Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti

By Belen Fernandez

Haiti's brutal paramilitary campaigns received scant media coverage, while "political violence" was decried at length.

The Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti was instrumental in the 2004 coup d'état that deposed Aristide [EPA]

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, certain media outlets painted a picture of a country overrun by looters and at the mercy of gang members and other criminals, including thousands of prisoners jolted free by the quake.

Relevant details were ignored, such as the contention by prominent Haitian human rights attorney Mario Joseph that 80 per cent of said prisoners had never been charged.  The media effort perhaps aided in rendering less incongruous in the eyes of the international public the deployment of a sizeable US military force to deal with quake-affected people who did not seemingly require military attention.

A Reuters dispatch from one week after the disaster - which reported "marauding looters", "scavengers and looters swarm[ing] over damaged stores", "increasingly lawless streets" and "[h]eavily armed gang members" - offered the following plea from policeman Dorsainvil Robenson: 

"Haiti needs help ... the Americans are welcome here.  But where are they?  We need them here on the street with us."

The whereabouts of the ever-elusive Americans are of course hinted at two paragraphs later, when we learn that "the White House said more than 11,000 US military personnel are on the ground, on ships offshore or en route".  Elsewhere, French Co-operation Minister Alain Joyandet was quoted as commenting in reference to seemingly skewed US priorities: "This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti".  As foreign military monopolised the Port-au-Prince airport, teams of paramedics and first responders were delayed in the critical hours immediately following the earthquake.  

Subscribers to the fantasy that the US is somehow qualified to counteract violence and install order in the Caribbean nation would do well to peruse a new book entitled Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti, in which author Jeb Sprague masterfully documents - among other topics - the detrimental role of US and fellow international actors in Haitian history.

Offering new evidence obtained through interviews and a massive amount of formerly classified US government documents, the book clarifies how Haiti's post-quake reconstruction rests on a foundation of total impunity achieved by the country's most brutal paramilitaries and their financiers. 

Legacy of violence 

As Sprague notes, the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 under "the pretext of possible German encroachment during the First World War… caused the deaths of an estimated 15,000 Haitians and saw the imposition of slave labour".  It also imposed "a modern army, one that would continue the US occupation long after US troops were gone", functioning on behalf of the Haitian elite and their American counterparts. Observes Sprague: "The US occupation wedded the country’s future to North American business interests."
 

Later, during the reign of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in the 1960s, US Marines trained the dictator’s Tonton Macoutes paramilitary force, known for "leaving bodies of their victims hanging in public, a clear warning to anyone stepping out of line, most especially leftists, socialists and pro-democracy activists".  Linked to the business elite and the military itself, the Macoutes were "vital for upholding a system based on severe inequality and class privilege". 

Following the transfer of power to Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, a brutal counter-insurgency force known as the Leopards was trained and equipped "by former US marine instructors who were working through a company (Aerotrade, Inc and Aerotrade International, Inc) under contract with the CIA and signed off by the US Department of State". 

Prior to becoming Haiti's first democratically elected president in early 1991, the young liberation theologian, Jean-Bertrand Aristide "denounced the historic role of the United States in founding, arming and training Haiti's military, which had been responsible for so much of the violence in Haitian history".

Sprague quotes Aristide: "They [the United States] set up the Haitian Army, they trained it to work against the people".  Indeed, it would be difficult to argue that the army was working for the people by massacring citizens attempting to vote in 1987, or by overthrowing the newly elected Aristide in September 1991 and slaughtering his supporters. 

Aristide's coup-inducing crimes included inviting street children and homeless persons to breakfast at the National Palace and endeavouring to raise the daily minimum wage from $1.76 to $2.94.  As Joanne Landy wrote in the New York Times in 1994, the latter effort was "vigorously opposed by the US Agency for International Development because of the threat such an increase would pose to the 'business climate', particularly to American companies paying rock-bottom wages to workers in Haiti". 

