13573: (Chamberlain, news item) 19 of Miami boat migrants returned to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>


     MIAMI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Nineteen of the more than 200 migrants who
tried to reach Florida on an overloaded Haitian freighter last week were
sent back to Haiti on Tuesday as a campaign to change U.S. immigration laws
escalated.
     The U.S. Coast Guard unloaded 17 Haitians and two men from the
Dominican Republic at the dock in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, Coast
Guard officials said.
     Their return to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti
and the Dominican Republic, came a day after 800 demonstrators massed at
the Miami headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
to protest the disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban migrants.
     People frequently leave both Caribbean nations seeking better economic
conditions in the United States. But while Haitians are routinely
imprisoned and then returned to their homeland, migrants from Cuba who
manage to set foot on U.S. soil are quickly freed and allowed to stay under
a four-decade-old policy that views them as fleeing communism.
     The Haitians are not just treated differently from Cubans. Unlike
migrants of other nationalities, they are held in detention rather than
released into the community pending asylum hearings.
     Human rights campaigners have condemned the treatment of the Haitians
and local activists made it an issue in the Florida gubernatorial election
campaign pitting incumbent Jeb Bush, the president's brother, against
Democrat Bill McBride.
     The Coast Guard said on Tuesday it was stepping up Caribbean patrols
to deter migrants, concentrating on the Windward Passage, the Old Bahama
channel and the Straits of Florida used by most Haitian and Cuban migrants.
     Cubans are often brought to the Florida coast in smugglers'
speedboats, while Haitians usually use rickety wooden sailboats or coastal
freighters that are dangerously overloaded. At least 157 migrants are
believed to have died while headed to Florida since January 2000, the Coast
Guard said.
     "The U.S. actively discourages illegal migration as a matter of
national security and for reasons of maritime safety," the Coast Guard said
in a statement explaining the heightened patrols.
     The plight of the more than 230 people who sailed spectacularly into
the heart of Miami's Biscayne Bay on Oct. 29 -- escaping detection long
after most migrant vessels are stopped at sea -- became a high-profile
campaign issue in the final days of Florida's election in part because the
drama was carried on live television.
     Haitian-American activists pressured the candidates to talk about the
unequal treatment of Haitians and Cubans, two of the largest immigrant
groups in multicultural Miami, Florida's most populous area.
     Most of the Haitians who scampered on shore from the 58-foot
(18-metre) wooden coastal freighter were being held at south Florida
detention centers and will likely be returned to Haiti. Those taken to
Port-au-Prince on Tuesday were picked up in the water and had been held
aboard a Coast Guard cutter since Oct. 29.