No Time for Moral Complacency--March 10, 2022
ukraine and haitian refugees
The world is focused on Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine. And it should be.
War crimes are occurring. A Ukrainian maternity hospital was recently destroyed (and three people killed) and civilian neighborhoods are bombed. Two million refugees have fled the country at this point..with many more to follow.
The New York Times—
Ukraine Presents a Moral Crisis, Not Just a Military One
Feb. 28, 2022—
Guest Essay by David Miliband—
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the military balance of power in Europe is up for grabs. The moral balance is also at stake. The West needs to show that it can live up to its values — as well as defend itself.
Vladimir Putin’s willingness to challenge international norms means Ukraine’s 44 million citizens are living in fear for their lives and their futures. All possible outcomes involve sacrifice and suffering on a huge scale.
As I read this article I was thinking that Haitians have been living in fear for their lives and their futures for years. And for the past couple of years, tens of thousands of people are internally displaced in Haiti—unable to live in their homes due to warring gangs.
For decades Haitians have fled their borders, too. And just several days ago Haitians were floating up on Florida’s shores after their unseaworthy boat, captained by smugglers, capsized.
According to Aljazeera—
7 Mar 2022
A wooden boat carrying hundreds of Haitian migrants capsized in shallow water off the coast of the US state of Florida, officials said, and many needed medical attention.
The United States Coast Guard and other agencies rushed on Sunday to help the group of migrants, which included women and children. Border Patrol officials said human smuggling is suspected and an investigation is ongoing.
Approximately 300 migrants were aboard the boat, Border Protection Chief Patrol Agent Walter N Slosar said, and 163 people swam to the shore. Many of the migrants, he said, were in need of medical attention. Coast guard images showed the boat tilted on its side and a large group of Haitians draped in towels on the shore.
But the US continues to expel the majority of migrants – including Haitians – under a coronavirus pandemic rule that allows border officials to quickly turn back migrants to their country of origin, or to Mexico, without processing their asylum claims.
In September last year, some 15,000 Haitian migrants gathered in south Texas hoping to claim asylum. But US authorities cleared out the makeshift camp and sent the vast majority back to Haiti aboard deportation flights.
Miliband continues—
First, Ukrainians fleeing for their lives need sanctuary, security and stability. The E.U.’s executive arm will ask member nations to grant Ukrainians temporary asylum, for up to three years. Britain is granting visa concessions only for British nationals’ close relatives in Ukraine. That’s not good enough.
All Western nations, not just those in the E.U., should open their borders to Ukrainians and ensure that they find safety and stability after escaping the chaos of war. That means fully-fledged refugee status, with the rights to work and receive state services.
Just think if we read the same about Haitians who are fleeing Haiti. Just think if we read that Haitians should be accepted by other nations as they run from violence, starvation, lack of medical care, lack of education, lack of jobs, and very bleak futures.
The world is facing a moral crisis in Ukraine. But there is a long-standing moral crisis in Haiti that needs to be acknowledged and responded to accordingly.
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org
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The Poles are opening up their homes to the Ukrainians. Should we be opening our homes to Haitian refugees? Why not?
And Ukrainian refugees are coming to our southern border now. Will they be admitted more often than Haitians to state their case?
Please see this article—Why Ukraine and not Haiti?
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Exclusive: Two Black Caucus members call on DHS to stop expulsions to Haiti
BY RAFAEL BERNAL - 03/16/22 02:11 PM EDT 329
© Greg Nash
Two members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Tuesday called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to immediately stop expulsions to Haiti.
In a letter obtained by The Hill, Reps. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) summed up their demand to Mayorkas and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky succinctly:
"We write with a request as simple as it is urgent: Stop deporting and expelling people to Haiti. Now."
The Biden administration has expelled more than 20,000 Haitians in 208 flights as of Tuesday, in most cases denying the Haitians a right to claim asylum in the United States.
At the center of Haitian expulsions is a Trump-era border management policy known as Title 42, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to quickly expel foreign nationals apprehended by U.S. border authorities under the auspices of pandemic sanitary protections regulated by the CDC.
The Biden administration is close to repatriating more Haitians than the last three presidents combined, noted Jones and Pressley.
"Two-thirds of those people have been forcibly flown there after being expelled under Title 42—in clear violation of their legal and fundamental human right to seek asylum here," they wrote.
The Biden administration's decision to continue implementing Title 42, even as it draws down pandemic restrictions on the general population, has been a constant source of criticism from immigrant advocates.
But the disproportionate effect the policy has had on Haitian migrants, a majority of whom are Black, has raised questions of racial double standards in immigration enforcement.
"Recently, on March 3, Immigration and Customs Enforcement suspended deportation flights to Ukraine in response to the 'ongoing humanitarian crisis' there — a justified and important exercise of your enforcement discretion. There is every reason to extend that same level of compassion and exercise that same discretion to suspend deportations to Haiti — and, in light of your own findings about the ongoing humanitarian crisis there, no excuse not to," wrote Jones and Pressley.
