Advocates for Haitian Immigrants Press for Temporary Relief From Deportation - NYTimes.com
May 28, 2009
By KIRK SEMPLE
For Danie, who moved from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to the United States in 2001 to live with her grandparents, there has never been a good time to go home.
Haiti, which has stumbled from grave political unrest to catastrophic natural disasters, remains one of the world’s poorest nations. So although Danie, 22, is an illegal immigrant, she has decided to stay in New York City. She lives in Cambria Heights, Queens, and is about to graduate from college with a degree in education. She hopes to become an elementary school teacher, but fears that her lack of a Social Security number will leave her few options beyond doing menial labor in an underground economy.
The desperation of Haitians was underscored this month when at least nine people drowned after their boat — crowded mostly with people fleeing Haiti — sank off the Florida coast.
“Things are easier here,” Danie said, speaking on condition that she not be identified by her full name because she feared detection. “There’s more security, people find food easier, you have money, somewhere to stay.”
But Haitians in New York — the city with the largest population of Haitian descent outside Port-au-Prince — are hopeful about a proposal under consideration by the Obama administration that would provide relief for her and tens of thousands of other illegal Haitian immigrants.
After four hurricanes and tropical storms in 2008 killed hundreds of people, wiped out most of Haiti’s food crops and caused nearly a billion dollars in damage, the country’s government asked the United States to grant undocumented Haitian immigrants what is known as temporary protected status. The designation would shield them from detention and deportation for a set period of time, and allow them to work legally, while Haiti tries to recover.
Such relief has occasionally been granted to immigrants who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict or environmental disasters. It is currently in effect for people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan.
Supporters of temporary protected status for Haitians say that Haiti is in no condition to absorb tens of thousands of deportees, and that its recovery may depend, at least in part, on a continuing flow of remittances sent home by illegal Haitian immigrants in the United States. Those remittances totaled $1.87 billion last year, according to estimates by the Inter-American Development Bank.
The Bush administration denied Haiti’s request in December. In February, the Obama administration, in a letter from the Department of Homeland Security to immigration advocates in Miami, said it would continue to deport Haitians. And anti-immigration lobbying groups have vowed to oppose any change in the policy.
But immigrant advocates and the Haitian diaspora’s civic leadership have continued to apply pressure on the administration and pore over the tea leaves of rumors and leaks for indications of a policy shift.
They say that in recent weeks, they have drawn hope from a number of developments. In April, on the eve of a trip to Haiti, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the administration was reviewing its deportation policy for Haitians. During the trip, she also spoke about the importance of remittances to Haiti.
Haitian advocates in New York say they have heard that the government has been detaining and deporting only those with criminal records, rather than those accused solely of immigration violations.
Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the government would continue to detain and deport Haitians who violate immigration laws but that under a recently executed agreement with the Haitian government, the American immigration authorities were focusing on those with criminal records.
“Our priority — and we’ve clearly articulated it — is removing those who are criminal aliens and have final orders of removal,” she said.
Ricot Dupuy, the manager of Radio Soleil, a Creole-language station with storefront offices on Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, said that suggestions of changing sentiment in Washington seemed to have calmed Haitians in New York.
“It’s kind of quieted down because of the belief that with Obama, they stand a better chance,” said Mr. Dupuy, who is the host of a nightly radio program of news analysis and social commentary.
In interviews, about two dozen Haitians and Haitian-Americans in Brooklyn and Queens said that if the Obama administration accelerated deportations, it would tear apart their community, splinter families and add a crushing burden on their homeland.
“Haiti cannot take another burden,” said Mathieu Eugene, a Haitian-American member of the City Council who represents Flatbush and other Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Haitian populations. Last month, the Council unanimously approved a resolution he sponsored in support of protected status for Haitians.
One recent morning at La Baguette Shop, a Haitian bakery in Cambria Heights that sells baked goods with a French influence, like pain au chocolat, the owners and several customers discussed the state of affairs in Haiti and the effects of deportation.
Katie Richard, a home health care aide in her 40s who emigrated from Haiti, said she was particularly concerned about young Haitians who were brought to the United States as small children, raised as Americans and were now being deported to a country they did not know.
“He doesn’t know anybody — he doesn’t have any family,” she said. “It’s bad for them. It’s bad for us, too.”
Advocates for Haitian immigrants say that if the Obama administration approves protected status, the measure would most likely apply only to Haitians who were in the United States before the inauguration. But some opponents of temporary protection fear that it would encourage more Haitians to make perilous sea crossings in hopes of being grandfathered in.
Others complain that while temporary protections for immigrants can sometimes be justified, the government has been too liberal in extending the time frames. Temporary protected status “should be used just to stop the flow back home for a relatively short period of time until a country gets back somewhat to where normal was before the emergency,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a public policy group that seeks to reduce immigration.
While no one knows exactly how many Haitians would be eligible for protected status, Ms. Gonzalez, the immigration spokeswoman, said about 30,000 in the United States have exhausted their legal options and face final court-issued deportation orders. Many more are still in litigation or have not yet come to the attention of the authorities, officials say.
Haiti’s long history of hardship has made its citizens realists. Many in New York made it clear that in spite of the hopeful signs for protected status, they were not holding their breath. And those here illegally said that regardless of the outcome, they still planned to press forward with their lives in the United States.
“They stay until they catch them and send them back,” said one illegal Haitian immigrant in Cambria Heights, a day laborer and father of two, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Then he considered one positive side of being deported. “If they catch you, they buy a ticket for you!” he said. His laughter was that of a man who knew he was at least free to make fun of his own situation.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment