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Obama Orders Diaspora Haitians Deported
Announced earlier in December, The New York Times noticed on December 19 in Kirk Semple's article headlined, "Haitians in US Brace for Deportations to Resume," saying:
"The Obama administration has been quietly moving to resume deportations of Haitians for the first time since" the January quake. US diaspora ones aren't amused, saying "an influx of deportees will only add to the country's woes," never mind the injustice.
After Congress established Temporary Protection Status (TPS) in 1990, Washington granted 260,000 Salvadorans, 82,000 Hondurans, and 5,000 Nicaraguans protection, then extended it on October 1, 2008. It lets the Attorney General grant TPS to undocumented residents unable to return home because of armed conflict, natural disasters, or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions."
Past recipients also included Kuwait, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Montserrat, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Angola. Haitians never got it, yet granting it is the simplest, least expensive form of aid so Port-au-Prince can concentrate on its crisis, while diaspora Hatians help through remittances back home.
No matter. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began rounding up Haitian immigrants ahead of resuming deportations in mid-January. According to ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzales, only those convicted of felonies or two or more misdemeanors, who've served their sentences, will be affected, "consistent with our domestic immigration enforcement priorities."
Founded in 1996 in Haiti, Alternative Chance is "a self-help peer counseling program....challeng(ing) the injustice of US immigration policies and assist(ing) immigration attorneys in fighting against deportation."
On December 16, it expressed shock about announced deportations. Pre-quake, it saw firsthand how criminal deportees are treated "in Haiti's DCPJ police administrative building and in other police stations or prisons in and around" Port-au-Prince. Uncharged in Haiti, "their detention is illegal under Haitian law and international standards."
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