Aside from USAID, another relevant euphemism from the coup period was the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a paramilitary organisation intimately linked to the Haitian military that assumed the task of terrorising the non-elite masses under the military junta. "Internal US government documents reveal that FRAPH was founded in part at the behest of the US Defence Intelligence Agency," Sprague notes. 

Recycling brutality 

After years of brutality and corruption, the military dictatorship faced growing resistance at home and abroad.  Aristide was thus reinserted in his lawful post in 1994 in exchange for, inter alia, committing to be more attentive to the needs of the US agriculture industry and drastically slashing tariffs on imported rice. 

Upon reinstatement, he logically moved - with overwhelming public support - to disband the armed forces and the section chiefs (the hated rural constabulary).  His government, and the elected governments that followed him, also gathered testimonials from thousands of victims of paramilitary violence and undertook judicial proceedings to prosecute military and paramilitary criminals. 

However, as researcher Eirin Mobekk has critically pointed out and Sprague has underscored, "only the army as an institution was dissolved… In a country where the army had run political life for decades it was an illusion to think that its networks would disappear with the removal of uniforms and the use of its buildings for other purposes".

US contributions to the dissolution of the army included maneouvering to insert allied Haitian ex-military officials into what was supposed to be a civilian police force and eliminating officers seen as overly loyal to Aristide or less than enthusiastic about the coup.  Some Haitian police officers were trained in the United States, where they were susceptible to overtures by the CIA, which also funded various FRAPH leaders and other paramilitaries. 

Given the high level of impunity enjoyed by military and paramilitary members who had committed atrocities - not to mention US insistence on a full amnesty for the coup perpetrators - it is somewhat less than astonishing that Aristide's re-election in 2000 also culminated in a coup d'état.  Instrumental in the overthrow was the Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti (FLRN), which as Sprague explains was "led by renegade police officials who were from among the same ex-FAd'H [Haitian Armed Forces] pushed into the country’s new security force by the United States in the late 1990s". 

Backed by some wealthy Haitians, neo-Duvalierists, sweatshop owners, and government and army officials from the neighbouring Dominican Republic (who didn't want Aristide's anti-military, pro-human rights rhetoric rubbing off on their own citizenry), the FLRN staged incursions into Haiti from Dominican territory with the ultimate goal of forcing the re-establishment of the Haitian army.

Of course, the sign of any good army is its ability to safeguard the domestic population, and these incursions provided the FLRN with an opportunity to showcase its skills - which it did by massacring and assaulting supporters of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, often with sickening tactics. Citing formerly classified US embassy cables, Sprague uncovers how a small but powerful fifth column within the government was also working to undermine Aristide. 

According to Sprague, it is likely that French and US intelligence facilitated the paramilitary insurgency in some way, while "the International Republican Institute (an organisation funded by the US government that promotes 'democratisation programmes' around the world) provided a forum through which the [Haitian] political opposition strengthened its ties with the paramilitaries".

As journalist Max Blumenthal has documented, the IRI benefitted in its underhanded dealings from the diplomacy of Roger Noriega, an Iran-Contra-era figure recycled into the Bush II administration along with his Cold War Manichean fantasies according to which Aristide and anyone else with less than extreme right-wing political convictions is a communist demon.  

Sprague aptly comments that US' "knowledge that [sectors of] Haiti's 'business community' [were] strongly backing paramilitary terror underscores the cynicism of Washington’s constant demands that Aristide seek 'compromise' with his 'peaceful opponents'".  In the end, the compromise consisted of Aristide's removal on a US military plane to the Central African Republic in 2004 and the installation of Gerard Latortue as head of state.  The ensuing peace is recalled by historian Greg Grandin: 

"During Latortue's brief stint in office, 2004 - 2006, Haiti experienced some 4,000 political murders, according to The Lancet - while hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas members, Aristide supporters, and social movement leaders were locked up - usually on bogus charges. Latortue's friends in Washington looked the other way." 

