Boat People

The future of an inhumane but effective U.S. policy toward Haitian boat people rests on resolution of a legal issue from never-never land. It is whether folks who are not citizens are protected by U.S. law in international waters, or whether the U.S. may violate its law protecting them so long as it does so in those waters.From the September coup ousting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide until May 24, the Coast Guard picked up 36,980 Haitian boat people on the high seas. After hearings to determine their status as political exiles in fear of persecution, or mere economic refugees seeking prosperity, the Coast Guard returned 27,242 to Haiti and admitted most of the remaining 9,738 to the United States as political refugees.

When the vital interests of the big powers are not involved, can the international community ever muster the will to take collective military action against tyrants and aggressors who outrage humanity? The Persian Gulf war, when oil supplies were at stake, inspired brave talk about a "new world order." But since then, international resolve has been found wanting, not least because the United States has been unable to live up to its self-proclaimed leadership role.The twin tragedies of Haiti and Bosnia underscore the problem.

MIAMI -- President Bush's order to return Haitian boat people directly to Haiti without review violates international law and serves as a virtual death sentence for some Haitians, refugee lawyers said yesterday."

The trouble with Baltimore's juvenile court system is that there is not enough of it.The Japanese prime minister says Americans lack a work ethic? Well, he lacks tact. So there.What the Democrats really need is Hillary Clinton without Bill.We are shipping the Haitian boat people back whence they came. Native Americans are wondering why they didn't think of that for the English boat people of 1607.Bert Parks has gone to the great Beauty Pageant in the sky.The best thing to do with Eastern High School is move Lake Clifton High School to it and use the Lake Clifton campus for something else.

WASHINGTON -- Human rights lawyers will fly to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today to seek evidence that more than 5,000 Haitian boat people picked up on the high seas by U.S. Coast Guard cutters in recent weeks face unfair consideration of their asylum requests.The lawyers will argue in a Miami court Monday that the way the boat people are being screened by U.S. immigration officials prevents proper judgment on whether they are refugees with an internationally recognized right to haven outside their own country.

For the past week, Americans have witnessed with growing concern the spectacle of bedraggled refugees being plucked from vessels at sea by U.S. Coast Guard patrols and returned to the tender mercies of Haiti's bloody military dictatorship.Until the Bush administration backed off somewhat Monday by agreeing to house the refugees temporarily at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it was doing to the Haitians exactly what it had chided Britain for doing to Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong last year -- i.e. returning them against their will to a government bent on persecution and revenge.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration dispatched a military task force to the Caribbean last night to erect an emergency refugee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for thousands of Haitians who have fled the political turmoil in their -- country and whose exodus by boats to the United States has been blocked by the Coast Guard.Led by Brig. Gen. George A. Walls Jr. of the Marines, the military group, made up of hundreds of troops from all four military services, is to build a tent city at the American base on the eastern tip of Cuba to handle the more than 4,000 Haitians rescued at sea thus far and the hundreds more fleeing each day.A senior Pentagon official said yesterday's action could be open-ended and the size of the tent city was as yet undetermined.

Washington. - The decision to forcibly return Haitian boat people to their country, temporarily held up by a federal judge in Miami, underscores that the U.S. government is prepared to espouse policies for other countries it is not ready to live with itself. Further, it demonstrates once again that the U.S. government is highly selective in its decisions of who it will and will not be generous toward when it comes to emergency migration.The U.S. government, at the very highest levels, has opposed the involuntary return of Vietnamese boat people.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government expects the repatriation of Vietnamese boat people from Hong Kong to be carried out without the use of force, an administration official said yesterday."