[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 53 (Thursday, May 5, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 5, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
HAITI
Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, at any point the managers of the bill
wish to proceed, I will certainly yield the floor so that we might
proceed. But in this gap in the proceedings, I wish to make a statement
on Haiti. Of course, others have done that over the past weeks.
I address it from a little different aspect. Obviously, the situation
in Haiti has been deteriorating, and that deterioration has severely
accelerated in recent weeks. We read of these attacks by armed Aristide
supporters on military outposts and of soldiers retaliating by
indiscriminately shooting people on the beach and in boats. At least a
dozen persons have been reported killed over a previous weekend. Press
reports describe the hacked and mutilated bodies of Haitian citizens
lying in the streets and alleys, and we read of rampant smuggling and
profiteering by the military and its supporters. It is now very clear
that General Cedras and the other military leaders have no intention at
all of complying with the Governors Island agreement.
I do support the administration's interdiction policy. I supported
the policy when the Reagan administration instituted it in the 1980's,
I supported it when the Bush administration broadened it in the 1990's,
and I continue to support the Clinton policy today. It is the only
rational and sensible--but not politically correct--method of dealing
with illegal immigration from Haiti under all of the present
circumstances.
I believe it is most unwise to bring into the United States the 406
Haitians who were rescued from a wooden freighter near Florida on
Friday, April 22, on the same day we returned another boatload to
Haiti. And according to news reports, we allowed another boatload to
land yesterday. We must certainly be consistent if we expect
interdiction to be effective. It is not fair, in my mind, nor is it
conducive to a sound policy, to bring some of the boat people to the
United States and return others to Haiti. Our policy must be
comprehensible and understandable. If we screen some of the boat people
at sea or in the United States, then we should screen all of them at
sea or in the United States.
Mr. President, I have supported, and continue to support, the
interdiction policy because without it hundreds of thousands of
Haitians, fleeing social and economic turmoil in Haiti, would try to
make their way to the United States. Many would die on the voyage. Many
more would reach Florida. Such a heavy flow of unauthorized aliens into
the United States would add to the economic burden of immigration which
Florida already claims to be unbearable. And it would, I surely
believe, further seriously erode public support for a historically
generous immigration and refugee policy.
However, I do certainly acknowledge that it is difficult to defend
our Haitian policy in the face of this country's wholly uneven and
ragged record with regard to refugees. The Refugee Act of 1980, which
was crafted by our good colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy--
one of the first projects that he and I became involved with in our
work in immigration and refugee and asylum, a continuing labor--
contemplated a case-by-case examination of each applicant for refugee
status in order to determine whether or not that person had a well-
founded fear of political persecution.
You cannot be a refugee or an asylee unless you have a well-founded
fear of persecution based on race, religion, national origin, or
membership in a political or social organization, period. We are not
talking about economic refugees or political refugees of some other
order.
Despite the clarity of the refugee law, we annually admit
approximately 50,000 persons from the former Soviet Union, who are
presumed to be refugees simply because they are members of specific
religions. We accept nearly every person who can make it to the United
States from Cuba, no questions asked, simply because Cuba is a
Communist country. We admit scores of thousands of southeast Asians who
are treated as refugees not because they have fled political
persecution but in most cases only because they have relatives in the
United States. And then we offer green cards to tens of thousands of
Chinese students who were in the United States at the time of the
Tiananmen Square incident and claim they can never safely return home
again, although many thousands of them return to China for visits
during their school vacations.
Our refugee policy is simply ``gimmicked'' to death. And that does
make it highly difficult to defend the Haitian boat person policy,
although I still do believe it is the correct policy under all the
circumstances.
If the President should determine that a current interdiction policy
does not provide a reasonable opportunity for a person with a
credible--credible--claim of asylum to be heard, what else could be
done? I believe the three most likely alternatives are these:
One, we could allow Haitians to enter the United States to present
their asylum claims. In my opinion, this should be considered only as a
very last resort. Such a policy would not be in the national interest.
It would encourage hundreds of thousands of Haitians to attempt illegal
entry into the United States, and it would do great harm and damage, in
my opinion, to public support for our current, most generous
immigration and refugee policy.
A second alternative would be to resume screening of the Haitian boat
people aboard the Coast Guard cutters which rescue them. That was our
policy for many years, and it worked well. Despite its detractors, the
fact is a U.N. asylum expert visited the cutters, observed the
screening process, and found it acceptable. However, this process does
not lend itself to processing a large outflow of boat persons. It
became necessary to discontinue it after the boat flow increased so
dramatically following the OAS embargo which was instituted several
weeks after Aristide was overthrown.
A third alternative would be to establish a refugee processing
facility ``somewhere in the region,'' to which all rescued boat people
could be taken for screening.
Now, such a processing facility should be operated by the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees to ensure a credible screening process. Those
who are found not to have a well-founded fear of political persecution
should be returned to their homeland, while those who do present a
well-founded fear of persecution if they were to return could be
resettled in third countries or allowed to remain in the processing
center until it is safe to return. If third-country resettlement were
required, the United States should accept its fair share of these true
refugees. And this alternative, of course, is the most desirable
solution to the problem. It should be pursued without delay.
Both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration have
``dropped the ball'' on the establishment of a regional processing
center. Both administrations claimed that no country in the region was
willing to have such a facility established in its territory, and that
was, under the previous administration, and is, under this one, ``a
copout.'' What these two administrations were really saying is that
they were not willing to expend the foreign policy capital so clearly
needed to convince one or more of our neighbors in the region to
provide the location for a refugee processing facility.
