June 30, 2005

NEW YORK CITY/WASHINGTON – Haitians in the United States desperately need Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to spare them from being sent back to their crisis-ridden country. That is the message of a campaign being launched this week by the global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) and five other groups.

The campaign builds on these groups' June 7 conference in Washington, D.C., at which they examined the deepening crisis for Haitians and set Temporary Protected Status as their top priority for follow-up. For CWS, the campaign is "set in the context of a multi-pronged program of support for the Haitian people, who are mired in chaos and political uncertainty," said the Rev. John L. McCullough, CWS Executive Director, New York.

Church World Service has a longstanding presence in Haiti, working with ecumenical and grassroots partners to provide emergency food and medicine along with micro-credit opportunities to help families meet basic needs and send their children to school. "And through our Miami and Washington, D.C., offices, we have been vigilant advocates for just treatment of Haitian asylum seekers and detainees," McCullough said.

Even as the United States is warning its own citizens not to travel to Haiti, it continues to return Haitians "to a country destabilized by political turmoil, armed conflict, a high rate of kidnapping, environmental disaster, high unemployment, and massive starvation," said the Rev. Joe Roberson, CWS Immigration and Refugee Program Director.

It is exactly for such situations that U.S. law permits the Secretary for Homeland Security to "provide TPS to aliens in the United States who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of an ongoing armed conflict, the temporary effects of an environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions," he said.

TPS would permit Haitian nationals to remain in the United States for 18 months and to qualify for work authorization, assuring their safety until security is restored in Haiti.

The U.S. State Department has ordered the departure of its non-emergency personnel and their families from Haiti, and on May 26 warned Americans "of the potential for spontaneous demonstrations and violent confrontations between armed groups." The warning cites "the absence of an effective police force in much of Haiti; the potential for looting; the presence of intermittent roadblocks set by armed gangs or the police, and the possibility of random violent crime, including kidnapping, car-jacking, and assault."

With five armed factions loyal to competing political parties, "everyone's a target," said the Very Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir, Dean of the Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church of Haiti, among speakers at the June 7 conference.

Philadelphia attorney Thomas M. Griffin, who led an independent team to Haiti in November 2004, showed graphic photos as he shared the team's findings of "a hurricane of violence" in which "gunfire crackles, once bustling streets are abandoned to cadavers, and whole neighborhoods are cut off from the outside world. Gangs, police, irregular soldiers, and even U.N. peacekeepers bring fear.

"Haiti's security and justice institutions fuel the cycle of violence. Summary executions are a police tactic," the team found. "Haiti's brutal and disbanded army has returned to join the fray. The injured prefer to die at home untreated rather than risk arrest at the hospital. Those who do reach the hospital soak in puddles of their own blood, ignored by doctors. Not even death ends the tragedy: bodies pile in the morgue, quickly devoured out of recognition by maggots." Search keywords "Haiti Investigation" at http://www.miami.edu/ for the team's report.

Bill Frelick, Director of Amnesty International USA's Refugee Program, reminded the gathering that a key principle of refugee protection is "nonrefoulement," that is, not returning refugees to where their lives or freedom will be endangered. "How can President Bush, at a time that it's clear that people fear persecution, that lives are in danger, seeking asylum, return Haitians to Haiti on a blanket basis," Frelick asked.

Selena Mendy Singleton, Executive Vice President of TransAfrica Forum, described the Forum's "One Standard Campaign," which seeks an end to such discriminatory U.S. policies as requiring Haitians interdicted at sea to call out their request for asylum (the so-called "shout test"), hasty on-board credible fear interviews, mandatory detention for those who pass that hurdle, and prompt deportation of all who fail at any point in the process. See http://www.transafricaforum.org/ for more information.

The "Conference on the Deepening Crisis for Haitians" reiterated concerns expressed at a CWS-sponsored "Haiti Migration Crisis Conference" in Washington, D.C., in 2003. This month's conference drew more than 75 participants and was co-sponsored by Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, World Relief, Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and TransAfrica Forum, all partners in the campaign for TPS for Haitians.

The conference was endorsed by 14 members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Ilieana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who sent a written statement of support, and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who stopped by the gathering. Waters urged the United States to "use its influence with the interim government of Haiti to ensure that the interim government releases all political prisoners, respects human rights and postpones elections until violent gangs and death squads have been disarmed and security has been restored."

Another endorser was U.S. Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), who in late May 2005 introduced the Haiti Compassion Act in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 2592). Currently in the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, the legislation would make Haitian nationals eligible for Temporary Protected Status. "To return a Haitian national back to Haiti is not only morally unjustifiable, but poses a severe threat to their personal safety," Hastings said.

As a first step in its campaign, Church World Service is urging its constituents to write to President George W. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to ask them to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the United States. CWS also is urging members of the House Judiciary Committee's Immigration Subcommittee to support introduction of the Haiti Compassion Act. Click "Take Action" at http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigration/ for more information.

The six groups participating in the TPS campaign also are seeking meetings with the National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. State Department to express their views.

Church World Service