Preval asks for protected status for Haitians in US

Here is a letter that you can write to President Bush that would be a postive help to Haiti. It would not cost the US anything. It would be a tremendous help to Haiti. Please consider doing so. I ask this particularly of my Quaker friends who have Peace and Social Concern Committees who undertake regular letter writing campaigns.

Help for a neighbor
May 10, 2008

President Bush has received an urgent plea from this hemisphere's poorest country. Haitian President Rene Preval wants the U.S. to put a temporary stop to the deportation of Haitian immigrants. Preval's case for help is exceptionally strong.He seeks something called "temporary protected status."

It is a designation that the U.S. grants from time to time to immigrants who cannot be sent home safely because of political upheaval, widespread violence or natural disasters. Haiti's great tragedy is that it qualifies on all three counts.United Nations peacekeepers have been assisting Haiti's government since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was displaced by a coup in early 2004. That same year, Hurricane Jeanne, an earthquake and rain-driven floods killed more than 5,000 people and left thousands homeless. Hundreds of people died in Hurricane Dean and Hurricane Noel in 2007. Haiti's cities are plagued by so much kidnapping, drug trafficking and violent crime that the State Department warns Americans to stay away.Hence, Preval's request.

In essence, he's saying, allow Haitians in the U.S. to stay while we grapple with these disasters.Temporary protected status is provided only for up to 18 months, unless U.S. officials decide it should be renewed. The designation would affect an estimated 20,000 Haitians who are here illegally or whose legal residency is about to expire. The protection would apply only to those who are here now, so it would not create an incentive for more illegal immigrants to come here. Immigrants from Somalia, Burundi, Honduras and Sudan have temporary protection. Nicaraguans have had it since 1998 because of Hurricane Mitch. El Salvadorans have had it since earthquakes hit in 2001. There has been no flood of new immigrants from those countries because of this humanitarian gesture.That's what this would be for Haiti: a humanitarian gesture. It would also extend an economic benefit for the bereft nation.

Haitians in the United States sent an estimated $1.2 billion in remittances to their home island in 2007, according to the World Bank. That was almost a fourth of Haiti's gross domestic product and almost 10 times the assistance that the nation received from the U. S. Agency for International Development.

President Bush should grant President Preval's request. He can do so through executive action. No congressional approval is necessary. It would be a modest gesture for the U.S., but a great help to Haiti.

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Quaker Woman Arrested in Canada

It is a fine Quaker tradition to go to jail for conscience sake. Recently, a Quaker from Pennsylvania, was arrested at the Canadian border for transporting 12 Haitians, who had been living in New Jersey without proper papers. She, Friend Janet Hinshaw- Thomas, will stand trial under the laws for human trafficking.

Now I don't yet agree with Friend Janet's action since I believe that nations have a right to determine their own immigration laws. The United States takes in one million immigrants a year, more than the rest of the world combined. But there are laws, there is a long waiting line.

Friend Janet might change my mind on this issue. I am open to that.

In addition, I would love to see the entire Haitian diaspora return to Haiti and help fix it. Estimates are that Haiti has lost 50 percent of its educated population. Imagine how bright these Haitians who just entered Canada are. They had already arrived in the United States and then found an agency, Friend Janet's, to help them get to Canada. Quebec doesn't need more educated Haitians - Haiti does.

But this is just an opinion.

My heart just sings to see a Quaker, or anyone, following their convictions to the end. It is a breathtaking event. Powerful, exhilarating for all involved.

I am pleased that I have met some other courageous people, who are willing to put their lives on the line, people who went to Palestine and accompanied children to school, a good friend who spent 6 months in prison for her convictions on closing the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, which specializes in teaching torture.

I have spent my time in jail - 40 days in Great Britain for speaking out against the war in Ireland back when Bobby Sands was fasting to death in Long Kesh. Years later, in Vieques, I was arrested as a Quaker with the support of my Meeting. Both were wonderful opportunities for my spiritual growth. This time I chose exile over imprisonment as I knew that I could not stay inside the United States and hold back my tongue and my feet during the current atrocities.

So my heart is with you, Friend Janet. I applaud you. I salute you.

Bravo!!

Hispaniola and Racism

Spaniards under Christopher Columbus established the first successful colony in the Americas in 1496 on the eastern side of Hispaniola. By 1511, having wiped out the indigenous Taino population, they began the importation of Africans as slaves. This was a century before colonization of North America with the importation of slaves into Jamestown in 1607.

In 1697, Spain ceded the western third of the island to France, who created their most productive economic colony with the use of African slaves. Noted for working the slaves to death and relying on constant new importations of new Africans, the French created a massive racial imbalance. By 1789 there were an estimated 500,000 African slaves to an estimated 32,000 French and French Canadian plantation owners. In 1804, the slaves revolted and formed the first Black Republic, Haiti.

Henri Christophe, became President of Haiti in 1807. He writes of the French:

"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?"

Political control of both sides Island went back and forth in a series of battles: Spain, France, Haiti, Spain, Haiti, Spain, independence, US occupations, dictatorships, democracies, overthrows, "imperialist interference', democracies.

The Dominican Republic defines itself historically as "white, Christian, Spanish." Despite the fact that the Taino indians were wiped out in the first 50 years of European occupation, and the Dominican Republic is 76% mixed race, most Dominicans are identified on their national identity cards as "indios".

Immigrants into the United States from the eastern side, the Dominican Republic, are classified under the US census as "Latinos"- theoretically marked as an ethnic identity -while immigrants from the western side, Haiti, are classified as "black" - a racial identifier.