And the Biden administration faces a unique challenge in Haiti, a Western Hemisphere country undergoing a deep political and humanitarian crisis.
The Biden administration recognized the gravity of the situation in Haiti last fall, listing the country under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that defers deportations or expulsions to a country undergoing man-made or natural disasters.
While that designation spared Haitians in the United States before the July cutoff date from repatriation, Haitians who arrived later are not eligible for TPS protections.
"This Administration cannot have it both ways. It cannot be that Haiti is in so deep a humanitarian crisis that people who have fled Haiti are entitled to Temporary Protected Status, but also that Haiti is safe enough that you can deport and expel people there by the tens of thousands," wrote the legislators.
The administration's expulsions increased significantly after the September crisis in Del Rio, Texas, when nearly 15,000 Haitians crossed the Rio Grande and briefly camped under a highway bridge in the United States.
A majority of those migrants, and Haitians who have subsequently arrived, have been returned to Haiti under the auspices of Title 42, preventing them from claiming asylum.
Mayorkas and other officials have defended the policy as a sanitary necessity given the coronavirus pandemic, but that argument has fallen flat as the pandemic's effects have waned.
"There is no reason to believe Title 42 expulsions actually protect anyone’s health. In fact, leading public health experts, including former CDC officials, have condemned the use of Title 42 as 'scientifically baseless and politically motivated,'" wrote Jones and Pressley.
And court cases have further muddied the rationale behind the measure, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled "it’s far from clear that the CDC’s order serves any [public health] purpose," while a Texas federal judge ruled the administration cannot implement an exception for minors and families it had previously announced.
Jones and Pressley joined advocates in calling for the end of Title 42, but also called for a moratorium on repatriations to Haiti specifically, a measure that the United States took after an earthquake in the country during the Obama administration.
"As Representatives for some of the most vibrant Haitian and Haitian-American communities in the country, we know that our constituents deserve so much better than these deportations," wrote Jones and Pressley.
"While more than 20,000 people have already been deported or expelled, it is not too late to protect the thousands more who call our communities home. And it is never too late to do right by those who have already been wronged by welcoming them back home," they added.
HAITI NEEDS OUR HELP—THE GREATNESS OF A SOCIETY IS BEST MEASURED BY HOW IT TREATS ITS LESS FORTUNATE NEIGHBOR
July 17, 1994
Peoria Journal Star, The (IL)
by John A. Carroll
News from the island nation of Haiti continues to dominate the front pages of the newspapers and television broadcasts. We are inundated with the faces of boat people attempting to escape, and we catch glimpses of the Haitian military who ruthlessly maintain the status quo. Should we really care about Haiti's problems considering all of our own? What should be done? During the last 12 years, I have had the opportunity to travel to Haiti multiple times to work in hospitals and clinics located in the capital city of Port-au-Prince and in the countryside. The people's buoyant spirits and eternal optimism in the face of tremendous hardships compel me to return.
Since the coup d'etat in September of 1991, Haiti is a police state run by fear. Repression and violence are institutionalized here. Nighttime is particularly haunting, with the piercing sounds of automatic gunfire echoing through the capital. Bodies littering the streets at dawn are a common sight.
Freedom of speech and assembly are nonexistent for anyone questioning the military junta. Right-wing paramilitary groups wage a campaign of terror directed at the poor because it is these very people who have the strongest resolve to see their democratically elected president returned to Haiti. When these hardships are combined with the fuel and economic embargo levied against Haiti, a nation that was once poor and stumbling is now barely crawling.
Environmental conditions are abysmal. The mountains have been deforested as a source of fuel and the soil has eroded. Daily existence is geared primarily for survival; nature is viewed strictly from a utilitarian perspective. To see a bird is a rarity; most have been eaten.
Because of the infrastructure collapse in Port-au-Prince, hundreds of tons of garbage accumulate each day in mountain-like heaps in the streets. Raw sewage flows down the same streets and into the ocean. In this city of 2 million, the stench, heat, flies, and general chaos make for squalid living conditions.
Lack of potable water breeds much illness, such as intestinal parasites and typhoid fever, which cause severe dysentery and dehydration. This, combined with malnutrition, naturally attacks the weakest members of a population -- its children. A recent study conducted by researchers from the United States concluded that 5,000 Haitian children under the age of 5 die each month. These silent deaths in our own back yard do not make the nightly news, but do directly reflect the severe conditions that exist in Haiti today. This should be a huge source of embarrassment for the entire world. Dirty water, malnutrition and poverty to such a degree are all preventable in this day and age if we just cared enough.
