While helping applicants take their place on the line, Richard Champagne, current President of the Haitian Lawyers Association (HLA)stated, "This is an opportunity for the HLA and participating attorneys to give back to our community. Haitian immigrants have been suffering for a long time, and after the Obama administration granted TPS, it was our duty to assist. It has been a great opportunity to partner with the city of North Miami, given the concentration of Haitian nationals in the city.
The head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Alejandro Mayorkas, says his agency can't eliminate its fees, but it has the power to waive them for people who can prove they are poor. He has promised that his employees will treat applicants with a "generosity of spirit." This would be a refreshing change for an agency notorious for bureaucrats expert in finding a way to say no.
A Hartford Courant photographer, he opens the door to Haiti's dark, brutal secrets with explicit photographs taken in his native country. [Marc Yves Regis] was a freelance photographer with the Miami Times and an intern with the Miami Herald before joining the Courant. The book outlines Haiti's democratic reforms, beginning with the 1990 appointment of the country's first woman president. A year later, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot handed power to Jean-Betrand Aristide, who captured the presidency with an overwhelming 67 percent of the vote in the country's first true democratic election.
Although the program has a long, academic-sounding formal tide, "Sugar, Slavery and Imperialism: How Sugar Drove the Forced Migration of Africans to the Caribbean and the Impact of the Haitian Revolution," it is an informal presentation aimed at general audiences. This is a rare opportunity to learn more about Haiti's former status, as the richest, rather than the poorest, country in the hemisphere; about Haitian participation in the American Revolutionary War and aid to other independence struggles; about the brilliant diplomatic and military leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines, Petion and others, who defeated the forces of Napoleon, Britain and Spain together; about how the Haitian victory caused Napoleon to sell the vast Louisiana territory to the United States, and about the great heroism of ordinary Haitians that was required for victory to be won. (The Louisiana Purchase, which will be commemorated on specially minted nickel coins in 2004, also opened the way for an expanded domestic "slave trade" within the United States, which was even larger than the former Atlantic trade).
Attorney Michael Etienne, Irvence St. Jean, President of United for Haiti, Sandra JeanPierre, owner of WOW Factor Weddings and Events and the Fernande Saint Jean, the host for United for Haiti Gala, enjoy a night of celebration at the United for Haiti First Annual Black Tie Gala at FIU.
