[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          THE TRADEGY IN HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, no one can ignore the front-page pictures, the 
photographs, in the Washington Post this morning. They are pictures 
here under the headline ``Haiti's Tiny Victims.''
  It talks about youngsters, malnourished or starving, and dying in 
Haiti. This is one of those pictures you just cannot close your eyes 
and make it go away. The scene comes back, and actually the scene in 
reality down there from firsthand observers is even worse than these 
pictures depict.
  I know that there is a Harvard report that came out a few months ago 
from the Harvard International School of Public Health noting that 
1,000 Haitian children a month, 1,000 children a month are dying as a 
direct result of the United States embargo on Haiti. How many do you 
suppose are dying today now that we have intensified this embargo and 
made it even more stringent?
  We cannot disavow the responsibility for these innocent victims.
  I heard Bill Gray, the President's special assistant on Haiti, last 
night on CNN after we got home saying, ``We aren't really causing any 
harm. Haiti is a poor country. Gee, they are having trouble there. This 
isn't our fault.'' Well, baloney. That is not true. We are causing 
this, and we have got to recognize that fact and accept the 
responsibility.
  The facts are the relief flights are not getting in. The 
administration is holding them back, and the reason they are is because 
the military is getting ahold of the materials that are coming in, the 
medicine and the food, and selling them on the black market, and 
profiting and making themselves even more comfortable. Those relief 
flights are not going. They are not getting through because of the 
embargo.
  We were feeding a million people in Haiti, 1 million people were 
counting on us for food and medicine. Those flights are not going 
through.
  What are those folks doing? I will tell you what they are doing, they 
are starving and dying from disease. We are causing an economic 
catastrophe that is literally driving people into the sea. I read from 
the Washington Post yesterday, ```There is nothing for us in Haiti,' 
say the Haitians. `The embargo is killing us one by one. So whatever it 
takes I am going, going into the sea.'''
  Despite Mr. Gray saying, ``No, no nothing we are doing here is 
causing a problem for these people,'' baloney, he is wrong, and it is 
painful and it is deadly. I am very deeply troubled. I am very deeply 
troubled, as you can tell, by the Clinton foreign policy. Driving 
innocent victims into the sea is not what America is about, and it is 
not what democracy is about.
  This Congress is complicit. We cannot escape our own accountability 
here. We are allowing it to happen. We endorse, by a very thin 
majority, a policy that is driving people into the sea, and it is 
wrong, and we all know it.
  The sanctions have destroyed a very weak economy that was there, and 
the military junta is still profiting. How long is this going to go on? 
How long are we going to cancel the relief flights? What are we doing, 
creating a pretext for invasion? Is that what this is about?
  Well, we have got another problem here. It is called the credibility 
at the White House. Bill Gray lost it with me on C-SPAN last night when 
I heard him say we are not causing a problem there, but there is more.
  Aristide calls Haiti a house afire. We, of course, have helped set 
the house afire by helping torch it with our economic sanctions, but 
more than that, then we have gone ahead and we have said to the 
Haitians, ``Look, come on out. There is a better life in America.'' We 
have created a magnet.
  We have now got a scene where people are literally floating out of 
Haiti on just about anything that will float. Our helicopters from the 
Coast Guard cutters are spotting them, sending the cutters to rescue 
them, and we have a tremendous number of refugees, because we have 
created an incentive for them to leave and an incentive for them to 
come. This is unbelievable. We have created this scene.
  Now, the problem is this, two out of three of those Haitians are 
going to be returned to Haiti. So they are not going to believe that we 
are real people, because we are telling them there is a better life, 
and we are sending them back to starvation.
  The real problem is another part of the magnet we have caused is we 
have changed the standards, despite Bill Gray's personal assurances to 
me and other Members of Congress, that we would maintain the standards 
for political asylumship, we now have a situation where 30 percent of 
those applying for asylum are being given asylum, and under the rules, 
traditionally that has been a 5-percent approval rate.

                              {time}  1040

  So we have not only deceived the Haitians, we are now in a position 
where we deceived Members of Congress because the rules have been 
changed even though we received assurances that they would not be.
  Who can you believe in the Clinton administration? They are now 
feigning surprise by all this number of refugees. Is it a wave or is it 
a surge? Well, it is neither. It is a costly mess, costly in terms of 
dollars for taxpayers and lives of Haitians.
  I do not know where we are doing this as a pretext for an invasion or 
not. I do not know whether we are doing it because the President needs 
votes for his domestic agenda. I have no idea why we are doing this 
stupidity. There is no threat to our national security to justify an 
invasion, and there are better solutions out there. The White House 
knows it, and I wish they would attend to those solutions and stop the 
starvation and killing that is going on in Haiti.

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