[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 64 (Friday, May 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          LIFE IN LITTLE HAITI

                                 ______


                          HON. CARRIE P. MEEK

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 20, 1994

  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, a human rights tragedy is 
occurring in Haiti: a consistent campaign of terror by the ruthless 
regime in power against the Haitian people. As we all know and the 
administration has finally acknowledged, this is a political campaign 
of terror being waged against supporters of President Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide. It has intensified in recent weeks.
  As sponsor of H.R. 3663, the Haitian Refugee Fairness Act, I applaud 
President Clinton's commitment to stop the summary repatriation of 
Haitians fleeing their country by boat. However, it concerns me greatly 
that Haitians currently interdicted are being summarily returned to 
Haiti and afforded no protection at all.
  Mr. Speaker, these are human beings. Men, women and children with 
hopes and dreams. We must act in the most fair and humane way possible 
to ensure their safety and well-being. I am inserting in the Record a 
Washington Post article by William Booth that provides a glimpse into 
the lives of the many Haitians who have settled in Little Haiti in my 
district.

     `Work, Work, Work': In Little Haiti, Life Is Hopeful but Hard

                           (By William Booth)

       Miami, May 18.--As the Clinton administration dispatches 
     more ships to intercept a feared mass exodus of Haitian 
     ``boat people,'' a classic tale is unfolding here on the 
     streets of Little Haiti, where the nation's most unwanted 
     immigrants pursue their own version of the American dream.
       On the nightly news, Haitian immigrants appear as a 
     desperate and diseased people, walking barefoot down the 
     gangplanks of U.S. Coast Guard cutters, another burden to the 
     already overwhelmed courts and schools of South Florida. 
     Under pressure from state officials, President Clinton has 
     vowed to keep them out.
       But the negative image fades against the vibrant scenes of 
     life in Miami's Little Haiti. Here the streets are lined with 
     storefront churches and mom-and-pop businesses selling 
     medicinal herbs, beepers, mangoes and health insurance, while 
     members of a growing, economically mixed community of more 
     than 100,000 are filling adult education classes, opening 
     beauty salons and struggling to survive.
       ``Work, work, work, church, school and more work. That is 
     the life of Haitians in this country,'' said Tony Garcon, a 
     Haitian who came to Miami 14 years ago and now cooks at a 
     country club, a job that allows him to take vacations and 
     send his children to school back in Haiti, where he says 
     there is better discipline.
       During two dozen interviews, most Haitians and their 
     advocates said they believed Haitians would stop coming to 
     the United States if the political violence, repression and 
     economic stagnation in their homeland ended.
       Haitians described their lives here as hopeful but very 
     hard. Many are disturbed by the crime and discrimination, and 
     parents complain that their children are becoming ``too 
     American,'' meaning unruly and disrespectful.
       ``In almost all respects, the Haitians are the typical 
     immigrant ethnic community, people who really come to the 
     States for a better life, to get their kids an education, to 
     sacrifice for the next generation,'' said Alex Stepick, a 
     sociologist at Florida International University who has 
     studied the Haitian community for more than a decade.
       But the Haitians face unique obstacles too, Stepick said. 
     They are from the poorest country in the hemisphere; they are 
     black; and they are immigrating to a city where the balance 
     of power is shifting away from English-speaking Anglos and 
     toward relatively affluent Spanish-speaking Cubans and other 
     Hispanics.
       Thrown into the mix is the unease felt between many 
     American-born blacks and Haitians, seen in schoolyard fights 
     and in the fact that Haitians do not move into traditionally 
     black neighborhoods a few blocks away.
       Clinton administration and state officials say they fear a 
     mass exodus of Haitians to South Florida will swamp local 
     government, already struggling with past waves of migration. 
     Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) is using the federal 
     government to recoup the hundreds of millions of dollars he 
     says the state has spent caring for, teaching and 
     incarcerating illegal aliens, including the Haitians.
       But calculating the real costs--and benefits--of the 
     Haitians is not so easy. Many Dade County officials said they 
     are not sure how much the Haitians consume; nor do they 
     believe that the Haitians are any more ``costly'' than the 
     Nicaraguans, Dominicans, Colombians and Cubans who have 
     settled here.
       As a community, Haitians are praised by officials in Miami 
     as industrious and law-abiding. It is not unusual for Haitian 
     immigrants to work two and or sometimes three jobs for 
     minimum wage. Many attend school besides, either to learn 
     English or a trade.
       ``Our adult classes are absolutely crammed with Haitians,'' 
     said Henry Fraind, assistant superintendent of the Dade 
     County schools.
       Raymond and Clotilde Sylverne and their four children came 
     to Miami two years ago from Port-au-Prince, where Raymond 
     worked as an accountant and Clotilde as a government 
