Ho hum. It’s a year since a massive earthquake devastated Haiti and by all the news accounts this week, international aide did not pour into Haiti, Bill Clinton and George Bush were not successful in raising money to re-build the country and where is the Obama Administration? No where according to this article in the Boston Globe! Critics say the Obama US Citizenship and Immigration Services is responsible for not moving fast enough to give “deferred action” status to all those Haitians who got in here by hook or by crook after the quake and now want to stay.
By the way, the Obama Administration did make Temporary Protected Status available to all Haitians illegally in the US before the quake.
The people discussed in this article, got in somehow after the quake and live in limbo. Some got in through a need for medical treatment and don’t want to leave, others were probably snuck in across our borders with the help of NGO’s and now live in hotels or are homeless in Massachusetts (elsewhere probably too).
This is how the story in the Globe begins:
BROCKTON — The young schoolteacher fled Haiti after the powerful earthquake, the day she spent four terrifying hours pinned under a car and a pile of rubble. In Massachusetts, she found medical care to heal her grotesquely swollen leg, counseling to quiet her nightmares, and hopeful messages from the US government that it would help her start over.
But today, the one year anniversary of the quake, she is homeless, with no documentation to work or drive, and living in a Brockton shelter with her husband and two daughters, aged 3 and 2 months. She is among a flood of Haitians silently adrift across the United States. Many fled the horrific disaster, using visitor visas to enter the United States and stay with friends or relatives, hoping to stay, at least temporarily, to work and rebuild.
In April, a top federal immigration official said Haitians who fled the earthquake could apply for deferred action, a rarely used immigration benefit that could allow them to stay and work for a fixed amount of time. But hundreds of applications are still unresolved nationwide, and advocates say that many Haitians are still unaware that the option exists.
Because they are not permitted to work, many are becoming burdens on their families or finding themselves homeless, according to Catholic Charities and other advocates. In Massachusetts, some are reluctant wards of the state, which pays for food stamps, apartment shelters, or hotel rooms for destitute families.
“I just want to have legal status. I need to start over,’’ said the woman, who asked not to be identified because she has applied for deferred action and fears deportation.
No kidding, she and millions of others just want to start over in the US.
But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that favors tougher restrictions on immigration, said the Haitians should return to their homeland, because the visas were supposed to be for temporary travel. He pointed out that other nations in dire straits, such as Congo, do not receive special treatment.
If the truly charitable leaders of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities, World Relief, Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society can’t find it in their hearts to find private charitable money for all those they help get across the border, then maybe it is time for them to go home. Kind of makes you wonder if there really is a Cloward-Piven strategy to create chaos and bring down our welfare system—ultimately as well our form of government.