John Legend Addresses Trump’s Attack on Haitian Immigrants in Singer’s Ohio Hometown: “How About We Love One Another?”

John Legend on Thursday addressed Donald Trump‘s attack on Haitian immigrants in the singer’s hometown Springfield, Ohio.

During the presidential debate Tuesday, the former president suggested that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are taking over the city.

“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said.

In a video posted to social media Thursday, Legend reminded his fans that he grew up in Springfield.

“You may have heard of Springfield, Ohio this week,” the “All of Me” singer said. “In fact, if you watched the debate, we were discussed by our presidential candidates, including a very special, interesting man named Donald J. Trump.”

Legend spent several minutes speaking about the history of Springfield. “Our city had been shrinking for decades,” he said. “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 upward 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 got 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 had 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.”

The singer said Springfield added “15,000 or so immigrants” to the population of 60,000. “You might say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of people.’ For a town that only had 60,000 before, that’s a 25 percent increase. That is correct.”

He acknowledged challenges that arose as a result of the demographic shift. “You might imagine there are some challenges with integrating a new population, 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 the 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.”

Regardless, Legend said: “The bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them, and they were willing to work, and they wanted to live the American Dream.”

He compared the stories of those in Springfield to “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 food, maybe having to adjust.”

He continued, “But all coming because they saw opportunity for themselves and their families in the American dream, and they came here to do that.”

Legend then spoke about embracing immigrants in all communities. “Some facts about immigrants,” he said. “They usually do very well here. They are hardworking, they’re 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.”

He added: “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. How about we love one another?”

Legend’s statement ended with him posing a question to his fans — “I grew up in the Christian tradition. We said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ. 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?”