Res­o­lu­tion No.43

Sub­mit­ted by:

The Hon­or­able Andre D. Pierre
Mayor of North Miami

The Hon­or­able David N. Cicilline
Mayor of Providence

43. URGING PAROLE FOR ALL HAITIAN BENEFICIARIES OF APPROVED IMMIGRANT VISA PETITIONS AND EXPEDITED CONSIDERATION AND APPROVAL OF ALL PENDING IMMIGRANT VISA PETITIONS

1. WHEREAS, on Jan­u­ary 12, 2010, Haiti was dev­as­tated by an unprece­dented 7.0 Richter Scale earth­quake which has killed at least 250,000 peo­ple, left mil­lions home­less and injured, and destroyed impor­tant Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and inter­na­tional insti­tu­tional resources and infra­struc­ture; and

2. WHEREAS, Haiti is the west­ern hemisphere’s poor­est nation and one of the poor­est in the world; and

3. WHEREAS, on Jan­u­ary 14, 2010, Pres­i­dent Obama said that the dis­as­ter in Haiti “is one of those moments that call out for American’s lead­er­ship” and

4. WHEREAS, it is a pol­icy of the United States to expe­di­tiously assist Haiti’s peo­ple and gov­ern­ment to rebuild and recover from this cat­a­stro­phe; and

5. WHEREAS, the Hait­ian dias­pora is mainly in the United States and remits about $2 bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally which is cru­cial to the wel­fare and sur­vival of Haitians and to Haiti’s wel­fare; and

6. WHEREAS, if allowed to work in the United States, the 55,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries would send remit­tances to Haiti sup­port­ing an esti­mated 550,000 to one mil­lion per­sons in Haiti; and

7. WHEREAS, such cap­i­tal flow is by far the largest source of for­eign aid to Haiti and more impor­tant to Haitians per capita, than to any other nation in the world; and

8. WHEREAS, prior to the Jan­u­ary 12, 2010 earth­quake, the United States Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) had approved immi­grant visa peti­tions for 55,000 Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries now lan­guish­ing unnec­es­sar­ily in dev­as­tated Haiti until their pri­or­ity dates become cur­rent, which is esti­mated to take any­where from six to 12 years; and

9. WHEREAS, there are legal ways for the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion to promptly parole these 55,000 Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries who are already approved for entry into the United States; and

10. WHEREAS, doing so would reunite fam­i­lies, pro­vide for orderly migra­tion, and ease the bur­den on Haiti’s over­whelmed gov­ern­ment with­out cost the United States; and

11. WHEREAS, Haiti’s prompt recov­ery and the sur­vival of its democ­racy are of great national secu­rity to the United States given Haiti’s prox­im­ity and our large Haitian-American pop­u­la­tion; and

12. WHEREAS, parol­ing the 55,000 Hait­ian approved ben­e­fi­cia­ries into the United States and allow­ing them to work is the sim­plest, most effec­tive way to help Haiti recover from the cat­a­stro­phe now being suf­fered; and

13. WHEREAS, DHS has human­i­tar­ian parole author­ity under the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­ity Act (INA) under Sec­tion 212(d)(5)(A) to expe­di­tiously parole into the United States per­sons for “urgent human­i­tar­ian rea­sons or sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic ben­e­fit;” and

14. WHEREAS, the United States has brought hun­dreds of thou­sands of Indochi­nese, Cuban, and Kosovo refugees, among oth­ers, into the United States when it was deemed it to be in the inter­ests of national secu­rity; and

15. WHEREAS, although no con­gres­sional action is needed for DHS to exer­cise its human­i­tar­ian parole author­ity under the INA, the Hait­ian Emer­gency Life Pro­tec­tion Act of 2010 (“HELP Act”), S. 2998 and H.R. 4616, cur­rently pend­ing leg­is­la­tion, would grant V visas to bring these Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries into the United States; and

16. WHEREAS, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion has been urged to promptly parole the 55,000 Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries of approved immi­grant visa peti­tions by the edi­to­r­ial board of the Wash­ing­ton Post in their edi­to­r­ial, ”The U.S. should wel­come Haitians in,” pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 29, 2010; and

17. WHEREAS, the edi­to­r­ial board of the Miami Her­ald fol­lowed suit in its lead edi­to­r­ial, “U.S. must lead in Haiti’s recov­ery,” pub­lished on March 22, 2010; and

18. WHEREAS, Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano was urged to parole the 55,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries by House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Chair­per­sons John Cony­ers (Judi­ciary), Howard Berman (For­eign Affairs), and Zoe Lof­gren (immi­gra­tion sub­com­mit­tee), Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Yvette Clark, South Florida’s Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lin­coln Diaz-Balart, and Mario Diaz-Balart, and by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anh Cao of Louisiana; and

19. WHEREAS, the same relief was urged in a March 12, 2010 let­ter to Sec­re­tary Napoli­tano by 74 national and inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions and eight other indi­vid­u­als; and

20. WHEREAS, the same relief was urged on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010 in a Huff­in­g­ton Post op-ed by Hebrew Immi­grant Aid Soci­ety (HIAS) Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Mark Het­field; and

21. WHEREAS, as Pres­i­dent Reagan’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliot Abrams, who also served as Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s Deputy National Secu­rity Advi­sor, wrote in his Wash­ing­ton Post op-ed, “What Haiti Needs: A Hait­ian Dias­pora,” Jan­u­ary 22, 2010, that “a larger Hait­ian dias­pora would be a far bet­ter base for the country’s eco­nomic future than aid pledges” because their “remit­tances to Haiti would give its econ­omy a huge and con­tin­u­ing jolt,” and “one of the best ways to help Haiti is to allow some Haitians to move abroad” because “migra­tion would mean that Haiti needs to pro­vide fewer hos­pi­tal beds, schools, meals and jobs – and migrants’ remit­tances will be key to Haiti’s eco­nomic recov­ery for decades to come,” and Pres­i­dent Obama “should be ask­ing Con­gress …to allow a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of Haitians legally admit­ted to the United States – to sev­eral times the roughly 25,000 per year in the past decade. … There are no panaceas for Haiti’s recov­ery, but any sen­si­ble approach must include migra­tion from the island. If the United States is com­mit­ted to giv­ing Haiti hope for the future, enlarg­ing the Hait­ian dias­pora is a sure­fire way to suc­ceed;” and

22. WHEREAS, mil­lions made home­less by the earth­quake will suf­fer unnec­es­sar­ily dur­ing Haiti’s rain and hur­ri­cane sea­sons; thereby decreas­ing the win­dow avail­able for action; and

23. WHEREAS, immi­grant visa peti­tions for a fur­ther 19,000 Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries are pend­ing but not yet been approved; and

24. WHEREAS, help­ing neigh­bors and suc­cor­ing the needy are in the high­est tra­di­tions and val­ues of the United States,

25. NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that The United States Con­fer­ence of May­ors hereby urge Pres­i­dent Obama and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano to promptly parole into the United States all Hait­ian ben­e­fi­cia­ries of approved immi­grant visa peti­tions and to per­mit them to legally work in the United States, and to expe­dite con­sid­er­a­tion and approval of all pend­ing but not yet approved immi­grant visa petitions.