Category: Haiti

The Haitians are coming! Catholics will bring the kids

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update January 19th: This is one of our earliest posts on the Haitian refugee issue, see our whole new category here with many more recent posts.

Last night I reported that tens of thousands of Haitians illegally in the US have won the lottery—with the earthquake wrecking havoc on Haiti, they have been granted Temporary Protected Status meaning they will stay here indefinitely.

Now comes news that we are going to bring thousands of Haitian refugees to Florida!

From The Orlando Sentinel:

American Red Cross officials Thursday said more than 4,000 Haitian refugees could be coming to Central Florida soon.

The WFTV.com report shows the organization plans to bring the Haitian refugees, as well as more than 45,000 U.S. nationals living in Haiti, to Jacksonville and then divide them among other Florida cities, including Tampa, Miami and Orlando.

Earlier today I heard a discussion on the Laura Ingraham show about lifting the lid on the refugee issue.  Laura was interviewing a former (I believe former) ambassador to Haiti who said if the Obama Administration gives the slightest sign of agreeing to take more Haitian refugees, he predicted “millions” would jump into the sea in an effort to get here.

Governor Crist, not closing the door on the idea of taking in Haitian refugees, said it depends on the feds.  I think that means he wants to know how much money the federal taxpayer will put in the kitty to care for the impoverished refugees.

… Gov. Charlie Crist added that any plan to shelter Haitian refugees and U.S. nationals living in Haiti in several locations throughout Florida will depend upon the federal government.

Meanwhile Catholic Charities says it will bring “orphaned” children.  Does that mean they will do this with private charity or with a per-head payment from the US State Department just as they do with their normal refugees?

Catholic Charities and other South Florida immigrant rights organizations also are planning an ambitious effort to airlift thousands of Haitian children left orphaned in the aftermath of Tuesday’s horrific earthquake — a move mirroring Operation Pedro Pan in the 1960s.

“We will use the model we used 40 years ago with Pedro Pan to bring these orphans to the United States to give them a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future,” Catholic Charities Legal Services executive director Randolph McGrorty said Thursday at a news conference in the offices of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balrart.

With all the chaos, isn’t anyone worried that they will scoop up children who do still have living relatives but might have only become separated during the turmoil?  Wouldn’t it make more sense for Catholic Charities to establish some decent orphanages in Haiti for a year or so and try to find families of the supposed “orphaned” children.

There is more:

Warning of a Haitian exodus, here.

Temporary Protected Status for Haitians approved

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Temporary Protected Status confirmed in Wall Street Journal article today.

Update January 16th:  I think I read this wrong, here is a report from The Hill that says TPS for Haitians had not yet been decided!

That means that Haitians presently in the US can all stay for now.  From the New York Times:

The Department of Homeland Security said it was halting the deportations of Haitians back to the island “for the time being.” Refugee and immigration rights groups said the United States should grant temporary protective status that would allow Haitians who are now in the United States to stay here.

Here is more information on how the program works.  I previously mentioned temporary protected status regarding Liberians, here.   The Obama Administration did extend the time they are allowed to stay in the US.

Further information on TPS, here, at Center for Immigration Studies.

Jobs in Florida scarce for refugees, so what else is new

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is another of those older stories I’ve had kicking around in my queue hoping to find time to post on it.  It is an article lamenting the lack of jobs for refugees in South Florida.  I bet there are a lot of other South Floridians not working either with a state unemployment rate of 11.2%.

From the Sun Sentinel:

It’s never been easy for South Florida’s new immigrants to get their first job. Last year about 1,200 new refugees entered Broward County, many from Cuba, Haiti and Colombia. Many start off staying with relatives until they have the resources to get their own place.

A year ago, Youth Co-Op, which serves the tri-county area and has about 2,000 clients in Broward and Palm Beach counties, was able to easily place about 85 percent of them in jobs. Many found work in hotels, restaurants and the landscaping industry, among others.

Within the last six months, only about 65 percent of the agency’s clients have landed jobs.

In light of the economy, the state Department of Children & Families, which contracts out social services for refugees, lowered the placement standard agencies must meet from 65 to 60 percent. [Heck that sounds good compared to some places where we hear the employment rate is closer to 20%!]

[….]

