Key West's Labor Market Reels as Haitian Immigrant Protections End

In Key West, a place built on the labor of those willing to sustain its hospitality economy, the withdrawal of federal protections for Haitian immigrants has exposed how deeply a community can depend on workers it rarely pauses to see. The policy shift happened in Washington, but its weight landed on an island with no economic redundancy — no alternative workforce waiting in reserve, no buffer against the sudden absence of people who were not peripheral to Key West's economy but foundational to it. What is unfolding there is a quiet reckoning with the distance between policy and place, between