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TechnoratiUS Implored to Stop Deporting Haitians
Protected status urged for battered country
Almost a year after Hurricane Hanna slammed into Haiti, the memory stops her cold.
![[Children are fed at a food centre in Gonaives, Haiti in March 2009. (AFP/File/Isabelle Ligner)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/haiti_gonaives.jpg "haiti_gonaives.jpg")
Gracieuse Marius, a nurse, had huddled inside until the floodwaters subsided in the city of Gonaives, then she raced into the streets to find someone to save. Instead, she was confronted with silence: Cars, trees, and dead animals floated in the water. She still cannot bring herself to talk about the children.
Overwhelmed, she left Haiti for the United States. Now she is adding her voice to a growing nationwide chorus urging the United States to stop deporting Haitian immigrants, at least until their nation can recover from four devastating hurricanes last year and years of political and economic turmoil.
Haiti is one of the least-developed countries in the hemisphere, and one of the poorest in the world, according to the US State Department. Six of Marius's relatives are here illegally and facing deportation, among more than 32,000 illegal Haitian immigrants nationwide and 2,000 to 3,000 in Massachusetts.
"If they are sent back, some of them will die," the 46-year-old mother of two said in French Creole through a translator, after English class at the Association of Haitian Women in Boston. "When someone goes back and they don't have any family and don't have any money, what are they going to do?"
From Boston to Miami, Haitians and several prominent advocates are intensifying pressure on the US government.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representatives Barney Frank and Stephen Lynch are urging the Department of Homeland Security to grant Haitians temporary protected status, and Lynch cosponsored a bill that would force Secretary Janet Napolitano to take the step if she does not act on her own. The status would allow Haitian immigrants, legal and illegal, to remain here and work for a fixed amount of time.
State Representative Marie St. Fleur, who was born in Haiti, visited that country this spring and then met with White House aides on the issue last month. In January, Haitian Ambassador Raymond Joseph took it even further, by stalling deportations to Haiti. He refused to provide deportees' travel documents until the Obama administration reviews its policy on Haiti.
"Anyone who requests a paper from us is not getting it," he said Friday.
Last month Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Haiti and said the US government was reviewing its policy on granting Haitian immigrants temporary protected status.
But Napolitano, who has the granting authority, has stayed silent. Deportations halted last year after the hurricanes, but have resumed, including a plane filled with 48 convicted criminals who were deported to Haiti last month, said her spokesman Sean Smith.
Frank said Friday that the US policy is discriminatory. The government now provides temporary protection to five countries - El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia, and Sudan - but it has never offered it to Haiti.
"I think it's outrageous that they don't have it," Frank said.
Others are more cautious, saying Haiti is one of many struggling countries. They worry that the temporary protection would become permanent. Salvadorans and Hondurans have had the status for years.
"Haiti is a country that's in bad shape, but it's perpetually in bad shape," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors reduced immigration. "There are hurricanes, but there will always be hurricanes."
But Haitians say their nation should qualify for temporary protection. It is beset by widespread unemployment and crime, and is still recovering from last year's hurricanes, which left 800 dead, thousands homeless, and led to riots over food. Haitian officials are also worried that deportations will slash the $1.87 billion that Haitians in the United States sent home last year, more than a quarter of that nation's income, according to the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.
And hurricane season starts June 1.
In Massachusetts, Haitian immigrants are one of the largest groups in the state, with more than 43,000 people clustered in Boston and other large cities. They include taxi drivers, parking garage attendants, and cooks, and also college professors, politicians, and high school valedictorians. Each year, immigrants here send more than $12 million home to Haiti.
"It makes sense for us to keep those people here," said Carline Desire, executive director of the Association of Haitian Women in Boston. "It's never given to Haitians when we meet all the conditions."
A 51-year-old Hyde Park housewife named Marie, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, is a legal immigrant whose visa expires in July. She intends to overstay it because she refuses to bring her 13-year-old American-born son to Haiti.
"I have to stay to take care of him," she said. "There is big trouble in Haiti."
Charles Pean, a 55-year-old Boston radio show host and Haiti native who has been pressing for temporary protected status on the air, said Haitians are worried about deportations.
"I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but I know Haiti will be 10 times, 100 times worse than the way it is now because we do not have any structure to absorb those people," he said. "All the institutions are weak. They are not prepared for a catastrophe."
7 Comments so far
Show AllYes Pangolin, the US keeps offering handouts to Haitians and they just fail to get it together. What’s wrong with those people?
For example.
•When the US military landed in Haiti in 1915 they roped Haitians together into chain gangs to build roads for them for better mobility for, uh, our troops and for resource extraction to benefit US companies and a tiny, tiny, tiny population inside Haiti.
•The US then used an act of Congress to create a Haitian army to repress the population while ensuring resource extraction for that tiny, tiny, tiny population in Haiti, oh and US companies.
•Years later the US gave the dictator Papa Doc Duvalier American taxpayer cash while turning a blind eye to the brutality he inflicted on his people. As long as he voted anti-Castro he was ok by us. Deforestation continued.
•In 1961 Kennedy cut off the aid when Duvalier so obviously absconded with the money and used it for himself but in 1971 the US started it back up again. This time we didn't seem to mind how Baby Doc Duvalier and his wife spent our money in Paris and Miami and at shoppings malls everywhere. The more they shopped the more the Haitian government went into debt and the less money went to Haiti itself. Their poverty increased. The deforestation continued.
