wfn.org | Grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians, Campaign Urges

["CWS News" <awalle@churchworldservice.org>]

Grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians, Campaign Urges

June 30, 2005, NEW YORK CITY/WASHINGTON, D.C. - 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
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
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
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.

-end-

Media contact: Ann Walle, CWS, 212-870-2654; awalle@churchworldservice.org