First, Haiti is far from recovering from a series of natural disasters like the Jan. 2010 earthquake, Hurricane Matthew, as well as the preventable and curable cholera outbreak. Hundreds of thousands were killed during the Jan. 2010 earthquake, thousands more wounded, and seven years after thousands of Haitians are still living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) camp and calling makeshift tents and shellers their home. Last Oct., Hurricane Matthew devastated the most southern part of the country killed several hundreds, destroyed houses and the peasants’ livelihoods. Finally, but not least, the cholera outbreak introduced by the United Nations peacekeeping soldiers has already killed over 10,000 Haitians and sickened thousands more, and it has not been put under control.
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Read the entire letter HERE.
Protected Status for Haitians
June 4, 2017
To the Editor:
Re “59,000 Haitians Displaced by Earthquake Get Six Months More in U.S.” (news article, May 23):
The refusal of John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, to extend temporary protected status beyond six months for displaced Haitians reflects this administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.
Haiti is a textbook case for generous extension. Secretary Kelly’s statement ignored Hurricane Matthew’s vast destruction last October and the cholera epidemic, which has killed 9,700 and sickened at least 800,000 so far. Thousands of quake victims remain displaced; Haiti’s government requested at least 18 months.
A campaign that included bipartisan support from the Republican governors of Florida and Massachusetts and 100 members of Congress avoided termination of temporary protected status altogether, but the announcement bodes ill for Honduran, Salvadoran and other holders of that status.
Campaigning last September in Miami, Donald Trump called Haitian-Americans hard-working, creative and industrious and promised to be their “greatest champion.” Preparing to separate parents from their American-born children makes a mockery of that promise.
STEVEN FORESTER, MIAMI BEACH
The writer is immigration policy coordinator at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.