23813: (pub) Slavin: St. Pete Times "Advocates: Haitians deserve refuge" 111504 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

jps390@aol.com

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/11/15/Worldandnation/Advocates__Haitians_d.shtml

Advocates: Haitians deserve refuge


After upheaval and storms, their home is in no shape to welcome them back. But U.S. officials say they can't stay here.

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent

Published November 15, 2004

MIAMI - It has been a rough year for Haiti, hit by a double whammy of political turmoil and natural disasters.

But not bad enough, according to the exacting standards of United States' deportation policy of undocumented aliens.

Immigration advocates in Miami are fuming over the Bush administration's refusal to grant greater leniency to an estimated 20,000 Haitians illegally in this country.

"The message of our president to the Haitians is absolutely clear," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "Your lives don't count."

Little and others want the Department of Homeland Security to grant the Haitians Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which would protect them from being returned to their ravaged homeland - at least for the time being.

The request for TPS has bipartisan support from South Florida members of Congress, including two leading Cuban-Americans. It also has received partial backing from Gov. Jeb Bush.

Bush says he supports TPS, but only "in a way that doesn't create a huge influx of immigrants." He is concerned by the potential loss of life in the event of a surge in boat people, as well as the strain on local resources.

"We are not equipped to deal with the costs related to mass migration," he wrote in an e-mail.

But Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, wrote to President Bush last month, "It is long past time to put an immediate end to the deportation of Haitians from this country."

Haiti's government formally requested TPS in a letter to the White House on Sept. 30 in the wake of Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed upward of 3,000 people. Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue argued that the combination of political violence and natural disasters had "rendered us temporarily unprepared to handle adequately the return of our nationals."

That request appeared to have been turned down last week when the Department of Homeland Security announced a case-by-case adjudication of undocumented Haitians. Only those from a limited area of Haiti directly affected by Jeanne could escape deportation.

But officials later backtracked and said the request for TPS was "still being reviewed."

Haitian immigration advocates say TPS for Haitians would cover only some 20,000 illegal Haitians. They are spread across the country, mostly in Miami and New York, with smaller pockets in places such as Tampa Bay.

What concerns U.S. officials and Gov. Bush is that granting TPS might set off an uncontrollable exodus of boat people from Haiti.

"I think there will be a rush to come here," Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said after talks with Latortue last week in Miami. "We would end up taking people back to Port-au-Prince and making the situation worse."

Advocates of TPS for the Haitians say the administration's case-by-case approach fails to address the enormity of Haiti's plight, seriously underestimating the impact of Jeanne. The latest in a series of calamities to strike the country, the storm made impassable the country's main highway.

Immigration advocates say the conditions in Haiti more than meet the standards set for TPS. Besides being hit by storms twice this year, political violence in February led President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee the country aboard a U.S-government chartered jet. Despite U.N. peacekeepers, the country remains politically unstable.

"If ever a group was deserving of TPS, it's Haitians," Little said.

Immigration advocates protest that U.S. officials have adopted a double standard for Haitians. Some call it racist. Immigration attorneys cite a congressional study last month that examined conditions in several countries that have received TPS in recent years, including Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, then-Attorney General Janet Reno designated TPS for 87,000 Hondurans and 6,000 Nicaraguans in the United States as of Dec. 30, 1998. The government cited an estimated 6,500 deaths in Honduras and up to 1.5-million people made homeless or displaced. In Nicaragua's case, 3,800 died.

On Feb. 13, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft granted TPS for 290,000 Salvadorans after two earthquakes killed 1,259 people and left at least 1.3-million homeless or displaced.

The report noted 3,000 reported deaths and an estimated 300,000 homeless in Haiti after Tropical Storm Jeanne hit the port city of Gonaives in September. It said the storm's impact "was made worse by the cumulative effect of prior crises," which "have exacerbated the conditions of extreme poverty in Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere."

The Gonaives flood came on top of scores of deaths during an armed rebellion in February and a flood in May that killed 1,191, with another 1,400 reported missing.

Only last week the Department of Homeland Security granted an 18-month TPS extension for Hondurans and Nicaraguans. The department said there continued to be "a substantial, but temporary, disruption in living conditions due to the devastation from Hurricane Mitch."

Of 82,828 homes destroyed or damaged by Mitch in Honduras, it said only 42,768 have been rebuilt. Power and water supplies were still recovering.

Salvadorans also won an extension last year. "Although El Salvador has made progress in its post earthquake reconstruction effort, much work remains," the department ruled. Only one-third of 170,000 homes destroyed had been rebuilt. New schools and health centers were awaiting construction.

"Returning Salvadorans would tax an already overburdened infrastructure that is currently incapable of providing for them at home," the ruling stated.

Bad as things are in El Salvador, Haitian-Americans grumble that they pale in comparison to Haiti. Two-thirds of Haiti's 8-million inhabitants live in poverty, according to international agencies. Electricity and running water are scarce, at best, in rural areas.

Whether to grant TPS is a matter of government discretion. It is granted only to people from a country suffering "extraordinary and temporary conditions," due to either armed conflict or environmental disaster.

Critics of TPS say it has too often become a door to permanent residency.

"It is used primarily for persons who are in the U.S. illegally and have no intention of returning to their homeland when conditions change there," said Jack Martin, a director at the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform.

During the Central American civil wars in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people were granted TPS. By the time the wars were over they had been in the United States such a long time, they were granted full residency.

U.S. officials say that though Haitians have a strong case, Jeanne affected only a limited area of the country. The impact of Mitch and the earthquake in El Salvador engulfed almost the entire country.

"They are just finding excuses and more excuses," said Lucie Tondreau, a Haitian-American activist. "They just don't want to do the right thing."

Local activists also dismiss fears of more boat people.

"The Coast Guard has barricaded the island," Tondreau said. "No one can get out."

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

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J.P. Slavin
New York
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