US employers and Haitian immigrants live in constant uncertainty as status of work permits remains in limbo For more than a month, Bobby Kuchinsky arrived at his Florida restaurant…

US employers and Haitian immigrants live in constant uncertainty as status of work permits remains in limbo For more than a month, Bobby Kuchinsky arrived at his Florida restaurant each morning worried about whether he still had enough staff or if this might be the last shift for some of his Haitian workers, who have spent more than a decade as cooks, busboys and oyster shuckers. On Tuesday, he suspended six of them after they lost authorization to work in the US. Kuchinsky and thousands of other businesses owners and managers are living in a state of constant uncertainty because confusion clouds the status of work permits for Haitian employees with temporary protected status (TPS). As part of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration terminated TPS for about 1 million people from more than a dozen countries, including 350,000 Haitians who have been living and working legally in the US since 2010. The termination, which exposed them to deportation, was challenged in district courts. On 25 June, the supreme court sided with the government, allowing TPS to end. The cases went back to the lower courts, which generally take 32 days to announce their decisions following the high court’s recommendations. In the meantime, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), extended the Haitians’ work permits. The agency usually acted on the same day that the permits expired and offered extensions of only a few days, creating confusion and desperation among employers and the Haitian community. Then on Monday, the work permits were not extended, and fear mounted – not only due to the loss of jobs but also because of the potential for arrest and deportation to Haiti, a country deemed unsafe for Americans to travel to by the US.