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Haiti clearly holds a place in the heart of Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. He’s been to the country at least 25 times with his wife, he said at a press conference Monday in Springfield.

He helped found a school in Haiti that bears the name of his daughter, Becky, who died decades ago in a car accident.

He respects the Haitians who have come to the US legally and found work in Springfield.

“They’re legal,” he said on “PBS Newshour” Tuesday night. “They want to work. In fact, they want to work overtime,” he said.

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Further, DeWine said the Haitians found Springfield because business owners there were having trouble finding workers after the Covid-19 pandemic.

But while he is defending the Haitians legally working in Springfield with Temporary Protected Status due to violence and a humanitarian crisis after storms and an earthquake there, DeWine wants to separate them from the larger immigration and border debate fueling the Republican political argument in 2024.

“The immigration issue, and the border issue, obviously, is fair game,” DeWine said in the PBS interview, and it’s a refrain he has repeated in press conferences and interviews in recent days.

But that’s a different issue than what’s going on in Springfield, he said.

Without specifically criticizing former President...

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