[from Black America web: http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/haitians419]

Also see Fanm Ayesyen Nan Miyami web site for updates: http://www.fanm.org/

Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2007
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com
More than 100 Haitians who landed in a Florida community continue to be detained as they await a decision on whether they will be sent back home or allowed to immigrate to the U.S.

“All of them are still detained, except for one who died," said Marlienne Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, Inc., an advocacy group that is working to reform U.S. immigration policy toward Haitians. “They continue to hold the rest of them, including the children.”

On March 28, 102 Haitians reached the shore of Hallandale Beach after a grueling 22 days at sea in a dilapidated wooden sailboat. The refugees, who arrived starving and dehydrated, were taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security and taken to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Pembroke Pines for processing. Nearly a dozen minors were among the group.

Since their arrival, the adults have been held at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, and 14 children are being held at the Boystown shelter in Miami-Dade while they await the outcome of hearings on their status.

Lifaite Lully, 24, drowned as the refugees’ sailboat ran aground. According to the Miami Herald, a wake is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday at Monique and Loriston Community Funeral Home on Dixie Highway. The funeral is set for 11 a.m. Saturday at the Notre Dame d’Haiti Church in Little Haiti. The service was delayed a week as Haitian leaders and relatives tried to secure a humanitarian visa to allow Lully’s mother, Isemaelite Vassor, to attend. She received a visa from the U.S. consulate in Port au Prince on Wednesday and was scheduled to fly to Florida on Thursday for her son's funeral services, Forester said.

Lully will be buried in Florida.

“We are trying to get them released,” Bastien told BlackAmericaWeb.com about the surviving refugees. “We’re trying to get the momentum going.”

On April 9, 78 Haitians were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard before they could reach the Miami shore. The Coast Guard crew provided food and medical aid to the emigres before returning them to Haiti. Under federal law, if refugees are caught before they reach land, they can be sent back immediately.

Unlike Cuban refugees, who are allowed to stay under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Haitians are routinely sent home.

“Cubans fled Communism and arrived earlier, wealthier and much better connected than Haitians. No other immigrant community has such advantages,” Steven David Forester, senior policy advocate for the Haitian Women of Miami, Inc., said in a recent letter to the editor in the Miami Herald.

Bastien said her group is pushing to get temporary protected status (or TPS) for Haitians, which provides a 12- to 18-month halt on deportation proceedings based on a number of criteria, including environmental disasters, such as hurricanes and tropical storms. Haiti, which has been beset by a number of storms over the years and has yet to recover, has never been granted TPS despite strong support from the South Florida community. Nicaraguans, Salvadorans and Hondurans were granted that status following devastating storms in 1999 and 2001, and continue to enjoy that status through extensions approved by the federal government.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) introduced a bill in January that would grant temporary protected status for Haitians. The legislation has been referred to the subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. Last week, Hastings wrote a letter to President Bush asking him to grant such status to Haitian nationals already living in the U.S.

“In light of the recent developments regarding more than 100 Haitian migrants who landed ashore in South Florida on March 27, 2007, and even more recently, the 78 who landed on April 9, 2007, I write to urge you to authorize Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to grant temporary protected status for 18 months to Haitian nationals presently in the United States,” Hastings wrote the president.

The letter to Bush was a follow up to a letter Hastings wrote to Chertoff in March 2006, seeking TPS for Haitian nationals, as well as a letter Hastings sent Haitian President Rene` Preval urging him to lobby President Bush for the protective status.
“As you know,” Hastings’ letter continued, “TPS may be granted when any one of the following three conditions are met: there is ongoing armed conflict posing a serious threat to personal safety; it is requested by a foreign state that temporarily cannot handle the return of nationals due to environmental disasters or when extraordinary and temporary conditions in a foreign state exist which prevent aliens from returning. Haiti meets all of these requirements, any of which suffices.”
According to Forester’s letter to the Herald, 5,000 Haitians demonstrated for temporary protected status last April. The following month, the U.S. Senate amended the 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.

So, there have been successes, but not enough to help the current group of refugees, Bastien said.

The Haitian Women of Miami, Inc., say that granting the protective status would protect U.S. borders by keeping remittances flowing which support hundreds of thousands of Haitians. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, U.S. Haitians send $1.17 billion home annually. However, the women’s organization points out, the deportation of non-criminal refugees decreases the opportunities to send money home, thus driving more Haitians to try to reach U.S. shores in search of work.

Bastien said the policy of returning refugees to Haiti contributes to the destabilization of Haiti. She said her organization had written to the Florida congressional delegation and the Congressional Black Caucus, hoping they would intervene in the case.
“We want our delegation members to write one combined, bipartisan statement, and we have not received that yet,” Bastien said. “We don’t understand what’s going on. We’re trying to meet with (Rep.) Kendrick Meek; we heard he is close to (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi. We want to see if he can get Pelosi to take a stand.”

In the meantime, she said, the organization’s Web site, is encouraging supporters to write elected officials and call for the release of the refugees.

Over the weekend, Meek (D-Fla.) met at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with Henry Petithomme, a 32-year-old Haitian American and Army veteran who launched a hunger strike two weeks ago in an effort to win TPS for the refugees. On Monday, Meek sent a personal letter, as well as a letter from Petithomme, by messenger to President Bush calling for TPS for the refugees.

“Despite repeated requests over the course of years by me and my congressional colleagues, your administration still refuses to grant temporary protected status to Haitian nationals presently in the United States, notwithstanding the fact that Haiti is still dealing with a political, civil and environmental crisis that requires the continued presence of United Nations peacekeeping forces,” Meek wrote.

Hastings noted in his letter that Burundi, Somalia, Sudan and Liberia, in addition to Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, had been granted TPS protection, and that within the past year, nationals of all seven countries were granted a 12-month extension by the Department of Homeland Security.

“By refusing to give Haiti TPS designation, our inequitable immigration policies continue to send a clear message: The safety of Haitian lives is not a priority compared to a Honduran, Liberian or Sudanese life,” Hastings wrote. “These double standard and discriminatory immigration practices must end.”

In his letter to Bush, Petithomme emphasized that the Haitian refugees who landed on Hallandale Beach were not seeking special treatment, but the same status afforded to other immigrants fleeing troubled circumstances.
“These migrants spent 22 days at sea running away from their homeland which is currently experiencing political and economical turmoil, i.e. political instability, violence, kidnappings, poverty, etc. Unfortunately, sir, one of them died here, and there is no telling how many might have died along their journey,” Petithomme wrote. “They come here looking for the same thing others have obtained, and that is opportunity. Yet, time and time again, they are not received as others are received, and that, Mr. President, in the eyes of many, is unjust.”

Just as a soldier understands he may have to be willing to die for his country at a moment’s notice, Petithomme wrote, “I’ve been called by an even higher power and I’ve been asked, ‘Will I die for my people?’ Sir, as a soldier of peace, I close this letter with what I’m sure goes through the minds of many soldiers. Though I may not be ready to die, I understand that my physical life rests in your hands.”