Haitian Refugees

President Bush is expected to sign an order banning foreign ships that do business with Haiti from entering United States ports. This follows his decision to return Haitian refugees to their homeland without giving them a chance to make a case for political asylum. The administration says the people are fleeing poverty, not political persecution. Critics say the U.S. is creating a "Caribbean Curtain" that does the same to Haitians as the Berlin Wall did to East Germans.The Evening Sun would like to know what you think.

Howard Community College's Marie Jean came to New York in 1984 as an 8-year-old Haitian immigrant, lost both parents within a year of arrival, and after frequently being denied food by foster parents, she relished attending school because, as she says, "That was the only place you knew you were going to eat. " Her life story reads like a stroke of misfortune. In 1992, Jean was involved in an automobile accident that left her in need of more than three dozen surgeries. She required rehabilitation and needed to relearn how to read and write.

WASHINGTON -- The number of Haitian refugees picked up by U.S. patrol vessels declined sharply yesterday, the Coast Guard reported, prompting officials to speculate that the Clinton administration's new restrictions on asylum-seekers may be working.Coast Guard officials said the service encountered only 146 Haitians yesterday on three small boats, one of the smallest daily totals since June 16, when the Clinton administration expanded its facilities for processing Haitian refugees aboard ships.

Could you imagine a country so cruel and intolerant that it would deport undocumented immigrants from Haiti to their island home in the wake of the devastation there? President Obama's recent decision to grant temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians ensured that the U.S. is not such a place. The widespread death and destruction in Haiti has clearly struck a chord in Americans' hearts. Last weekend's celebrity-filled telethon raised $57 million, and total U.S. giving has already exceeded an unprecedented $569 million as of Thursday thanks in no small measure to both wall-to-wall television coverage and Web sites, text messages and other advances of modern telecommunications.

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations will soon send a special envoy and a large group of advisers to assist the Clinton administration in its new policy of granting interviews to asylum-seekers from Haiti, U.N. officials in Geneva said yesterday.As part of the effort, the world organization will try to persuade other countries in the Caribbean to allow the United States to bring refugees ashore to conduct the hearings, said Cheseke Dessalegn, director of the Americas bureau in the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

For three years, Jennie Smith lived in a village of mud huts in Haiti, teaching people how to stay healthy. And in turn, she says, they taught her how to live without money or modern conveniences: sharing their food, teaching her their language and showing her how to cook on an open fire.So when the opportunity arose to work as a Haitian interpreter, helping the INS screen refugees seeking asylum at Guantanamo Bay, Ms. Smith enlisted. It would be her way to give something back to the nation whose people had treated her like family.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused yesterday to slow down its schedule for dealing with Haitian refugee policy to give President-elect Bill Clinton more time to ponder his own approach.By a vote of 7-2, the court rejected a plea, from lawyers for refugees, to put the legal dispute on hold until Mr. Clinton gets a chance to carry out his campaign pledge to change Bush administration policy.President Bush's 6-month-old policy of picking up fleeing Haitians at sea, and taking them back to their homeland without any review of their pleas for asylum, is under a legal challenge before the court.

MIAMI -- For advocates of Haitian refugees, President-elect Bill Clinton's announcement that he plans to temporarily continue a Bush administration policy of the summary return of Haitian boat people falls just short of an outright betrayal.For weeks, refugee advocates who have urged a more compassionate treatment for Haitians fleeing their country havespoken almost giddily of their expectations of dramatic policy changes."Only three weeks ago, they were promising that whatever was announced would be to our satisfaction," a leader of one human-rights group based in New York said of the assurances by Mr. Clinton's advisers.

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations High Commissioner fo Refugees has drafted an ambitious proposal for countries throughout the Western Hemisphere to grant temporary asylum to Haitian boat people.The high commissioner is trying to take advantage of President-elect Bill Clinton's campaign promise to "stop the forced repatriation of Haitian refugees" even as U.S. immigration officials make plans to carry out the Clinton policy.In a confidential memorandum given to the Clinton transition team and to the State Department, High Commissioner Sadako Ogata and her staff said Mr. Clinton's inauguration Jan. 20 would create an "opportunity to fashion a humane and effective response" to the Haitian refugee crisis.

