By JOHN CLEMENT FAVALORA

Below are excerpts from a let­ter by The Most Rev­erend John Clement Faval­ora, Arch­bishop of Miami, to Pres­i­dent Bush.
I write to offer my strong, con­sid­ered and prayer­ful sup­port of Hait­ian Pres­i­dent René Préval’s recent request for Tem­po­rary Pro­tected Sta­tus (TPS) for Hait­ian immi­grants in the United States.
As the West­ern Hemisphere’s poor­est coun­try, plagued by polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, vio­lence and envi­ron­men­tal crises, Haiti is sim­ply unable to han­dle the return of its nation­als at this time, mak­ing Hait­ian nation­als cur­rently in the United States eli­gi­ble for TPS under the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­ity Act. As such, grant­ing TPS for Haitians is not only the morally right course of action, but also sanc­tioned by law.

Tragic events
Daily, in the pews of our churches, behind the desks of our schools, inside the wait­ing rooms of our var­i­ous min­istries, I hear the tear­ful laments of our Hait­ian broth­ers and sis­ters who watch painfully, often tear­fully, as their beloved home­land sinks deeper into a human­i­tar­ian cri­sis. I note with sad­ness the fol­low­ing tragic events, which prompted Pres­i­dent Préval’s request:
• In Octo­ber 2007, Trop­i­cal Storm Noel’s tor­ren­tial rains caused floods and land­slides dam­ag­ing or destroy­ing nearly 20,000 houses and killing 66 peo­ple;
• The storm hit as Haiti remains prone from the destruc­tion of Trop­i­cal Storm Jeanne in 2004 that caused more than 2,500 deaths, count­less injuries, and the com­plete destruc­tion of 4,000 homes and left 250,000 home­less — a tragedy on the scale as one that prompted you to des­ig­nate TPS for Sal­vado­rans in 2001;
• To improve secu­rity in Haiti, Pres­i­dent Pré­val requested the 8,000 U.N. peace­keep­ing troops to con­front crim­i­nal gangs that kid­nap, harass and ter­ror­ize Port-au-Prince res­i­dents, a tes­ta­ment to the con­tin­u­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence;
• The U.S. gov­ern­ment warns U.S. cit­i­zens of the risk of travel to Haiti, stat­ing that ”chronic dan­ger of vio­lent crime, espe­cially kid­nap­pings. Most kid­nap­pings are crim­i­nal in nature, and the kid­nap­pers make no dis­tinc­tions of nation­al­ity, race, gen­der or age; all are vul­ner­a­ble.…” In fact, embassy per­son­nel live under a cur­few due to this vio­lence. Yet many Haitians face the hor­rific choice of aban­don­ing their U.S. cit­i­zen chil­dren in the United States, if deported to Haiti, or keep­ing the fam­ily unit intact by expos­ing their chil­dren to these risks.
If the peo­ple of Haiti have any chance to extri­cate them­selves from this human­i­tar­ian cri­sis, TPS will serve as an essen­tial ele­ment in their suc­cess.
With its des­ti­tute econ­omy and polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, the money sent to Haiti from Haitians in the United States rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal source of eco­nomic aid to the island nation. Haitians in the U.S. annu­ally remit approx­i­mately $1 bil­lion to Haiti, 30 per­cent of its gross domes­tic prod­uct.
Ongo­ing depor­ta­tions not only staunch the flow of this sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic assis­tance, but also exac­er­bate the human­i­tar­ian cri­sis by increas­ing job­less­ness, home­less­ness and fam­ily separation.