early 2025, about 1.3 million people<\/a> from 17 countries held TPS designation. Of those, more than 330,000 were Haitian nationals and 3,800 were Syrians.<\/p>\n The Capital Region is home to both Haitian and Syrian communities, though not all members are affected because many have other forms of legal immigration status or work authorization.<\/p>\n Overall, New York is home to 40,000 Haitian migrants, according to\u00a0data<\/a> collected by the policy organization FWD.us. The group estimates that 25,000 Haitian TPS workers in the state have lost work authorization as a result of federal action, including 5,000 caregivers and 2,000 nursing assistants.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Immigrants, including naturalized citizens and noncitizens, have long filled severe labor shortages in long-term and direct care settings. A 2024 survey by KFF found<\/a> that immigrants comprise 60% of New York\u2019s direct care workforce. That includes personal care aides, nursing assistants and home health aides who work in home health, nursing facilities, residential care facilities or other settings focused on providing care for the elderly and people with disabilities.<\/p>\n While exact figures for the Capital Region and Hudson Valley are unavailable, Thomas described the termination of TPS as \u201ccruel,\u201d saying it has already begun putting some of the state\u2019s most vulnerable residents at risk.<\/p>\n \u201cThese workers have legal status within the country,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why they were hired and trained. It is so hard to attract people into this workforce, and to see them disappear, it\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen Lipson, executive vice president of LeadingAge New York, an association of more than 5,500 nonprofit and government-sponsored providers across the continuum of aging services, said the loss of TPS is the latest in a series of federal immigration changes that have exacerbated workforce shortages in long-term care.\u00a0Workers were similarly affected by the earlier termination<\/a> of the CHNV humanitarian parole program, which allowed some Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals, as well as their families, to be considered for a two-year stay in the United States.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no pipeline of job applicants waiting to fill these positions,\u201d Lipson said. \u201cWorsening staffing shortages could force providers to make hard choices to limit admissions to nursing homes and home care, creating barriers to care for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n Not every healthcare provider in the Capital Region expects major disruptions. An Albany Med Health System spokesperson said the organization does not anticipate a \u201csignificant operational impact.\u201d<\/p>\n The Healthcare Association of New York State expressed \u201cgreat concern\u201d about \u201cany policy that exacerbates longstanding healthcare workforce challenges,\u201d and called on lawmakers in Washington to act. There have been renewed calls to pass H.R.1689<\/a>, which would redesignate Haiti for TPS, and is sitting in the Senate after the House passed it in April. Another bill,\u00a0H.R.9523<\/a>, was introduced shortly after the Supreme Court decision and would permit judges to review TPS claims. Neither the House nor Senate has voted on it yet.<\/p>\n Thomas said the direct care industry has experienced \u201cwhiplash\u201d over the past year as federal changes to work authorization hung in limbo. Now, organizations and agencies are working to mitigate risks for the communities impacted.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, a union representing healthcare workers across the Northeast, that includes helping workers who are suddenly vulnerable due to the loss of work authorization.<\/p>\n \u201c1199SEIU is working tirelessly to provide our union members with information and resources to protect their families\u00a0\u2014 and to demand justice and decency during these perilous times,\u201d Executive Vice President Greg Speller said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the Capital Region\u2019s Haitian community have been impacted by the termination of temporary protected status, costing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":976653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[12514,210,1141,1142,425,50,290,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-976652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-diversity","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-local","tag-news","tag-state","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117028450995193855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/976653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}