IRIN

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88736

NEW YORK — The US gov­ern­ment allows for­eign cit­i­zens into the US in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers “for urgent human­i­tar­ian rea­sons or sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic ben­e­fit”. In the past, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this so-called “human­i­tar­ian parole” have been thou­sands of refugees from Indochina, Cuba and other coun­tries dur­ing the cold war, most flee­ing com­mu­nist regimes.

So far, how­ever, the gov­ern­ment has been far less gen­er­ous in grant­ing human­i­tar­ian parole to Haitians recov­er­ing from the 12 Jan­u­ary earthquake.

On 18 Jan­u­ary, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) announced it would extend human­i­tar­ian parole on a case-by-base basis to chil­dren already in the process of being adopted by US citizens.

Parole sta­tus has also been approved for a small num­ber of Haitians with dire med­ical needs, most promi­nently per­haps Jenny Alexis, a two-month-old baby found in the rub­ble of a Port-au-Prince flat four days after the earth­quake. She was air­lifted to Miami – with­out US gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion — where doc­tors restored her to health. Her par­ents were later granted human­i­tar­ian parole to be with her. In total, about 1,000 Haitians have been given parole sta­tus since the quake.

“The num­bers are ridicu­lously small given the scale of the calamity,” said Ira Kurzban, a Miami-based attor­ney who has been involved in Hait­ian affairs since the 1970s.

In Feb­ru­ary, leg­is­la­tion was intro­duced in both houses of Con­gress that would extend human­i­tar­ian parole to 55,000 Haitians whose immi­gra­tion appli­ca­tions were approved before the earth­quake but who face the prospect of wait­ing years before gain­ing entry.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, the spon­sor in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, told IRIN she had heard com­plaints “for years” from her Hait­ian con­stituents in Brook­lyn about the need to expe­dite the immi­gra­tion process. The bills were intro­duced even though Con­gres­sional approval does not appear to be nec­es­sary for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to act. In fact, on 8 March, eight mem­bers of Con­gress wrote to Janet Napoli­tano, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s sec­re­tary of the DHS, to ask that the depart­ment “con­sider using its parole author­ity” in the case of the 55,000 Haitians.

Help with reconstruction

The Haitians would be able to con­tribute to the recon­struc­tion of their coun­try by send­ing remit­tances. “You can put this into motion with­out a dime being spent by the US gov­ern­ment,” said Steve Forester of the Insti­tute for Jus­tice and Democ­racy in Haiti. “It will put money into the hands of prob­a­bly 500,000 peo­ple in Haiti. A Hait­ian work­ing here sup­ports as many as 10 peo­ple in Haiti, some­times less, some­times more. A major goal is to speed the recov­ery. Shouldn’t we use all means at our disposal?”

“We just don’t see the logic in hav­ing them stay five or 10 years in Haiti when it is a dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tion,” said Shaina Aber, asso­ciate advo­cacy direc­tor for the Jesuit Refugee Ser­vice in Wash­ing­ton DC. “Their strength would be in pro­vid­ing remit­tances to Haiti.”

The mat­ter was raised with Vice-President Joe Biden after a meet­ing with Haitian-American com­mu­nity lead­ers in Miami on 5 April . “I went to him after­wards and told him that it was one of the most effi­cient ways that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion can help in the recov­ery process,” said Mar­leine Bastien, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Fanm Ayisyen Miyami (Hait­ian Women of Miami), a com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tion. She said Biden was inter­ested to learn that the pro­posal had sup­port from both Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic mem­bers of Con­gress from south Florida. “He said, ‘I will be sure to look into it’,” Bastien said. “He was very cau­tious. Hope­fully we will hear something.”

Haiti advo­cates are also push­ing for a more gen­er­ous human­i­tar­ian parole pol­icy for those in life-threatening cir­cum­stances, a clas­si­fi­ca­tion that admit­tedly could include hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple. Jayne Flem­ing, a human rights lawyer from San Fran­cisco, trav­elled to Haiti in March with a team of lawyers and doc­tors to inter­view those who might qual­ify. They spoke to wid­ows unable to feed their chil­dren, orphans with rel­a­tives in the US, indi­vid­u­als with “extreme” med­ical needs, and a fright­en­ing num­ber of rape sur­vivors. She is return­ing to Haiti later in the month to final­ize parole appli­ca­tions for 52 of them.

“There are peo­ple in Haiti right now who will die if they don’t get out,” she said. “Those are the ones we see as eli­gi­ble for human­i­tar­ian parole.”