Tampa Tri­bune Editorial

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/jan/14/Help-emigrants-aid-Haiti/news-opinion-editorials/

The United States, Haiti’s major bene­fac­tor and trad­ing part­ner, is respond­ing quickly to the dis­as­trous earth­quake that hit on Tues­day. Pub­lic and pri­vate con­tri­bu­tions will be substantial.

Yet there is some­thing more the United States should do and it’s polit­i­cally dif­fi­cult: grant tem­po­rary pro­tected sta­tus to Haitians liv­ing here illegally.

For­mer Pres­i­dent George Bush refused to do it, and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has dodged the issue, say­ing it should be part of “a broader con­ver­sa­tion about immigration.”

An esti­mated 30,000 Haitians, many of them in Florida, are fac­ing depor­ta­tion from the United States back to a place where they can­not find work and likely can­not even find food and shel­ter. Immi­gra­tion law antic­i­pates the need for occa­sional flex­i­bil­ity in such sit­u­a­tions. Cur­rently immi­grants from Sudan, El Sal­vador, Soma­lia and Liberia enjoy var­i­ous lev­els of pro­tec­tion from imme­di­ate deportation.

Haitians liv­ing here deserve equal treat­ment. The best way to help them is to let them stay and work legally for up to 18 months. Haitians work­ing in this coun­try already send more than $1 bil­lion home each year.

It’s a sit­u­a­tion com­mon around the world. Work­ers find­ing suc­cess abroad and send­ing money home help poorer coun­tries improve them­selves, reports Econ­o­mist mag­a­zine. It notes that “armies of itin­er­ant nan­nies, dish­wash­ers, meat­pack­ers and plumbers shift more cap­i­tal to poorer coun­tries than do West­ern aid efforts.”

Few coun­tries are poorer than Haiti. Its cap­i­tal city is reduced to rubble.

The deci­sion to allow decent, non­crim­i­nal Haitians to stay here and work won’t be pop­u­lar dur­ing this time of high local unem­ploy­ment, but it is the decent, sen­si­ble and neigh­borly thing to do.