1000 Castros

[Billy Burnett]

Senseless, deadly U.S. policy on Haitians persists
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/828419.html

Two years ago, Louiness and Sheryl Petit-Frere were newlyweds celebrating their good fortune. Both from Haiti, they had found love and one another in Miami.

Today, Louiness, a 31-year-old baker, waits at the Glades detention facility in Central Florida to be sent to a country he hasn't seen in a decade, where no one waits for him.

His 27-year-old bride in Miami tries to make sense of a senseless immigration law that would deport an otherwise law-abiding, working man because he had an old asylum petition denied.

Never mind that he is married to a U.S. citizen, that he had, in good faith, filed for legal status and had shown up for the interview at the Citizenship and Immigration Services office when he was hauled away like a common criminal.

Petit-Frere's mother and five siblings are all permanent U.S. residents, including his brother, Sgt. Nikenson Peirreloui, a U.S. Marine with a war injury to show for his two tours in Iraq. But none of that matters.

ACTIONS FALL SHORT

The U.S. government deems it imperative to deport Petit-Frere, who has no criminal record, to a place decimated by four back-to-back storms this summer, with thousands of starving, dehydrating children left homeless and adults facing no prospects for jobs.

''It seems terrible,'' his mother, Francina Pierre, told me Saturday while she waited for her daughter-in-law to get off work as a grocery store clerk.

''He has nobody left in Haiti,'' she said. ``My mom died, my dad died, my sister died. And my two brothers live here. One is a U.S. citizen and the other is a permanent resident. We have no more family living in Haiti, no more.''

The Bush administration had sensibly put deportations to Haiti on hold after a succession of hurricanes and tropical storms destroyed parts of the island, leaving thousands without work or home. But the president stopped short of granting temporary protected status, or TPS, to Haitians living in the United States without proper documentation.

Natural disasters generally qualify for TPS consideration -- as Central Americans with TPS can attest. But Haitians can never seem to catch a break.

U.S. immigration officials decided recently that it would be just dandy to deport Haitians while recovery efforts on their part of Hispaniola proceed in spurts and stops, as children die of malnutrition and mudslides continue to impede reconstruction.

`TERRIBLE CONDITIONS'

''How can this nation in good conscience send children and families to face the terrible conditions that exist in Haiti?'' Cheryl Little, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center's executive director, said in a statement. ``People could die because of this decision.''

She's not crying wolf.

The conditions in Haiti, as superbly detailed by Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles the past few months, cry out for solutions -- not asinine deportations that only exacerbate an already untenable situation.

As President Bush looks through his list of pardons to wipe the slate clean for criminals, he should move to do more for the common man, people like Louiness Petit-Frere. Why not grant TPS for Haitians who have no criminal record, so they can stay and work here until conditions improve in their country?

Those who do have family in Haiti can send money and goods back to help the reconstruction and rev up the economy.

TPS was designated for catastrophic situations like Haiti's. There's no reason to deny Haitians TPS. Only racist excuses.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Every sober person clearly remembers the child, Elián Gonzalez, but almost no one has heard

a word about the Haitian counterpart at the very same moment in time: Sophonie Telcy. Not one peep, and she was COMPLETELY alone in the world, facing deportation to a country where she literally had no one, NO ONE to meet her, and take her in to share what meager rations they had.

Here's a good reminder, from a quick search:

Haitian Orphan's Story Draws No Crowds

Adrian Walker
The Boston Globe

MIAMI - Sophonie Telcy is 6 years old. Her mother died shortly after
bringing her to America a few months ago. Sophonie has no desire to return
to the country where she was born and, until recently, raised. Which in her
case is Haiti.

Sophonie Telcy has no cheering sections outside the home of her guardians,
no television crews, and no celebrities forming a human chain on her behalf.
No one has suggested that her presence on these shores constitutes a
miracle.

In fact, almost no one seems to care whether she stays or goes.

Telcy lives with friends of her mother in Lake Park, Fla., a suburb of West
Palm Beach less than 100 miles from the Elian Gonzalez circus. She is
subject to deportation at any time. As surely as Elian has become the poster
child for resistance to the Castro regime in Cuba, Sophonie's few advocates
believe her fight with the government is just as symbolic - of what they
view as a glaring double standard in US immigration policy.

"Damn right there's a race issue," says US Representative Alcee Hastings,
a Fort Lauderdale Democrat. "There's disparate treatment. The INS should
not be paying attention to organized political pressure."

The Elian soap opera has gradually exposed every social fissure in South
Florida. Among the most enduring is resentment at the handling of Haitian
immigration compared to that from Cuba.