Sprague, meanwhile, observes that "Bill Clinton's [former] policy of inserting a handful of ex-FAd’H criminals into Haiti's police force… was now put on steroids" and that "in 2004 -5 the United States and the UN oversaw the recycling of 400 ex-army paramilitaries into a revamped police force" - paving the way for yet more repetitions of history. 

Media coups 

Why is it that Haiti's brutal paramilitary campaigns received scant international press attention while quantitatively and qualitatively inferior political violence by a small number of Fanmi Lavalas supporters (which occurred in the context of clashes with the opposition) was decried at length? 

Obviously, media coverage is shaped by geopolitical and financial interests, with the terms of events defined by the powerful.  This is how, for example, terrorism conducted by the US and Israel becomes "counter-terrorism", "self-defence" and "democracy promotion" in the Western mainstream media. 

Sprague documents how, in the case of Haiti, the press in the US, France, Canada and other locales undertook to demonise Aristide and rebrand the violent and unpopular uprising against him as non-violent and popular. As US-trained FLRN commander Guy Philippe remarked to journalist Isabel McDonald following the coup: "[The] international media, the media leaders helped us a lot.  And thanks to them we were able to overthrow the dictator.  And without them I don't think that we could have".  

"Obviously, media coverage is shaped by geopolitical and financial interests, with the terms of events defined by the powerful."

In an essay for the London Review of Books, Paul Farmer describes how Aristide was made the scapegoat for crimes committed by the very people who overthrew him.  Summarising Philippe's pre-coup history, which involved reincarnation as a police chief following the demobilisation of the military, Farmer writes: 

"During his tenure, the UN International Civilian Mission learned, dozens of suspected gang members were summarily executed, most of them by police under the command of Philippe's deputy. The US embassy has also implicated Philippe in drug smuggling during his police career.  Crimes committed in large part by ex-military policemen are often pinned on Aristide, even though he sought to prevent coup-happy human rights abusers from ending up in these posts." 

Farmer also noted that "Philippe has been quoted as saying that the man he most admires is Pinochet".  The bloody legacy of the Chilean dictator offers a reminder of how helpful US-backed coups and violence can be when it comes to introducing neoliberal reforms. 

After the second overthrow of Aristide, Sprague writes, the temporary regime set about "securing [Haiti] as a platform through which global capital could flow freely", in accordance with instructions from the IMF and other interested parties: 

"The interim government laid off between eight and ten thousand civil sector workers, many from the poorest slums of Port-au-Prince. Other programmes under the Aristide government, such as subsidised rice for the poor, literacy centres and water supply projects, came to a halt following the coup d'état." 

The long-fantasised-about mass privatisation of Haitian state assets, however, appeared more difficult to pull off - until, that is, the country was shattered by the 2010 earthquake and control over Haiti's energy, water and other sectors was divvied up between international players like the World Bank and USAID. The 2011 debut of singer-turned-head of state Michel Martelly, elected with the support of a mere 16.7 per cent of the electorate and described by former Financial Times journalist Matt Kennard as a "shock president" prepared to enforce economic shock therapy, seems to have set the stage for the conversion of Haiti into a neoliberal fairytale kingdom. 

It is fitting that Martelly, whose presidential objectives include a resurrection of the Haitian armed forces rather than the pursuit of projects benefitting the majority of the nation's citizens, is himself a longtime close associate of Duvalier's paramilitary Tonton Macoutes.  

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in 2011. She is a member of the Jacobian Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the  London Review of Books blog, AlterNet and many other publications.

04 October, 2012

Source:

Al Jazeera

Haiti needs a democratic revolution not an election!

By Jean H Charles:

“After Rwanda and Yugoslavia, Haiti seems to be the next theater of a major mischief by some international institutions.”

I must state at the outset that I am not advocating nor promoting neither a violent nor an armed revolution.  I am talking about a democratic revolution in the minds and the spirit of the people, a revamping of the institutions and a new covenant of the government to usher in a true process of democracy.  Once this revolution is on the way, Haiti can then proceed with a free and fair election.

