U.S. to Haitians: Stay Home and Bear the Burden

[Derechos]

Five days after the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, an air force cargo plane flew one of the first missions of the U.S. military’s aid effort. The plane flew for five hours over the devastated country broadcasting the loud, prerecorded voice of Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, in Creole:

“If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. They will intercept you right in the water and send you back home where you came from.”

The disembodied voice from the sky told Haitians, still stunned by the earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people, that U.S. immigration policy toward Haiti would remain the same as it has for decades. This was despite the fact that just a few days earlier, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had announced 18 months of Temporary Protective Services (TPS) for Haitians who had been in the United States before January 12, and that all deportations in process would be stopped.

However, Coast Guard Lt. Chris O’Neil, the spokesperson for the newly formed Homeland Security task force in charge of “managing” any influx of Haitian migrants or refugees coming from the country, said simply, “The goal is to interdict them at sea and repatriate them.” O’Neil’s declaration reflects the same much-criticized immigration policy that the United States has implemented toward Haiti for dozens of years, a strategy that often corrals the blowback of U.S. foreign policy—both politically and economically.

https://nacla.org/node/6462

[protocol rv]

1. Do you think the US should let the illegal Haitians in?

That would make a mockery of US immigration law, don't you think?

[Judi Lynn]

2. What makes a mockery of the US immigration law would be the US policy on Cuba

which allows Cubans to enter the U.S. and take full advantage of a vast array of priviledges set aside just for Cuban immigrants, including instant safe status, they are completely legal and will not be hunted down like Haitians, Cubans are instantly able to receive U.S. Social Security, get a work visa, food stamps, move into U.S. taxpayer-supported Section 8 housing, full medical treatment, even financial assistance for education.

Haitians have been intercepted at sea, and taken wading ashore, and returned immediately to a living hell on earth, as has happened when the U.S. supported, directed and financed death squad leaders, former Ton Ton Macoutes (death squad) members, outfitting them with weapons and clothing for their outfits, training them in the Dominican Republic, and sending them across the border to massacre suspected leftists in Haiti. During in between times the US has financially supported and given haven to these same death squad monsters within the U.S., itself, under three U.S. Presidents.

A mockery of US immigration law is heaping gifts upon the shoulders of any Cuban who makes it to the U.S., while deporting everyone one else instantly, even though they ALL have traveled farther, and longer than Cubans to get to the States, hundreds and hundreds of the others dying in the attempt annually.

A mockery of US immigration law is the cynical use of people as political pawns, and the abuse of people desperately in need of help.

[Bacchus39]

5. always the Cubans versus Haitians comparison when the same goes for all other immigrants

Mexicans, Dominicans, Chinese all get deported too. so if we let Haitians in like the Cubans what about the Venezuelans, Colombians, Africans, etcetera ad nauseum?

[Judi Lynn]

3. Do you remember that as the pRsident George W Bush set up Haitians for slaughter

from the I.R.I. supported death squads, and people desperately attempted to flee from the slaughterhouse, he surrounded Haiti with US Navy and Coast Guard ships to seize them all and place them right back in front of the very murderers who were there to lay brutal waste to them?

My God. Pure evil. Evil people supported this. Evil people and dangerous fools.

Thank you, Derechos.

We have so far to go before becoming a nation of human beings.

Typically, it seems we haven't inched forward one bit since then.

[Downwinder]

4. No comment. Read the whole article.

Makes me too bitter.