Haitians are deported at a much higher rate, turned around on the seas more
often, and have a more difficult time getting residency status. The legal
rationale for that is complicated, but it hinges on the longstanding
judgment that Cuban immigrants are fleeing political persecution, whereas
Haitians are economic refugees.

Historically, it owes much to the Cold War, like the Elian battle itself.
The Duvalier regime that pillaged Haiti from 1958 until 1986 was a client
state of the United States, and its successors - some democratic, some not -
have also enjoyed Washington's support. Castro, by contrast, was always
viewed as the political rogue of the Caribbean. The precedent of
preferential treatement for Cuban exiles was established in the early 1960s
and has been reinforced as Cuban-Americans gained political power.

"I knew there had to be other children, even in my district, who were in
the same situation as Elian, or worse," Hastings said Monday. "In five
days, we found 26 kids who are orphans. Sophonie Telcy's situation is far
worse than Elian's. She has no family in Haiti, and the government there has
no policy for dealing with orphans. She could end up living on the street if
she has to go back."

More:
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000rc/Haitian_Orphan,_age_6,_Draws_No_Crowds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Isn't it a shame that in our current world politics and race can play such a deadly part in a country which boasts of being a "melting pot," a "democracy," a "great experiment," etc., etc., etc.

The standards applied to Cubans as opposed to all other national groups are based ENTIRELY upon the value of the politics of acquiring as many Cuban immigrants as possible, backed up by a wildly generous system of financial sponsorship, and legal guardianship for Cubans once they arrive here, under their own steam, regardless of their pasts they leave behind in Cuba, as in the cases of all criminals. The only Cuban criminals, pointed out steadily by both Billy Burnett and Dr. Mika, who can't come here are the ones who submit their names to the American Interests Section in Havana to apply for a visa and get rejected. If they come here by any illegal method they are HOME FREE, and they WILL be protected here by U.S. law, thanks to the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, and WILL receive surprising financial backing not available to any other group, at great costs to U.S. taxpayers.

These liberal gifts to Cuban immigrants, were they extended to people from other countries would have us innundated immediately. We'd be so crowded we couldn't find room to breath any longer. Even allowing other people to come here with no threat of expulsion, also in the Cuban package, would swell the number of illegal immigrants from everywhere else.

More, on Sophonie:

Sophonie
Why the world doesn't know about Sophonie ...

By Christine Evans, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer ... Sunday, April 23, 2000

She is so small, just 6, like Elian. When she smiles, perhaps at a bowl of strawberry ice cream, you see she is missing two front teeth. In kindergarten, at Lake Park Elementary, she is just beginning to read. Her teachers are so proud, because when the school year began, she couldn't speak a word in English. She loves pink. On Sundays, she puts on a frilly dress and goes to church.

Just like Elian, she came from a tiny island country, a place so riven by politics and poverty that people risk everything to flee. ...

Now, like Elian, she is here but not here. She has no legal standing in the United States. No residency papers. No health insurance. ...

She got her picture in the paper once, after U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings filed a bill on her behalf, but the story did not make the front page. That place, especially now, is reserved for Elian Gonzalez, the little boy from Cuba, not for Sophonie Telcy, who came from Haiti.

Ti gason, the boy -- that is what the people in Sophonie's world call Elian, who was rescued at sea Thanksgiving Day and turned instantly into a cause celebre, from the moment he touched land until Saturday morning, when federal agents whisked him away. The people in Sophonie's world hear about Elian on the TV. They hear about Sophonie, too, but only when the radio broadcasts in Creole. Then, yes, people talk, rat-a-tat-tat, quick Creole gossip: What about Sophonie? What will happen to her? The little girl from Haiti?

"Ohhh, I do not know," Henry Smith said last week as he settled into the plump white sofa in his new Lake Park home, a place big enough for his three children, his wife, Jeanine, and now Sophonie.

He is not Sophonie's dad. Nobody is sure where her father is. Smith is her caretaker, the man who said yes when her mother, Sana Romelus, came to his door one Sunday morning a year ago holding Sophonie's hand.

"Will you take Sophonie for me?" she said. She was ill and had to return to Haiti, where she would last just a short time, he later learned, before dying. And so, Henry Smith said yes. He would take Sophonie.

Smith tells this story patiently, in the careful English he has acquired since his arrival here from Haiti in 1994, and he will tell it again and again to anybody who will listen.

"I think about that so much," he says, brow crinkling as if he might weep. Over in the corner, on a maroon love seat, Sophonie practices writing her name in a recipe book that is supposed to be for cooking.