The country needs a hiatus of three to five years of reconstruction, free of politicking, to heal the nation and set the country on the road of reconciliation and nation building.  The present regime can be compared to a piece of wood filled with termites in a piece of furniture.  To repair the furniture one needs to cut and throw away the damaged wood before affixing a new piece.  Otherwise the damage part will eventually infect the entire furniture, including the new piece.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville who coined the concept of democratic revolution, while speaking of the birth of the United States.   Akin to South Africa before Mandela, Haiti must transform itself from a de facto apartheid country to a state where the sense of appurtenance is the rule.  It needs now a democratic revolution not an election.

I have this week visited a rural community named Mazere on the road from Grand River to Bahon.  I have in mind these pictures that depict the extent of the misery, the magnitude of the squalid conditions as well as the inequality that 85% of the population of Haiti is forced to live under.

The public school, the only state presence of the area is located across the river. There is no bridge for easy access.  I asked the kids how they get to school, one of the mothers interjected to let me know they carry the younger ones across the river, which sometimes destroys everything in its way, including an irrigation dam recently built.

Inquiring further with the adults, I asked them what their most pressing needs are.   They told me that the government used to protect the land with rock formation on the hills to prevent avalanches during the rainy season.  This operation has not been done for the past decades.  We have now huge amount of water sitting for months in the fields destroying our produce.

It has been decades that the Haitian government has been a predatory entity preying on its people instead of providing services and support to help its citizens to enjoy the pursuit of happiness.

As such the people of Haiti educated or otherwise are waiting for the Blanc (the white man) to bring about deliverance.  On the political scene, the question is not what is the agenda of the candidates, it is rather who has the blessing of Barack Obama for the presidency of Haiti?  The sense of civics patriotism and leadership has been dimished by the last sixty years of corrupt governance.

The entire population is a crowd in transit.  The rural world with no services from the government is in transit towards the small cities.  The small towns have become ghost entities with the citizens in transit towards the larger cities, their citizens are in transit towards the capital and there the dream is to find an American visa or take a leaky boat towards Florida or the Bahamas.

Building up the sense of nation has not been a governmental priority or a United Nations foreign intervention initiative.   MINUSTHA (the UN force) is substituting itself as the Haitian army without assuming the defense of the country. Inequality and injustice is queen, extorting the notion of appurtenance from and for each other.  The sense of noblesse oblige of the past that kept the poor ones afloat has been substituted by the doctrine of “rock in the water against rock in the sun” or class warfare by Aristide.  The Preval regime has introduced the concept of “swim to the shores at your own risk” leaving everyone to fend for themselves... It has left no lifeline of security for the majority of the population which is going into a free fall abyss.

In an article this week in the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles depicted the fetid situation where the Haitian refugees are living under in the Corail camp.  “What was supposed to be the model for a new Haiti looks like the old one, a menacing slum.” Jean Christophe Adrian the United Nations Human Settlements Program added “the international community has a tremendous responsibility for creating this monster.”

Haiti, after Rwanda and Yugoslavia, could be the scene of a major catastrophe orchestrated by a non sensitive government with the connivance of major international institutions.  I was in Washington last June at the OAS mansion at a conference on Haiti organized by CARICOM.   In a conversation with Mr Colin Granderson, the Haiti resident, I shared my intention of running in the next election.   His answer: how much money do you have, instead of what is your vision for Haiti?  Sounds like “how many regiments do you have at your disposal?”

The gang of three -- the UN, the OAS and CARICOM -- in its dealing with Haiti is using according to Emil Vlajky in the wretched of the modernity, the absolute rationality which is anti-human.  The human rationality with its sense of ethics is not in favor.   The poor, the wretched, the refugees of the catastrophe will continue to live with unkept promises.  While the entire country is decrying the upcoming election as a masquerade with the president holding all the marbles, the General Secretary of OAS characterize the process as “credible”.   The Haiti of the Duvalier’s, the Aristide’s and the Preval’s culture is a gangrene that must be extirpated to create a modern nation sensitive to the needs of its people.