There is a very good reason why such a processing center should not
be established on U.S. territory. We have demonstrated over and over
again in this body and in the Congress that there is no such thing as a
``temporary'' status or a ``temporary'' stay in the United States.
Every time we have allowed any group of undocumented aliens or
``refugees,'' particularly a group from a Western Hemisphere nation, to
remain in the country ``temporarily,'' we have found they stay
permanently.
We just do not have the stomach to carry out our ``temporary safe
haven'' policies with the use of enforced departure when it is safe for
the aliens to return. We will not deport people after the ``horror''
has ended. And all of those persons and, of course, their legal counsel
take advantage of these policies, and you may be darned sure of it. In
fact, the workload for American immigration lawyers in this area is, as
we say in the trade, ``significant.''
Nicaraguans who came here in the 1970's during the fighting between
the Samoza forces and the Sandinistas are still in the United States.
After free elections were held in their country, Salvadorans who poured
into the United States in the 1980's and who were given temporary
protected status in this country remain right here, although the
fighting has ended and the democratic elections have been successfully
held in their homelands.
The Poles who sought ``temporary'' protection here during the
repression of the solidarity movement remain riveted in this country
although their original leader, Lech Walesa, has now been President of
that country for years. How can this be? I believe that all fair-minded
observers must agree that ``temporary'' safe havens have just not
worked, you cannot have fled Poland during the time when they were
crushing solidarity and stay now that the leader of solidarity is
leading the country. If you were really a refugee, you would go back.
I have not heard of anybody that wanted to go back. In El Salvador
they came here because five factions were going in and chopping each
other to pieces. And now that is all over. You have democratic
elections. Have one of them gone back? Not one.
Remember, we gave them the temporary status because we said, ``We
know you need this, and when conditions improve in your country, we
know that you will go back like you said you would.'' Watch. None of
them go back. And we do not deport anybody. That is not the way we are.
That is against our heritage.
But let us not keep fooling ourselves. Nicaraguans have free
elections. Did they go back? Not one.
So, the Bush administration was able to put together a broad
international alliance to deal with Kuwait. It seems to me they could
have done a broad international alliance to deal with the processing
center in that part of the world, and I think Warren Christopher and
company have some crucial work to do in this hemisphere, for a volatile
situation is boiling away only a few hundred miles off the Florida
coast.
As I say, it was extraordinary what the Bush administration put
together, the broadest international alliance ever known in history to
deal forcefully with Saddam Hussein's misadventure in Kuwait. But that
administration was not willing to have its own State Department make a
diplomatic effort necessary to establish an offshore refugee processing
center in the Caribbean-Central America region.
The Clinton administration has surely done no better. It as well is
unwilling to spend the diplomatic ``chits'' required to get one or more
of our neighbors to provide the location for a processing center.
I have very reluctantly supported the administration's determination
to return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti to head the Government there.
I disagree with those who say we must send Aristide back in order ``to
restore democracy in Haiti.'' Democracy was nearly as difficult to find
there during the Aristide administration as it was during the previous
cruel administrations in Haiti.
President Aristide was ``freely elected,'' and that is, in my mind,
the only justification for further efforts to return him to his office.
Aristide showed us he was not a democrat during the months he presided
in Haiti. When a freely elected Parliament would not cooperate with his
administration, he used the mob to bully Haitian parliamentarians.
Aristide encouraged his followers to employ ``necklacing'' to
intimidate his opponents, and indeed, his followers did execute members
of the Haitian military in this manner, an horrid activity which, I
believe, had much to do with precipitating the coup which resulted in
his exile. Perhaps President Bush is right and we should discontinue
our effort to return him.
We are now considering the imposition of a full blockade of Haiti. I
doubt that blockade will be effective. To be successful we would have
to have the full cooperation of the Government of the Dominican
Republic, which we have not had thus far with the current lesser
embargo. Nevertheless, a blockade is preferable to military action, and
I believe we should first pursue that option.
However, if the full blockade is not effective in bringing down the
current military government, I believe we should consider military
action. I believe humanitarian intervention to curb extreme human
rights violations will support military action. It will not always be
easy or ``clean,'' as we learned so dramatically in Somalia, but it is
an option available to us.
But again, before any military action can be considered, the Clinton
administration must do its diplomatic work with a vigor and purpose we
have not yet seen in this hemisphere--or in the world. The President
must also do his political work on the Hill. As the Republican leader
reminded us earlier today, President Clinton must first convince the
Congress that military action is in the national interest. Any use of
troops must have bipartisan support.
While it is likely necessary for U.S. troops to provide the initial
intervention, those troops must be withdrawn as soon as possible,
certainly within 6 months. A U.N. or OAS force must then be prepared to
move in--and stay in--until democracy has been established in Haiti,
democratic institutions built up, a responsible police force developed,
and an effective judiciary established. This might mean 2 years, or 5
years, or 10 years--however long it takes--for we must assure that
whatever force replaces the American troops is committed to remaining
until the job is done.
Mr. President, I believe that the United States will have to provide
sufficient financing of an operation as I discussed for the people of
Haiti and for the people of the United States.
I firmly believe it would be far less expensive than allowing the
current situation to deteriorate further. The situation demands that
the United States and the international community take action now. We
must lead, and we must act decisively without further dalliance and
delay.
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