•Finally we used taxpayer money to support democratic elections in Haiti. But the Haitian people elected the wrong guy, Aristide, and the tiny, tiny, tiny population in Haiti who had always used bloody repression (organized by the US) to stay in power was not happy. Although Aristide was elected in both elections by a wider margin than the US has ever seen in it's own country, Aristide didn't bend over far enough. So we bought and paid for two coups to get rid of him. Millions of our taxpayer money again went to that tiny, tiny, tiny population in Haiti, the traditional employers of death squads, ton ton macoute, FRAPH. Unfortunately for them human rights abusers and their employees will never be freely elected by the people they terrorize. To solve this problem the US began rebranding these bad guys so that fake elections and other shenanigans will be believable to the rest of the world. Aristide was rebranded as the bad guy. This also costs more money, more American taxpayer generosity.
During the 2004 coup notorious thugs were repackaged as independent, civic minded "rebels" who just wanted a “change.” The mainstream media failed to report that some of these “rebels” were observed with 'made in USA' M16s and wearing American flag bandanas although at least one of these “journalists” stood next to one who pointed at which house they would burn down and which people they would rape and kill next. One such thug was observed at his "base" executing victims underneath an American flag. See Miami University Haiti Human Rights Report, November 2004. CNN literally refused to film a shipping crate stuffed with Haitians being smothered to death by the civic minded "rebels" who had put them there because CNN's shot list didn't include it. US taxpayer funded resources had successfully encouraged CNN to tell only the story they wanted told.
Thousands were killed 2004-2006 but it was successfully kept out of the media in order to justify a continuation of the foreign policy of 1915. See the Lancet Journal’s Haiti study. The mainstream media dutifully read their lines and the deforestation continued. All thanks to the generosity of American taxpayer dollars.
"The investments that have been made are in firepower, and the dividends have not satisfied the Haitian people's social, economic or political needs. Instead, the observable returns on the investment are bodies left in the street to be eaten by pigs or rotting in the morgue, and the tearing apart of communities that have long been knitted together by their shared hunger."
-See the University of Miami Haiti Human Rights Report, Nov 2004
No, Haitians aren't looking for more US handouts.
The more money pours into Haiti the more bloody their circumstances...oh, and the more deforested their country gets.
Granting TPS to 300,000 Haitians working in America is small potatoes. We grant it to every other country, why keep it from our neighbor who's just suffered 4 hurricanes, not including Hurricane Bush? It’s time to stop with the Jesse Helms brand of foreign policy towards Haiti. It’s time to stop blaming Haiti for regressive US foreign policy.
jojo12 - this is a story rarely told in school or the press. Thank you. Haiti needs help - not hundreds of billions like the bankers, but a little help. They especially need a land reclamation and food agriculture program. And self-rule.
Joe
"The US cannot accept refugees from nations that refuse to live within their environmental means."
(Pangolin)
You must be racist, nuts or both to suggest that a people who's forefathers were brought there against their will some how is responsible for their environment when the environment that they live in was never theirs nor was that environment set up for their success. Do you think CommonDreams readers are stupid or what.
Our Inhumanity towards one another based on racial, national, religious and class differences will some day be our undoing. For those who have audacity to do something about the situation the time is now. When a demogogue rises up it will be to late.
Haitians have to save Haiti and that means they have to quit looking north for handouts. They have to cut there birth rate faster than any nation in the world including China; there are just too many Haitians on that tiny territory.
The only hope I see for Haiti is a socialist revolution that elmiminates the waste of supporting idle rich and engages in a massive soil conservation program.
They have to out-Cuba the Cubans or die. Haiti simply cannot support the current population and won't be able to support much at all without massive environmental reforms.
The US cannot accept refugees from nations that refuse to live withing their environmental means. If our population continues to grow it won't matter how many CFL's we screw in because we will destroy the planet just like Haiti has been destroyed.
I think you should study some history to improve your thinking about Haiti. jojo12 has a clue about what has gone on, how Haiti got the way it is.
Also, if you can afford it, you should go visit Haiti to see the conditions. You might appreciate the complications of getting to a socialist revolution or any other basic improvements.
Meanwhile, we should give Haitians some asylum here. If someone who was injured and bleeding knocked on my door needing help, maybe I could give it and maybe not. But I would not tell them to manage their life better, stop having children and start having a socialist revolution before I closed the door in their face.
Joe
It seems to me unjustifiable that a country with such as vast history of revolution not to mention the very first nation on earth to rid themselves of slavery cannot receive help or any other form of aid from the world at large. Cuba one of the countries not mentioned in the article receive refugee status yet Cuba has a better educational system and healthcare system then the U.S. Haiti deserves the worlds help and they deserve the status that many other nations around the world enjoy here in the U.S.
...the very first nation on earth to rid themselves of slavery...
This is precisely why the world at large (read rich, white world) will not help. they are still being punished for having the gall to stand tall and demand to be free.
infact the rich, white world, and especially the US, has done everything they can to destroy this country and force them to eat dirt as a staple. (eg supported the Duvalier clan (papa doc and baby doc) undercut Arastide, and exterminate the only relialble food supply the Hatian creole pig, etc. etc.)