Arbitrary detention of Haitian refugees should not be part of U.S. foreign policy. Minors should not be held captive, nor should any of the refugees be denied due process or the right to legal representation. In the past, all Haitian refugees were considered economic refugees. Today, even the president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is claiming that he is being persecuted. While the U.S. Special Forces and the State Department are busy chasing Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, on the island nation of Haiti, a powerful and deadly drama is unfolding. Mob killings of reporters and shootouts in broad daylight between mayors and congressmen have become common occurrence.
Congressional Black Caucus members, black leaders and ousted Haitian Pres Aristide praised the Clinton administration for allowing Haitian refugees to be processed with a hearing on US ships and third country refugee centers.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
6 p., Argues the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians -- and particularly the redesignation of the eligibility period -- demonstrates the best of what the Administration can do using its executive branch authority to improve the quality of people's lives. It demonstrates a commitment to good immigration policy and to "good government" policies such as greater transparency and coordination. In the Haitian context, the Department of Homeland Security should also implement a program to grant humanitarian parole to the estimated 105,000 Haitian already approved as beneficiaries of family-based visa petitions, just as has been done for Cubans under the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program.
Discusses the deportation of foreign-born youth with criminal convictions to Haiti, other Caribbean countries, and Central America, based on 1996 laws allowing the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to deny due process to non-citizens.
-, An editorial asserts that the Chicago Defender joins the Congressional Black Caucus, the Miami Branch of the NAACP and Rep Carrie Meek in denouncing a Bush administration directive requiring INS officials to arbitrarily detain Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the US.
Why are Cubans and Chinese more at risk in their respective countries than Haitians from Haiti? When, last have you read about a revolution in Cuba where so many people lost their lives on a daily basis? This goes ditto for China. Apart from the conflict which took place in Tiamminen Square, a couple of years ago, there's been no other outward display of political persecution. In Cuba, there's always been a movement on from those in exile to recapture Cuba from Castro. For this reason anyone coming from Cuba has been welcomed in the U.S. with opened arms.
"It was shocking to see the changes made," [Marleine Bastien] told The Times. "The U.S. does not have the capacity to detain all persons that make it to this country. This policy mainly targets Haitians." The U.S. Department of Justice released a statement which said, "Rumors of successful entry into the United States have fueled migration surges, and any perception of a relaxing U.S. immigration policy could cause future migrations at sea ... "Miami Immigration and Naturalization Services Chief of Staff John Shewairy said the revisions have been designed to deter large numbers of Haitians from migrating to the U.S. He told The Times that detention of the asylum-seekers who arrived by boat on Oct. 29 is an effort to thwart "smuggling" of migrants from Haiti.
According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, several companies in Brooklyn, New York, including Chay Pa Lou Community Center, Inc., Delegue Tax Consultant, Inc., and their owner and operator Jean Michel; as well as Rinchef s Multi-Service, a/k/a Rincher Bookstore, a/k/a Rincher Associates, a/k/a Haitian American Entrepreneur's Group, LLC, and their owners and operators Deslande Seixas-Rincher and Sharlene Seixas-Rincher, targeted the Haitian community with fraudulent immigration services. "In light of the recent devastating earthquake in Port-auPrince, New York's Haitian residents have sadly been a target for immigration scams, bringing further pain to a community that has already suffered so much," said Cuomo. "These cases are a part of my office's ongoing crackdown on immigration scams throughout New York and I urge anyone who has been affected by this type of fraud to contact my office."
Amid the flurry of designations by the media, law enforcement officials, and advocacy organizations--terms ranging from "migrants" to "asylum-seekers" to "economic refugees"--one thing was clear. The people aboard that boat had fled desperate conditions for safe harbor in the U.S. What awaited them when they touched land was then, and remains, a matter of great contention. When asked about the implications of the designation "migrant," Miami field office INS public relations officer Barbara Gonzalez said that in the context of INS policy, "There is really no such thing as a migrant." She said, "Many use the word," when the correct terminology for what they intend is "non-immigrant." How about the terms "alien" and "refugee?" Amnesty International notes that the term "alien" has been used in U.S. legislation to describe various types of non-citizens, including those Amnesty would call "asylum-seekers." Similarly, the INS describes an alien as any non-citizen or national of the U.S.
Repatriations of Haitians in the Dominican Republic have become an almost daily routine. Indeed Dominican authorities almost constantly expel hundreds of Haitians illegally living in the Dominican Republic. Haitian authorities seem to accept as a fait accompli the onslaught on our territory nationals of Haiti with their Dominican counterparts, regardless of taking long-term measures to stop the bleeding of the labor national work as well as the brain drain to benefit our bordering neighbors. Notwithstanding the ill-treatment Dominicans inflict our brothers, repressed people manage to return a month later to where they are to be expelled. Since, in the absence of a long-term strategy to frame the returnees and give them hope for a decent life in their country, crossing to the other side of the border continues to attract good workers sentenced to unemployment in their own countries.
