Florida Catholic | Haitians Need Protected Status

Haitians need protected status

Published: 03.07.08

I pray that our elected officials will choose to do what is just, merciful and morally right.”

My dear friends,

More than a week ago, I wrote a letter to President George W. Bush — and every member of Florida’s congressional delegation — urging our government to grant temporary protected status to Haitian immigrants in the United States.

I decided to write this letter to support a similar request made by Haitian President René Préval, and also in view of the grave humanitarian crisis that continues to envelop our neighbors in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

In my letter, I point out that our own State Department warns Americans against traveling to Haiti due to the “chronic danger of violent crime, especially kidnappings” perpetrated by criminal gangs. This travel warning cites “the lack of civil protections in Haiti, as well as the limited capability of local law enforcement” to deal with this criminal element.

Despite this knowledge, we continue to send Haitians back into that environment, regardless of whether they have minor children who are U.S. citizens. Those deportations force parents to make a horrific choice: abandon their children here or keep their families intact by taking them back to a place that our own State Department deems extremely dangerous.

My Dear Friends

Pope Benedict XVI writes in his first encyclical, “God is Love” (“Deus Caritas Est”): “Love is the light — and in the end, the only light — that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working” (No. 39).

With a love that brings radiant light, Catholics in the United States help to build parishes in many distant places through the collection for the church in Central and Eastern Europe. Your generous donations support seminaries, social service programs, youth ministry, pastoral centers, schools, church construction and renovation, and the spreading of the Gospel message through the mass media.

Your compassionate concern for the universal church brings Christ’s light to people and places once covered by a pall of darkness. Please spread the radiant light of love by generously supporting this collection.

Aside from the criminal violence, Haiti also is suffering from the violence of nature. Tropical Storm Noel’s torrential rains in October 2007 caused floods and landslides that killed 66 people and destroyed nearly 20,000 homes. The Haitian people still have not recovered from the destruction caused in 2004 by Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed 2,500 people and left 250,000 homeless.

As I pointed out in my letter, when the people of El Salvador endured a similar tragedy in 2001, the U.S. government saw fit to grant them temporary protected status.

It would not be difficult to do the same thing for Haitians.

Our immigration laws give the Secretary of Homeland Security the right to grant temporary protected status to any group of immigrants if he finds “that extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state make returning aliens to the state undesirable for humanitarian reasons” (Section 244[b][1][C]) of the Immigration and Nationality Act).

Haiti, sadly and unquestionably, is a nation beset by “undesirable … humanitarian” conditions. We are not talking simply about hunger and poverty and lack of health care — all of which characterize the lives of the majority of Haiti’s people. We are talking now about unpredictable and senseless violence, violence so alarming that President Préval has asked that U.N. peacekeepers be allowed to confront the criminal gangs that are terrorizing the residents of Port-Au-Prince.

There is no other way to say it: It is morally wrong to send people back to Haiti until living conditions improve significantly.

As we continue our Lenten preparation, let us remember that the people of Haiti have been undergoing their own version of Christ’s passion for more than two decades. Granting Haitians in the United States temporary protected status would allow us to ease their burden, in the same way that Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus carry the cross to Calvary.

I pray that our elected officials will choose to do what is just, merciful and morally right. I also pray that Haiti’s unbearable burden of rampant violence, political instability and grinding poverty will soon be lifted, so that the Haitian people here and on the island may, once and for all, experience the glorious liberation of Easter.

Haitians need protected status

My Dear Friends

Other Stories