     receptionist. Because of their ties to the exiled government 
     of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, both were granted political aslum 
     here.
       After getting two months of free rent, the Sylvernes now 
     live in a spartan duplex on a tough street in Little Haiti. 
     They have been robbed twice. They want a better house, but 
     cannot afford one.
       Raymond works at night as a security guard for $5.20 an 
     hour. During the day, he takes five hours of English classes 
     at Miami-Dade Community College. He sometimes falls asleep in 
     class.
       ``But I keep going. My English must be good,'' he said. 
     ``Without English, nothing.'' A counselor has suggested that, 
     after he improves, he should seek training in health care, 
     perhaps as a medical technician.
       Clotilde works at a children's day care center for $4.50 an 
     hour and takes free English classes at night. The two see 
     each other in passing.
       ``Tired, tired, all the time,'' Clotilde Sylverne said. The 
     couple laughed when asked if they had been to Disney World in 
     Orlando; they have neither the time nor the money.
       Two of their children go to Toussaint L`Ouverture 
     Elementary School, where 80 percent of the pupils are 
     Haitians. One son will go a magnet school next year.
       The Sylvernes get $159 a month in food stamps and Medicaid 
     for their children. They have used Medicaid once in two 
     years.
       As soon as they earn more money, Raymond Sylverne said, his 
     family will stop taking public assistance. ``It's no good,'' 
     he said, ``It's for poor people.''
       The Sylvernes live in the middle of Little Haiti on a 
     dilapidated side street behind Notre Dame d'Haiti, the large 
     Catholic church that serves the Haitian community and holds 
     services in Haitian creole.
       The history of Haitians in Dade County is brief. When the 
     first recorded boatload of immigrants detected by the U.S. 
     Immigration and Naturalization Service arrived in 1963, they 
     were sent back to Haiti. By 1981 there were between 50,000 
     and 70,000 Haitians. Today, there are more than 100,000 
     reports Oliver Kerr of the Dade County Planning Department.
       Kerr said recent patterns of settlement show Haitians are 
     moving into more affluent areas north and west of Little 
     Haiti. They are also moving to Homestead, the agricultural 
     area hardest hit by Hurricane Andrew, where they work in 
     construction and landscaping and on vegetable farms, 
     displacing migratory Mexican labor. More and more Haitians, 
     many of them middle class, are moving to Miami from New York, 
     Boston, Chicago and Canada.
       While some Haitians rely on food stamps and Medicaid, 
     social workers say that many seem reluctant to take public 
     assistance and often view it as a dead-end.
       Dade County officials say they do not know exactly how many 
     Haitians seek help because they cannot ask the question of 
     ethnicity. But they said they believe that many Haitian 
     children and pregnant women seek medical care at county 
     clinics, where they must either have Medicaid or pay from $8 
     to $50 for their visits.
       Officials have often warned that Haitians could overwhelm 
     the school system, but of the 307,000 students in Dade 
     County, only 7,000 are Haitian-born. The principal of 
     Toussaint L'Ouverture Elementary said only about 75 of the 
     1,200 students need intensive English instruction.
       The language problem, however, is more severe at middle and 
     high schools, where many Haitian students who recently 
     arrived in Miami--the ``just-comes,'' as Haitians call them--
     must learn English and often struggle with their other 
     classes.
       Danielle Romer, the program coordinator of An Nou Koze, a 
     Haitian-help hot line, said that among the biggest problems 
     she hears about are Haitian parents frustrated by unruly 
     teenagers who become too Americanized.
       ``They keep sending them back to Haiti to go to school,'' 
     Romer said. ``I don't think it's right. But in Haiti, kids 
     don't talk back to their parents.''
       Like the Cubans who came before them, many Haitians live in 
     an immigrant enclave and socialize mainly with other 
     Haitians.
       In Little Haiti, it is possible to buy Haitian Prestige 
     beer at L'Unique Minimarket; eat griot and lambi at 
     Restaurant BeBe; listen to Haitian merengue at Les Cousins; 
     monitor one of the dozen creole radio programs; and worship 
     in a church where the liturgy is in creole.
       But unlike the Cubans, whose middle class and elites fled 
     the island in the early 1960s after the ascendancy of Fidel 
     Castro, the Haitians did not arrive with money or 
     organizations. Nor have they benefited from the almost $1 
     billion in aid that the federal government funneled to the 
     Cubans in the decade after their arrival.
       To work, Haitians have to learn English and often some 
     Spanish. And they must leave the enclave and compete with 
     others for jobs.
       In the last few years, the number of home-grown Haitian 
     civic clubs, business associations and advocacy groups has 
     exploded, and the leaders of the Haitian American Chamber of 
     Commerce say that more than 350 Haitian businesses are 
     operating in Dade County.
       Still, for the average Haitian in Miami, the immigrant's 
     story is still about sacrifice. ``We are tired, tired, 
     tired,'' said Raymond Sylverne. ``Sometimes all we want to do 
     is go to sleep and have some dreams.''

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