"Why do the Cuban people have more favor than the Haiti people?" the man who cares for her says. "Because people are people. If Cuban people are allowed to stay, then Haitian people should be, too. Every day you see Elian on the TV. I think it is good for the little boy, because everybody likes him and wants to help him. But I say: Here is Sophonie, a little girl from Haiti. She is here now. And she does not have a mother, just as Elian does not have his. I think surely somebody is going to help her now."

More:
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000rc/Haitian_Orphan,_age_6,_Draws_No_Crowds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have you heard of Sophonie?
2000 Harvard Crimson via U-WIRE
By Christina S.N. Lewis Harvard Crimson Harvard U.

(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Sophonie Telcy is a six-year-old girl,
whose mother risked everything to remove her from the tiny island
country of her birth, a country that is wracked by political turmoil and
economic misery. After bringing Sophonie to the United States, her
mother died, leaving Sophonie without care. Unlike a more well-known
young motherless child, Sophonie has drawn no crowds. No marches or
national work boycotts are being held in her honor. No one calls her
survival a "miracle." The public is largely indifferent to Sophonie's
plight because she comes from the island of Haiti rather than the island
of Cuba. The difference between this six-year old-girl from Haiti and
her more famous male counterpart from Cuba is that the latter is deemed
a political refugee, while the former is merely fleeing economic misery.
The gap in treatment between these two children illustrates one of the
most ideologically problematic distinctions in U.S. immigration policy.
As tensions between Cuba and the U.S. ease and the political climate in
Haiti becomes less stable, America should ease its restrictions against
Haitian immigrants. The poverty and misery in Haiti are so astounding
that the argument to accept Haitian refugees could be made on
humanitarian grounds alone. The country's economic structure has
collapsed. It has no major industries, leading to an unemployment rate
listed between 70 and 85 percent, according to a report two months ago
by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. However, helping people is rarely a
good enough reason for Congress to act.The legislature needs to realize
that Haiti's political climate is the real reason that Haitian refugees
have flooded the coast of South Florida at a daily rate that reached
into the thousands. Last week, over 200 Haitian refugees were found
stranded, without food and water, after a failed attempt to escape the
escalating violence in their homeland as elections approach. The stories
that emerge from refugees sound like they have emerged from a war zone.
Some refugees who had been involved with the electoral campaign said
that they had received death threats. "We were in misery," said
Francisco Martinez, a Haitian whose parents were from the Dominican
Republic, to the New York Times last week. "The chiefs in Haiti are
killing people. They burn down houses." The most frightening
development was the assassination of a well-known radio commentator,
Jean Dominique, who was one of the few uncensored voices in the country.
Dominique was gunned down by masked assailants outside the station where
he had worked for more than fifteen years. The free and democratic
elections promised by the President, Rene Preval, have been
postponed for months. Since March 29, ten prominent public figures have
been assassinated for political reasons. During a political riot
following the funeral of Dominique, the police reportedly stood by and
did nothing. Haiti is a land where law and order have degenerated. The
country's grip on democracy lies between tenuous to non-existent. Those
who flee fear political retaliation, not just hunger and poverty. Yet
the rule for Haitian refugees who reach the United States is
repatriation. Cubans who reach U.S. soil, however, are often granted
parole status, which allows them to apply for a work visa
immediately and to petition for permanent residency after only a year.
Haitians on Florida's beaches are almost guaranteed being sent home,
Cubans will almost certainly be allowed to stay.

More:
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg03519.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Florida's Haitian community fights to keep Sophonie in U.S.
May 4, 2000
Web posted at: 6:49 p.m. EDT (2249 GMT)

~snip~
In Miami, Haitian advocates held a news conference to present Sophonie, and her case, to the public.

"My name is Sophonie Telcy," the child told reporters.

A spokesperson for the INS said there are no plans now to remove Sophonie from the Bolivard home or to deport her.

But Haitian advocates promoting her case say the girl is living in legal limbo, and they complain that Sophonie's case has not gotten the attention given Elian, because Elian is Cuban.

Under U.S. law, Cuban immigrants are rarely deported and are given special privileges that Haitians and other immigrants don't enjoy.

Hastings thinks that should change.

"What we are hopeful of being able to do is level the playing field so that if your circumstances are the same, you are treated the same."

But Hastings is doubtful his legislation to make Sophonie a U.S. resident will pass, so his staff is considering other options and is setting up a trust fund to take care of a little girl -- alone in America.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/05/04/sophonie/index.html