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives, in a symbolic protest against the Bush administration, voted last night to suspend for six months the deportation of almost 7,000 refugees detained on a U.S. naval base.The administration, which won a legal battle last week to force theHaitians home, is expected to veto the measure. It passed by a vote of 217 to 165, not enough to override a veto.In the past month, the U.S. Coast Guard has returned nearly 6,600 of 15,800 Haitians detained at Guantanamo, Cuba.

NEW YORK -- The United States is the world's leader in protecting refugees, yet there is one group of refugees that we treat differently from any other -- Haitians. U.S. policy toward them is distinctly unfair and discriminatory. For years, the U.S. government has feared an influx of Haitians to our shores and has gone to great lengths to ensure that very few of them reach our country. The Haitian elections scheduled for Feb. 7 likely will further destabilize the country and result in increased violence and persecution and more refugees fleeing toward the United States.

NEW YORK - Violence is worsening in Haiti by the day, and several boatloads of Haitians fled in the last few months to the United States seeking haven, only to be intercepted on the high seas by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned soon after, giving the Haitians onboard little chance to present their asylum claims. Although there has not been a major outflow of Haitians, the United States continues to implement needlessly harsh measures against Haitian refugees, singling them out for what amounts to discriminatory treatment.

WASHINGTON -- Panama's president-elect, a stalwart in the political party that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega controlled until U.S. troops ousted him in 1989, is suddenly the darling of official Washington.President-elect Ernesto Perez Balladares says he would allow up to 10,000 Haitians to stay in temporary havens in Panama after he takes office Sept. 1. The Clinton administration thought it had a deal with Panama's incumbent president, Guillermo Endara, to take in the boat people. But Mr. Endara, who was installed by U.S. troops after Noriega's downfall, abruptly withdrew his offer this month, leaving the White House strategy in shambles.

Our guy in Panama won't take Haitian refugees after all, which means that instead of invading Haiti we do Panama over again.Elect American Joe and get drinks on the house at American Joe's!

WASHINGTON -- The number of Haitian refugees picked up by U.S. patrol vessels declined sharply yesterday, the Coast Guard reported, prompting officials to speculate that the Clinton administration's new restrictions on asylum-seekers may be working.Coast Guard officials said the service encountered only 146 Haitians yesterday on three small boats, one of the smallest daily totals since June 16, when the Clinton administration expanded its facilities for processing Haitian refugees aboard ships.

The operative question is whether the Clinton administration is maneuvering or just blundering into an invasion of Haiti.The preferred answer would be neither of the above. For his own sake, and the nation's, it would be better if the president continues to zig and zag without directly confronting the consequences of a feckless policy.Ever since Mr. Clinton castigated predecessor George Bush for his "cruel" and "inhuman" practice of returning Haitian refugees on the high seas forthwith to their homeland, he has been in a box of his own making.

Our guy in Panama won't take Haitian refugees after all, which means that instead of invading Haiti we do Panama over again.Elect American Joe and get drinks on the house at American Joe's!

MIAMI -- The mood in Little Haiti just northwest of downtown Miami went from bad to worse yesterday.Haitian refugees and advocates already were smarting after President-elect Bill Clinton announced Thursday he would uphold an executive order by President Bush calling for all Haitian refugees to be summarily returned to their violent, depressed nation.Their anger increased yesterday after hearing of a U.S. plan to establish an unprecedented barricade of boats around Haiti's shore to make sure would-be boat people stay on the island.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has won a six-month reprieve before he confronts what may be inevitable -- that only military force can restore democratic rule to Haiti.By agreeing to allow U.S. screening of Haitian refugees, Jamaica and the British-ruled Turks and Caicos Islands have provided the United States with a safety valve to prevent any rush of Haitian refugees from sailing to Florida.At the same time, the president's special envoy, former Pennsylvania Rep. William H. Gray III, is spearheading an effort to squeeze Haiti's ruling military clique and its wealthy supporters economically.

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations will soon send a special envoy and a large group of advisers to assist the Clinton administration in its new policy of granting interviews to asylum-seekers from Haiti, U.N. officials in Geneva said yesterday.As part of the effort, the world organization will try to persuade other countries in the Caribbean to allow the United States to bring refugees ashore to conduct the hearings, said Cheseke Dessalegn, director of the Americas bureau in the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.