Any policy short of this radical intervention is unfriendly to the gallant people of Haiti that deserve a break from a life of abject misery.

September 20, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Disparities in US immigration policy toward Haiti and Cuba: A legacy to be continued?

by Alice Barrett & Kelsey Cary, COHA Research Associates:

Many points of comparison exist between Haiti and Cuba, as Ruth Ellen Wasem contends in a Congressional Research Report: “Both nations have a history of repressive governments with documented human rights violations.  Both countries have a history of sending asylum seekers to the United States by boats.”  In spite of these similarities, several political and economic factors have spurred divergent U.S. directives in these two island nations.

The United States and Cuba have maintained a tenuous relationship since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959.  The Kennedy administration implemented a two-tier policy consisting of an economic embargo paired with diplomatic isolation, both of which continue to dictate U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba today.  Although the U.S. has not sought to diplomatically and economically isolate Haiti in the same manner, relations between the former French colony and the U.S. have been shaped by the protection of national interests and subsequent military intervention.  Haiti has been unable to achieve stability, becoming a headache in the backyard of the U.S. and, consequently, ties between the two states have been tumultuous.  These contrasting histories and foreign policy approaches surpass domestic boundaries, as reflected in current U.S. immigration legislation.  Ironically, the U.S. holds refugees escaping from communist Cuba to more lenient standards than any other foreign nationals.  Migrants facing at least equally urgent circumstances, such as Haitians, suffer the ramifications of our broken policies.  The January 12, 2010 earthquake provides an example of a pressing and devastating event calling for the Obama administration to address the needs of the increasing numbers of refugees fleeing Haiti.

First Steps toward Favorable Status: The Cuban Adjustment Act

Cuba ranks as the fifth largest immigrant-sending country to the United States.  In 2008 alone, 49,500 Cubans became Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs).  The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) is arguably the single most important piece of legislation that initiated a longstanding pattern of preferential treatment of Cuban migrants.  The CAA guarantees that Cubans living in the U.S. after January 1, 1959 for a least one year may adjust to permanent residence status.

Following a 1996 amendment to this statute, the “wet foot/dry foot” practice evolved.  This practice implies that the U.S. Coast Guard interdict Cubans found at sea and return them to Cuba unless they profess fears of persecution.  However, Cubans who effectively reach the shore are inspected for entry by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and are by and large permitted to remain in the U.S. for the year following. Moreover, if a confirmed Cuban national attempts to enter the U.S. by land, usually through Mexico, Customs and Border Protections (CBP) personnel can inspect the would-be intruder and frequently deem them exempt from deportation.  Illegal Haitian migrants do not benefit from any comparable advantages.  If they cannot provide a reason for an asylum hearing upon arrival in the U.S., they are immediately repatriated or detained.

The Cuba-US Migration Agreement

In 1994, the number of Cuban refugees seeking asylum or immigrant visas to the United States became so great that the Clinton administration was persuaded to establish a policy to effectively decrease the amount of money being spent on refugee services and impose a fixed limit.  Consequently, the U.S. and Cuba willingly reached a migration accord in which the U.S. agreed to allow at least twenty thousand immigrants each year to enter the United States, excluding in this count the relatives of U.S. citizens, who would also be eligible to enter.  However, hardly any Cubans met the eligibility standards determined by the INS, meaning only a few qualified for visas as family-sponsored immigrants or as employment-based immigrants.  Additionally, a stronger U.S. interdiction policy forced migrating Cubans found in U.S. waters to be repatriated back to Cuba.  Such attempts, which seemed to hinder Cuban migrants trying to enter via the shores of Florida, ironically resulted in the Special Cuban Migration Lottery, or more simply a “visa lottery.”  According to a 2009 Congressional Research Report, 541,000 Cubans qualified for the drawing in 1998 alone.  The Castro government found this number frighteningly high and subsequently put an end to these lotteries.  However, the United States continues to parole Cuban registrants from 1998.  The number of Cubans who qualified for potential U.S. entry in a single year exceeds the figure of Haitians living in the U.S. today, estimated at 532,000.