Most refugees who are single qualify for a monthly cash stipend between $180 and $220 for their first eight months in the country, along with food stamps and other social services. There are no plans to extend the terms of that stipend, a spokeswoman with the office of refugee resettlement in Washington, D.C., has said.

I went to the stats because I wanted to know how many “refugees” were being resettled in Florida for the last few years.   In 2006 Florida took 2582 (1961 were Cuban), in 2007,  2691 (1818 Cuban), and 2008, 3723 (2698 Cuban).   These numbers do not put Florida at the top of the list for states receiving refugees, but I had read somewhere that Florida did get the most “refugees”.  I discovered that the refugee numbers on the normal charts do not tell the whole story.  

One needs to visit for example the 2007 Office of Refugee Resettlement Report to Congress to learn that in addition to the normal refugee numbers we take up to 20,000 Cuban and Haitian “parolees”  (called Havana Parolees) and in 2007 we took 17,294 Cubans.  Now that is for the whole country, but you can bet a large number of those ended up in Florida!

Bottomline, there are all sorts of programs bringing in “refugees” that put the number way above the supposed 80,000 cap for the year!   There are Havana Parlees, asylees from all over the world, and the Temporary Protective Status program, and others too probably!

Obama picks open-borders advocate for senior position at Homeland Security

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not unexpectedly President Obama has chosen a longtime advocate for bringing more immigrants to the US for a deputy assistant secretary at Homeland Security.  

According to the Colorado Independent:

Esther Olavarria, a Senior Fellow and Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, is Obama’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of homeland security for policy.

Olavarria, in particular, signals a major change for DHS.

Not only does she come from the progressive CAP, but she spent almost 10 years as counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees. Her work there included proposals on comprehensive immigration reform. Olavarria started her career as an immigrants’ advocate when she was a managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center; she has also been directing attorney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Pro Bono Project and staff attorney at the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.

Left out of this report is that she also previously worked for the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees).

Regular readers will remember that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is infamous for recently suggesting we airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US this year.   Because of her position at CAP’s Olavarria must have been behind that scheme.

What is the truth about HIV and refugees?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday the Washington Post published an opinion piece by Andrew Sullivan who says that all immigrants with HIV aids are barred from the US.     He begins “Phobia at the Gates”:

Twelve countries ban HIV-positive visitors, nonimmigrants and immigrants from their territory: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan and . . . the United States. China recently acted to remove its ban on HIV-positive visitors because it feared embarrassment ahead of the Olympics. But America’s ban remains.

It seems unthinkable that the country that has been the most generous in helping people with HIV should legally ban all non-Americans who are HIV-positive. But it’s true: The leading center of public and private HIV research discriminates against those with HIV.

HIV is the only medical condition permanently designated in law — in the Immigration and Nationality Act — as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Even leprosy and tuberculosis are left to the discretion of the secretary of health and human services. 

I am sure that last fall when we had our September Forum (see our whole category) in Hagerstown, MD about refugee resettlement that the State Department representatives told us the ban on refugees with HIV had been lifted by the Clinton administration.    Here is a post in which I mentioned the supposed lifting of the ban.   Now I’m wondering if it isn’t really lifted but just ignored by those admitting refugees to the US.

By the way, one of the flaws in Sullivan’s argument involves who pays for HIV treatment of immigrants.  He says they should be required to carry private health insurance.  That is not going to happen with refugees who get medical care gratus from local governments.

Take a look at the problems some county health departments are having with the cost of health treatment for refugees.  Ft. Wayne, IN (Allen County) comes immediately to mind.

Would treating HIV like any other medical condition cost the United States if such visitors or immigrants at some point became public dependents? It’s possible — but all legal immigrants and their sponsors are required to prove that they can provide their own health insurance for at least 10 years after being admitted. Making private health insurance a condition of visiting or immigrating with HIV prevents any serious government costs, and the tax dollars that would be contributed by many of the otherwise qualified immigrants would be a net gain for the government — by some estimates, in the tens of millions of dollars.

Sullivan does mention that immigrants with all other diseases including leprosy and tuberculosis are not legally banned.   A Somali refugee died of TB in a Tyson’s meatpacking plant in Emporia, KS last year—funny you never heard that reported in the mainstream media.

I would really like to know what is the truth about refugees with HIV.