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US Discriminatory Immigration Policy Toward Haitians
By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 2 of 5 page(s)
"After dealing with this administration on Haitian issues for eight years, I'm forced to conclude that its policy toward Haiti is based on racism. It's shocking. People (lack everything and) are starving. This callous disregard for human life is inexplicable. Many deported Haitians simply have no communities to return to. It is disappointing that the Bush administration would even consider sending people back to this incredibly fragile nation....(Haiti's) humanitarian crisis....continues and worsens."
(South) Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center's (FIAC) executive director, Cheryl Little, said: "We are attempting to do whatever we can to convince government officials to change their minds on this. It's an outrageously inhumane act."
On January 26, FIAC urged new DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to "immediately stay the inhumane deportations and to seriously consider granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians already in the United States." On December 19, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff denied the Preval government's TPS request. As a result, Haiti won't cooperate, so ICE is making Haitians get their own travel documents (including passports) and assist in their own deportations.
Throughout 2008, around 1000 occurred in total. After a near-three month suspension (from September 19 - December 9), they resumed slowly, but picked up noticeably after Obama's inauguration. According to FIAC, men like Louiness Petit-Frere are affected, deported on January 23: "Here ten years with no criminal record, he leaves his US-citizen wife behind along with his mother and four siblings, all (with) legal status....One of his brothers, US Marine Sgt Nikenson Peirreloui, served and was injured in Iraq."
In 2008, Obama campaigned vigorously for South Florida's Haitian vote. Now he's betrayed it the way he's abandoning millions of distressed households by providing little in real relief compared to trillions in handouts to Wall Street and the rich.
After Congress established TPS in 1990, Washington granted 260,000 Salvadorans, 82,000 Hondurans, and 5000 Nicaraguans protection, then extended it on October 1, 2008. It lets the Attorney General grant temporary immigration status to undocumented residents unable to return home due to armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions." Besides El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, past recipients included Kuwait, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Montserrat, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and Angola. Six nations still have TPS, but all face expiration in 2009 unless extended.
Haitians never got it, yet granting it is the simplest, least expensive form of aid so Port-au-Prince can concentrate on redevelopment while Haitians in America help through remittances back to families. In 2006, they sent $1.65 billion, the highest income percentage from any foreign national group in the world.
In 1997, the Clinton administration granted Haitians Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for one year. Currently about 20,000 Haitians qualify for TPS, a much smaller number than for other recipient countries.
Nonetheless, deportations are proceeding with 30,299 on "final order of removal" status, meaning an immigration judge ordered them out. About 600 are in detention, 243 others are electronically monitored, and all 30,000 will be removed by an administration as callous to the poor as previous hard-liners under George Bush. In America, everything changes, yet stays the same, even under the first black president.
Some Background on Haitian Immigration to America
Haitians began arriving in South Florida about 50 years ago, but were denied the same rights and treatment as more favored immigrants like Europeans. Fleeing repressive dictatorships hardly mattered during years under "Papa" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier or when military dictatorships ran the country.
In September 1963, the first boatload claiming persecution arrived but were denied asylum and deported. Decades later, it's the same. After a 1991 coup deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, thousands of Haitians fled to America. Most were intercepted at sea and sent home while around 300 were detained at Guantanamo because tests showed they were HIV positive.
Conditions at the camp were deplorable. Treated like prisoners, they were held behind razor wire in leaky barracks with bad sanitation, poor food, and little medical care even for the sick and pregnant women. After protests and a hunger strike, crackdowns were severe, many were imprisoned, and Clinton White House justification was no different than today. The DOJ claimed Haitians had no legal rights under the Constitution, federal statutes, or international law. Wrong.
International law protects asylum seekers, Haitians as much as others.
Article I of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines one as:
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