Haitian Immigration Policy: An Unaddressed History

Although Haiti has seen some democratic progress since the election of René Preval in 2005, it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  The wide-reaching foreign policy arm of the White House has largely contributed to Haiti’s plight.  A nineteen-year U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 only exacerbated the dire economic and political situation in the country.  Throughout this period, in which U.S. occupying forces continued to abuse their power, between 15,000 and 30,000 Haitian lives were taken.  During its tenure, the U.S. failed to establish democratic traditions, but did find success in strengthening an already powerful institution: the Haitian military. Authoritarian regimes since then have predictably dominated the nation as only two leaders have voluntarily handed over power.  An estimated 40,000 people were jailed, tortured or killed during the twenty-nine years (1957-1986) spanning the rule of Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc) and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”).

U.S. immigration policy towards Haitians originated during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier with an aim of reducing the number of Haitian migrants seeking asylum or immigrant visas to the United States in the aftermath of the 1981 Mariel Boatlift.  The boatlift was a seven-month time period when an influx of 125,000 Cubans and 25,000 Haitians seeking asylum in the United States arrived by boat to the shores of South Florida.  As a result, Ronald Reagan negotiated with then Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier to develop the policy of interdiction, a practice whereby the Coast Guard stops and searches boats on the high seas suspected of transporting undocumented immigrants.  For instance, from 1981 to 1990, 22,940 Haitians were interdicted, yet only 11 of them were even considered qualified to apply for asylum in the United States.  Washington claimed that Haitians seeking asylum in the U.S. during this time period could only be considered economic migrants and were therefore unqualified to remain in the country.  However, this specious conclusion was stood on its head following the Presidential coup in 1991, which overthrew the constitutional Aristide government.

The Aftermath of the 1991 Coup

Jean-Bertrand Aristide had served as an embodiment of hope and prosperity for the poor, but the left-leaning policies he wanted to implement were deeply disturbing to both the Haitian army and elite.  This frustration resulted in a coup that marked a continuation of Haitian military tyranny: Aristide had been the state’s first democratically elected leader and his ousting led to yet another oppressive military regime.  The U.S. and the international community responded to the crisis by imposing an international trade embargo against Haiti, nominally calling for the reinstatement of Aristide.  Additionally, nearly 40,000 Haitians boarded boats and departed for Florida’s shores, forcing the U.S. to re-evaluate the migrant status of Haitians.

The coup in 1991 challenged Washington’s assumption that Haitians were fleeing their country solely for economic reasons and were not eligible for asylum.  The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) stipulates that a refugee can only stay in the U.S. if they “demonstrate a well-founded fear that if returned home, they will be persecuted based upon one of the five characteristics: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Although Haiti’s poverty suggests its citizens might only be seeking U.S. immigrant visas for economic purposes, a 1992 Amnesty International report contradicts this claim. It revealed that since the beginning of the coup, a minimum of 1,500 people had been killed and thousands more had been imprisoned and tortured for merely having a picture of Aristide hanging on the wall.  Yet this created no changes in refugee policy, signaling that in reality, Washington was no more favorably oriented to Aristide than to the Haitian military.

The Bush administration ignored a basic tenant of a treaty on refugees to which Haiti and the U.S. had been parties since 1968.  International refugee law forbids the return of refugees to their country of origin unless adequate assurances have been made that they will not be persecuted.  Nevertheless, in November 1991, the Coast Guard sent home 538 Haitian escapees.  This repatriation occurred in spite of an arrangement made between the U.S., the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) and other countries in the region to provide a safe-haven for these interdicted Haitian migrants.  According to a 2005 Congressional Report, Washington returned these Haitians without interviewing them to determine whether they were at risk of persecution.  In order for the interdicted Haitians to even be considered eligible for asylum, they would have had to attest to being in danger if repatriated.  They were never granted the opportunity to do this, unlike their Cuban counterparts.

