[Bret L]

U.S.-Haiti Immigration Policy Wins No Friends And Influences No People

By Joe Guzzardi

"In a page out of the "it’s a small world" book, former president Bill Clinton and I have something more in common than our gray hair.

Both of us made our first trip to Haiti about thirty-five years ago.

At the time, Clinton was a young, recently-defeated Arkansas
Congressional candidate traveling with his bride, Hillary.

Remembering Haiti, Clinton said that he became entranced by voodoo
religion and culture. According to Clinton, he watched "with
fascination" a ceremony in which a man rubbed a flaming torch all over
his body without getting burned and a woman biting the head off a live
chicken.

Recalled the budding multiculturalist Clinton: "I've always been
fascinated by the way different cultures try to make sense of life,
nature and the virtually universal belief that there is a nonphysical
spirit force at work in the world that existed before humanity and
will be here when we all are long gone." [Bill Clinton’s Second Chance
in Haiti, by Karen Tumulty, Time.com, May 19, 2009]

In contrast, I came away from Haiti with distinctly less favorable
impression.

As part of a business roundtable investment banking group sent to the
Caribbean Islands to promote commerce, I viewed Haiti from a strictly
practical perspective.

Over a ten day period, our group traveled to Jamaica, Trinidad, the
Dominican Republic and Haiti.

By the time we arrived in Haiti, our last stop, I had developed a
personal game plan. I would go to the meetings, attend the lunches and
tour the islands in the chauffeured car provided by our hosts since I
was certain that they would drive us only to the most beautiful spots.

Otherwise I would stay in our resort hotel. I knew that if I stuck to
its beaches and tennis courts, I’d be fine. Venturing into Port-au-
Prince was, and still is, a step into hell.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, I had seen plenty of poverty in the major
cities and up in the mountains. While I never saw any headless
chickens or watched witchcraft in Puerto Rico, I did see naked
children with distended bellies playing in front of their ramshackle
huts.

Although in the early 1970s I didn’t know anything about federal
immigration policy, when I returned to New York from my island trip, I
understood why Haitians would do anything—even risking their lives on
rickety rafts—to get to America.

Clinton is now the recently-appointed UN Special Envoy to Haiti and
Hillary is the Secretary of State just back from Haiti where she
delivered $300 million in US aid. [Clinton, in Visit to Haiti, Brings
Aid and Promises Support, by Mark Lander, New York Times, April 16,
2009]

And now, decades later, I know plenty about immigration.

What I understand more clearly than either of the two Clintons is that
Haiti is still in the same miserable condition it was when they
observed the voodoo rituals. Since billions in foreign aid over
decades has not helped Haiti one iota, Clinton might as well put a
match to our $300 million.

On the other hand, U.S. immigration policy creates a large part of
Haiti’s instability.

In all the years that have passed since I visited Haiti, three things
related to the island and immigration have happened or, depending on
how you look at it, not happened.

*

Economically, Haiti is in worse shape today than in the 1970s.
*

U.S. immigration policy has done little to discourage illegal
immigration. Nothing underscores federal immigration ineptitude more
than our Haitian (vis-a vis our Cuban) policy.
*

U.S. failure to internally enforce existing immigration law has
encouraged more Haitian illegal aliens to come to the U.S. knowing
that if they get to America, they may be able to avoid deportation

Reviewing the pattern developed over recent decades, the numbers of
Haitian who annually cross the 700-miles to the Florida coast by raft
or unseaworthy sail boats range from several dozen to hundreds. What
the alien navigations never do is abate.

The latest incident occurred in April when a raft carrying twenty-four
people capsized. Twenty died. [Haitian Migrants Drown After Boat
Capsizes Off the Bahamas, by Tosheena Robinson-Blair, Associated
Press, April 22, 2009]

For those who survived, their future is uncertain.

Unlike Cuban migrants who are put on a path to citizenship because of
the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Haitians are not given a free pass.
They can apply for amnesty, a dice roll at best. Or they can sink into
the underground economy where, since the Haitians generally have no
marketable job skills, they can be exploited by the unscrupulous.

Another potential outcome for Haitians: the ever-present prospect of
temporary protected status. Even though Haitians have consistently
been denied TPS, as well as deferred enforced departure which has been
granted to refugees from other Central American and African countries,
their American-based lobbyists always hold out hope.

Good news for the Haitians may soon be forthcoming, however. President
Barack Obama is predictably contemplating making exactly the wrong
move regarding Haitian immigration.

Specifically, as reported in August by our Patrick Cleburne, Obama’s
administration is reconsidering issuing TPS to Haitians. Once the
prospect of any type of amnesty gets floated, illegal immigration is
sure to follow. In the case of Haitians that means more deaths at sea.

In his blog, Cleburne asked the hard question: What is the value added
when Haitians come to the U.S?

In America, unlike Haiti, voodoo isn’t our unofficial national
religion. The culture of crime in Haiti is pervasive, another thing
the U.S. doesn’t need more of.

An interesting side note is that other countries into which Haitians
have migrated eagerly want to deport them. In a Dominican Republic
sweep earlier this month, more than 200 Haitians living illegally in
the country with which they share a border were deported. Other large
groups of aliens escaped when they were tipped off that a raid was in
progress. [Dominican Republic Deports 163 Haitians, Latin American
Herald Tribune, July 23 2009]

The Dominican reaction to Haitian immigration is much like our own
toward all immigration.

Estimating that as many as one million Haitians live in the Dominican
Republic, state officials are concerned that the illegal aliens have
taken jobs and worry that many natives may go without medical care
because free treatment is given to immigrants.

In the worst cases, Haitians cross illegally every day to beg on the
street or work in the sugar cane fields.

Officials in neighboring Barbados also view its current levels of
immigration skeptically. According to Denis Kellman, Barbados`s
Ambassador to the "Caribbean Community and Common Market," the free
movement of people "would always create a problem" and add that: "we
have accepted enough people into Barbados as it is."

I’m sorry to report that our group of bankers didn’t raise any money
or even generate any interest stateside in Haitian investment.

Haiti’s political instability, poverty, illiteracy, an unschooled
labor pool and rampant disease killed off whatever foreign investment
prospects there might have been.

The U.S. has a laundry list of errors made in Haiti dating back to
1915 when it first occupied the island, continuing through the
Duvalier and two Aristide eras, and going right up to our modern two-
faced immigration policy that allows poor, black and desperate Cubans
into the country and puts them on a path to citizenship while
deporting the equally poor, black and desperate Haitians.

America’s best strategy would be to end Cuba’s easy access while
keeping our Haitian deportation stance intact.

When it comes to Haitians, the U.S. cannot hold out amnesty’s lure,
offer TPS or permit craven employers to hire the most unskilled of
their lot without prosecuting them to the maximum that the law allows.

At the same time, Haitians have to step up for themselves. Eight of
ten Haitians with college degrees live outside Haiti. Any Haitian who
earns his degree in the U.S. must sign an agreement to return upon
graduation.

If Haitians truly want better lives for themselves, then, even though
it will be a decades-long climb, Haitians and not Americans will have
to make it happen."

http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/090724_haiti.htm