Dem Ayanna Pressley falsely claims Haitians are 20% of healthcare workers—it's 0.6%

Representative Ayanna Pressley claimed on Capitol Hill that Haitian workers make up 20 percent of healthcare workers as the House voted to advance legislation extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti. However, figures the American Immigration Council show that the figure is actually around 0.6 percent.

This week, the House passed the discharge petition on the measure by a vote of 220 to 207, sending the proposal to the Senate. The bill, led by Pressley, would extend TPS protections for Haitian nationals for an additional three years.

Pressley said she was “elated” that “360,000 Haitian nations whose lives hang in the balance,” will feel “more hope.” In a video after the vote, Pressley defended the initiative, claiming that “one in five” healthcare workers in the US are Haitian, including one in four of long-term healthcare workers, who are Haitian.

“That was a point that was deeply resonate for a lot of people because if you don’t extend temporary protected status, people’s work authorizations are immediately null and void, those positions are immediately empty,” she claimed.

Pressley also made this claim on the House floor, saying, “Haitian TPS holders are not the problem. Quite the contrary—they are part of the solution. They are not our enemies. They do not exploit our nation. They enhance it. Secretary Kennedy himself has said that we are in a caregiving crisis. One in four of our health care workers are Haitian—long-term health care. And one in five of our health care workers are Haitian.”

However, available data does not support those figures. Data from the American Immigration Council indicates that Haitian immigrants make up a small fraction of the U.S. healthcare workforce, estimated at about 0.6 percent overall among healthcare workers. The same data, from a 2018 American Community Survey, show that there are 102,100 Haitian healthcare workers in the United States, representing roughly 3.0 percent of immigrant healthcare workers. Larger shares of immigrant healthcare workers come from countries such as the Philippines, Mexico, and India.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where Republican lawmakers are unlikely to take it up. Ten House Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the measure, including Reps. Mike Lawler and Nicole Malliotakis of New York; Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez of Florida; Don Bacon of Nebraska; Rich McCormick of Georgia; Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania; and Mike Carey and Mike Turner of Ohio.

A White House spokesperson said that the bill is “going nowhere,” and a veto threat has been issued.