The Haiti Earthquake: an Amplification of Inconsistent Policy

The January 12, 2010 earthquake thrust Haitians into devastation: 230,000 died and 1.5 million are still left homeless.  The immediate need for relocation remains evident: the temporary camps constructed for those dislocated on the island are rapidly turning into slums and are extremely vulnerable to approaching hurricanes.  Although the United States’ capacity to accept immigrants has its limits, the continued disproportionate acceptance of Cubans over Haitians in light of Haiti’s latest crisis is unwarranted.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has focused on two short-term immigration solutions for Haitians in need of respite: the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for those residing in the U.S. illegally prior to the earthquake and the limited acceptance of Humanitarian Parole applications.  According to USCIS, Humanitarian Parole visas are to be “used sparingly to bring someone who is otherwise inadmissible into the United States for a temporary period of time due to a compelling emergency.”

Immigrants from Haiti: Visas and Detentions

By the end of last February, 31,000 people, including 7,200 foreign nationals, had been evacuated from Haiti to the United States.  However, as of May, only approximately 1,700 Haitian citizens had received Humanitarian Parole.  A series of restrictive practices stand in contrast to the open arms extended to Cubans, who continue to benefit under the CAA and from a high number of family connections. The U.S. government set the 2010 admissions ceiling for refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean at 5,000. So far, 3,351 out of 3,429 resettled have been Cuban refugees.  Considering the deplorable conditions Haitians currently face, their comparatively low acceptance is disconcerting. Furthermore, it creates a looming gap between evacuation and immigrant reception that tends to be filled through existing loop holes and illegal smuggling networks.  Instead of Humanitarian Parole, the remaining official number of Haitian evacuees have received tourist visas.  The drawback of tourist visas is that they prohibit legal employment in the U.S., likely leading to extended illegal residence and labor. These prospects put tourist visa holders at higher risk of detention.

Furthermore, many Haitians have once again resorted to illegal means of immigration, boarding boats to reach U.S. shores. Some U.S. officials seem to negate the link between such unlawful processes and the government’s limited immigration response.  In January 2010, immediately following the Haiti earthquake, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed, “Our ordinary and regular immigration laws will apply going forward, which means that we are not going to be accepting into the United States Haitians who are attempting to make it to our shores.  They will be interdicted.  They will be repatriated.”  This approach seems simple, but there is one caveat: deportations to Haiti have been at a stand-still ever since the earthquake, and the U.S. government has yet to name a date for their reinstatement.  To make matters worse, U.S. immigration law contains no restrictions on the amount of time that suspected illegal immigrants and asylum seekers may be held in detention.

Though U.S. detention policies have always been in place, they were strengthened following the September 11th terrorist attacks.  On April 17, 2003, the Attorney General ruled that the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) judges should take national security into account when deciding on bonds for detained immigrants demanding release.  The Bush Administration justified this claim on the basis that terrorists could pose as Haitians seeking asylum. Cuban migrants have not been singled out in the same manner and many critics believe the term “national security” is employed too arbitrarily as justification for this practice.  Such ambiguity results in the unnecessary detention of many Haitian migrants without proof of their being a danger to this country. Moreover, prison-like conditions, such as physical restraint, lack of medical attention, and occasional physical and verbal abuse in these centers are not in line with ICE regulations or international human rights standards.

Several Haitian migrants were placed in detention centers following the earthquake.  An April 1, 2010 New York Times article discusses a specific case where thirty Haitians had remained in detention for over two months at the Broward County Transitional Center, an immigration jail in Florida.  Marines directed these detainees onto military planes amid the chaos that erupted following the earthquake.  Advocates who fought for their release contended, “There is no reason to spend taxpayer dollars detaining traumatized earthquake survivors who cannot be deported and who have demonstrated that they are neither a flight risk nor danger to the community.”

