12111: Haitian family gets asylum (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

THe Australian
Haitian family gets asylum
By Sophie Morris
20 May 2002

A SMALL group of asylum-seekers from Haiti held by the US has been accepted
by the Howard Government as refugees.


Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock confirmed that Australia agreed to take
a family of five Haitians but denied it was part of a refugee swap deal with
the US.

Australia had agreed to grant the group refugee status but this was not an
"Iraqis for Haitians" deal, a spokesman for Mr Ruddock said.

However, the Howard Government had approached the US and other countries to
ask them to accept more of the Middle-Eastern refugees held by Australia in
camps in the Pacific.

"Burden sharing is a long-established aspect of the refugee system and while
Australia will do its part in other regions of the world, it also expects
other countries to share the burden in our region," he said.

The Weekend Australian reported that the Howard Government had agreed to
accept an increasing number of Haitians and Cubans who had tried to settle
in the US in exchange for the US accepting asylum-seekers waiting offshore
as part of the Pacific solution.

Haitian and Cuban asylum-seekers intent on making it to the US are kept in
camps in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or in Puerto Rico, just as approximately
1450 asylum-seekers detained under Australia's Pacific solution wait on
Nauru and PNG's Manus Island


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