The Haitian medical system is broken and floundering also. In this country of 7 million people, overcrowded hospitals have little fuel to power generators for electricity, and basic medical supplies and medicines are pathetically scarce. Paramilitary groups roam menacingly close to hospitals and treatment centers with their automatic weapons, intimidating hospital employees. The valiant and persistent efforts of the Haitian medical community are just not enough at this point.
In recent times the United States and the Organization of American States have levied an economic and fuel embargo against Haiti. The idea behind the embargo was to create so much misery for the poor and bourgeois that it would hopefully cause these people to rise up and pressure key members of the Haitian military and the elite to resign. However, the embargo had been so porous that until now it has been ineffectual in affecting the displacement of the military. The elite and the military control the drug trade on its way from South America to the United States and also the black-market gasoline that streams in from the bordering Dominican Republic. The embargo has been diluted in favor of the oppressors and misrepresented as too cruel a burden for the poor to bear.
The United States' position regarding repatriation of the Haitian boat people has been ambiguous at best. I have known many Haitians living underground in Port-au-Prince, many of whom are open supporters of the deposed Haitian president. Their efforts to obtain asylum in the United States are usually unsuccessful. In Peoria are several young Haitian men who, through their own immense courage, escaped in wooden boats and eventually made their way here. These men are political refugees and should be treated as such, as are thousands of other Haitians who have been interdicted at sea and returned to Haiti to an uncertain fate.
As recently as May 8, President Clinton himself commented that "the repression and bloodshed in Haiti have reached alarming new proportions" and described Haiti's government as "brutal. " Yet he continues to preside over a refugee policy which blatantly discriminates against Haitians. (Why are not thousands of Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Jewish and Christian immigrants from the Soviet Union forcibly repatriated?) The entire concept regarding Haitian refugees would become inconsequential if there were any quality of life for them in Haiti. The debate about "political vs. economic refugees"' would disappear if Haiti offered these people anything. Americans would not have to worry about yet another poor group of people coming to our shores for help. Many prominent Haitians who live in the United States now would likely return to Haiti to offer their skills in rebuilding their decimated country.
So what is to be done? I have asked this question of many Haitians, and they almost unanimously look me in the eye and say the same thing: "If your president really wanted to restore democracy in Haiti, he would do it today. " (It is common knowledge that the CIA ran the disinformation campaign against the deposed Haitian president.) This is a very humbling experience for me, realizing that I come from a country that is so beautiful, powerful and rich, yet inextricably linked to the Haitian misery that is unfolding daily. The concept of "global village" is alive and well here.
Yet as long as the lives of U.S. citizens living in Haiti are not in imminent danger, I do not believe the United States should invade Haiti. The Haitian Constitution already in place should be allowed to function, and Haiti's autonomy as an independent nation should be respected.
However, I do feel that the United States needs to do the following:
The economic and fuel embargo already in place needs to be strictly enforced. The border of the Dominican Republic must be sealed to stop the flow of gasoline to the Haitian military and elite. Travel visas for Haitians should continue under suspension and their assets and foreign bank accounts continue to be made inaccessible. Also, the drug traffic entering Haiti needs to be stopped before the Haitian military can profit even more from this illegal commerce. We should immediately end the degrading debacle of interdiction and forceable repatriation of Haitians attempting to escape a lifetime of poverty and oppression. The senseless and discriminatory classification of political vs. economic refugees needs to be abandoned. International principles of refugee protection should be followed. Support for other Caribbean basin nations should continue as they become sites for processing and relocation of Haitian refugees.
We should clearly state our opposition to any amnesty that would prevent the Haitian military from being held accountable for their human rights violations. The existing de facto government must not be recognized on any level as legitimate.
The United States should support the return and full deployment of the United Nations/Organization of American States international civilian mission in Haiti. This mission was instrumental in documenting human rights abuses before being driven out by the military.
The greatness of a society is best measured by how it treats its less fortunate neighbors. It is our moral imperative to help Haiti now. I am convinced that the proud Haitian people do not want charity but do demand justice. The power of darkness in Haiti can no longer be ignored or underestimated. And for me, I can no longer hide behind the German phrase after World War II: "Ich hatte keine ahnung"' (I had no idea).
John Carroll is a physician working in the emergency department at Saint Francis Medical Center. He most recently was in Haiti in February.
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April 20, 2022
New York Times—
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/opinion/biden-immigration-border.html
The White House has also been accused of carrying out its immigration policies in a racially discriminatory manner. It received wide condemnation last year when images surfaced of mounted border patrol agents rounding up Haitians fleeing political violence for deportation under Title 42. By contrast, the United States will welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, whom border patrol agents were directed to consider exempting from Title 42.
“President Biden’s decision to welcome Ukrainian refugees seeking safety in the United States is the right thing to do,” said Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California, Hastings. But, she added, “There is no way to look at what’s happening at the southern border other than along racial lines.”
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