15403: Hermantin-Miami Herald-Treat Haitian Asylum Seekers fairly, not Cubans worse (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald

OPINION PAGES


Posted on Fri, Apr. 25, 2003

CHERYL LITTLE
Treat Haitian asylum seekers fairly, not Cubans worse

Recent events have underscored the growing human-rights abuses in both Cuba
and Haiti. The arrests, beatings and prosecutions of dozens of peaceful
dissenters in Cuba followed by summary executions of three accused hijackers
remind us how close the brutal dictatorship is.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department issued a report on Haiti's rapidly
deteriorating human-rights situation. It cited extrajudicial killings by
members of the Haitian National Police, continued attacks on journalists and
political dissenters and civilian deaths due to the government's inability
to maintain order.

Haitians and Cubans have strikingly similar reasons to seek refuge in the
United States. Yet our government treats the two groups differently. While
both are subject to maritime interdiction, asylum officers screen Cubans on
board the Coast Guard cutters to determine whether they have potential
asylum claims.

Although this screening is far from ideal, it is more than what is offered
to interdicted Haitians, who are not screened at all unless they pass a
''shout test.'' On the cutter, Haitians have to aggressively express a fear
of repatriation before they are granted the right to be interviewed. This is
an extraordinary requirement, given that the Haitians are virtual prisoners
of uniformed U.S. officials and almost never have access to a
Creole-speaking translator.

Haitians who make it to U.S. shores are held in detention. Cubans are not.
Cubans often don't have to apply for asylum because they are eligible for
residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. U.S. officials argue that
they have to detain Haitians to deter them from coming, but there has been
no marked increase in the number of Haitian boat people since this policy
took effect in December 2001.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, using a detention
policy to deter future refugee flows violates basic principles of
international law. Further, detaining asylum seekers of a particular
nationality while releasing asylum seekers of other nationalities violates
international norms of refugee law.

Last November, President Bush said that Haitian asylum seekers should be
treated more fairly. The following day, immigration authorities announced
its new policy: detention and expedited removal of Haitians and all others
who arrived by sea -- except for Cubans.

Before that, detained boat people who made it to dry land on their own had
the right to request a bond. Indeed, most of the Haitians who arrived last
October were granted bonds. The now defunct INS appealed the judge's
decisions, arguing that Haitians represented a national-security threat
because Haiti could be a staging point for terrorists to invade our shores.

Last month, the Justice Department's highest appellate body upheld the bond
grant to 18-year-old David Joseph, calling into question the legitimacy of
the detention policy applied to virtually all Haitians who arrived last
year. The Department of Homeland Security then urged Attorney General John
Ashcroft to block Joseph's release and that of all other similarly situated
Haitians, and he did so this week.

The administration is manipulating our nationalsecurity concerns to justify
restrictive actions targeting people from Haiti -- a country that never once
has been cited as posing a threat to U.S. safety. Yet the U.S. government
considers Cuba a threat to national security, placing it on the State
Department's list of countries that support terrorism.

It strains credulity for the administration to claim that Haitian boat
people must be detained for purposes of national security while exempting
those from the only country in the region that appears on the
administration's own terrorist list.

In arguing for more-equal treatment of Cubans and Haitians, some have
suggested repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act. I strongly disagree. The
answer is not to treat a deserving group less fairly but to restore our
historical commitment to the protection of refugees, regardless of race,
country of origin or ethnicity.

This disparate treatment of two deserving nationalities is morally and
ethically wrong, based on fear rather than fact. The policies need to be
revised immediately, before the situation in both countries worsen more
direly.

Cheryl Little is executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy
Center.


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