TPS: Complications and Concerns

Detention is not a fear limited to would-be emigrating Haitians.  The crackdown of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been felt throughout the country’s immigrant community, preventing many eligible Haitians in the U.S. from applying for TPS. The U.S. government has granted TPS to Haitians in the U.S. until July 22, 2011.  Technically, this option is open to all Haitian nationals who were already in the U.S. prior to the earthquake, regardless of their current immigration status.  As of June 3, 2010, Alejandro Mayorkas, head of USCIS, received 52,000 Haitian TPS applications, lower than the expected number.   Representatives of both University of Miami Law School and the law firm of Hunton and Williams requested that the agency issue a statement assuring Haitians they would not be referred to ICE or asked to appear in court due to their status.  USCIS responded that laws of motions to appear in court (MTA) vary by state, making the issuance of such a statement impractical.

Lawyers also continue to face a number of hurdles in trying to help Haitians file TPS applications. For example, fees ranging from a total of $50 to $390 are difficult for many eligible applicants to provide. Birth certificates of applicants’ parents have also been required to verify Haitian nationality. These documents are often nearly impossible to obtain after the earthquake’s vast destruction. The current deadline for filing TPS applications is July 20, 2010. Due to complaints concerning the application process, the U.S. government is considering an extension of this deadline.

Why Preferential Treatment? Politics and Race

Arguably, Haitians receive a much colder welcome in the United States than Cubans. Cubans who are fleeing their island and breaking with a communist regime are in much better shape and generally considered deserving of asylum. If they reach U.S. territory successfully (either by boat or crossing the Mexican border) they receive refugee status and subsequently become LPRs. Critics argue that Washington rationalizes this immigration policy as serving a long-standing national political interest in accordance with the goals of the Cuban-American Lobby. Some suggest that Cubans’ special status serves as a purported blow against the Castro government.

Another explanation for this discriminatory treatment comes from Haiti’s lower average level of education. This initial disadvantage creates apprehension amongst Americans about Haitians’ ability to support themselves and contribute to U.S. society. Although Cuban immigrants still face some discrimination, they come from a nation with a 99.8% literacy rate and are thus perceived as less of a potential burden. Some critics even contend that preferential treatment bestowed upon Cuban refugees is an example of a double standard on the basis of race. TransAfrica, NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus released an amicus curiae brief designating U.S. interdiction policy as discriminatory and further arguing that Haitians were subject to “separate and unequal” treatment.

The United States cannot continue to justify differences in immigration practices developed toward Haitians and Cubans. While the Cold War clearly ended twenty years ago, the Haiti earthquake has put the country in a state of emergency. Current U.S. policy, however, promotes dangerous travel attempts to enter the U.S. and continues to fuel an unproductive Cold War mentality that is the product of the Cuban-American lobby attempting to garner special treatment for its cause.

Looking Ahead: Environmental Reasons for Concern

Although the USCIS is considering an extension of the July 20th TPS deadline for Haitians, such small modifications emphasize the need for large-scale adjustments.  Both TPS and Humanitarian Parole provided for Haitians are temporary emergency measures, while Cubans benefit from a standardized, annual quota set for refugees fearing persecution.  Not only does the limited scope of these visas continue the U.S.’s long standing bias against Haitian immigrants; it also serves as an example of insufficient responses to natural disasters on a global scale.  Tragic and unfair situations resembling the Haiti earthquake’s aftermath are becoming increasingly common in light of environmental dangers.  In 2005, A United Nations group warned of the increasing number of “environmental refugees” that would soon need relocation around the world due to climate change.  A 2009 article of the World Resources Institute points to the Carteret Islands as the first case of land deemed uninhabitable due to continuous flooding.  Its residents are now relocating to nearby Papua New Guinea.  Factual and scientific evidence points to rising sea levels and increased hurricanes.  These are both migration drivers that transcend political and economic boundaries that have influenced Washington’s biased treatment of Haitians and Cubans.  Further large-scale relocations due to natural disasters must be permanently accounted for in future immigration policy, both in the U.S. and around the world.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, visit www.coha.org

June 29, 2010

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