[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 30 (Wednesday, March 10, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2548-S2550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. GRAHAM of Florida:
  S. 2187. A bill to amend the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act 
of 1998; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Mr. President, seven years ago, I introduced 
the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 1998 (HRIFA). I 
introduced HRIFA after Congress enacted the Nicaraguan Adjustment and 
Central American Relief Act (NACARA). NACARA enabled Nicaraguans and 
Cubans to become permanent residents and permitted many unsuccessful 
Central American and Eastern European asylum applicants to seek another 
form of immigration relief. At the time, Haitians were suffering brutal 
and widespread political persecution by a ruthless dictatorship. Yet 
lawmakers opted to exclude Haitian asylum seekers from the NACARA 
legislation.
  HRIFA became law with bipartisan support and reversed this grave 
inequity in U.S. immigration law. It allowed Haitians who had fled 
political turmoil in their country an opportunity to adjust their 
status like the opportunity we granted to refuges from other countries. 
The legislation has been beneficial and nearly 11,000 Haitians have 
adjusted their status and become legal permanent residents of the 
United States. However HRIFA contained several flaws that undermine the 
original intent of the legislation. That is why today I am introducing 
the HRIFA Improvement Act of 2004. I would like to thank my friend 
Senator

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Mike DeWine for taking the lead in co-sponsoring this bill and for his 
continued support and commitment to fairness in our immigration policy.
  First, this legislation corrects an oversight that disqualified 
Haitian refugees who entered the country with falsified papers. Some 
Haitian refugees, like many who have fled repressive governments, used 
falsified documents to flee their country when it was impossible for 
them to get travel documents from their dictatorial government.
  If you look at other immigration legislation, it is clear that the 
exclusion of Haitian refugees who came here with falsified documents is 
an oversight. NACARA allowed refugees from a long list of countries, 
including Guatemala, El Salvador, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and a 
number of others, to adjust their status to legal permanent residence, 
even if they entered the country with fraudulent documents.
  As result of this oversight, many families and up to 5,000 American 
children face the possible deportation of a spouse, father or mother 
who has worked for a decade or more to build a life and a family in the 
United States. There have been media reports, heart-rending stories, of 
parents facing the choice between forever leaving their American-born 
children in their safe communities and schools in the United States or 
taking them back to a strife-torn Haiti where their parents risk 
political violence and persecution.
  I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an Associated Press 
story from December 29, 2003, called ``Flaw in Law threatens 
Deportation for Haitian Refugees.'' The piece tells the story of Rigaud 
Rene, a Haitian political activist now living in Miami. Mr. Rene faces 
deportation because he fled Haiti in 1994 using doctored documents and 
is therefore not covered by HRIFA. Since coming here, Mr. Rene has 
learned English, held down a job and earned his GED degree. He also 
married and has a one and a half year old American-born son.
  If Mr. Rene is deported, he will be forced to take his U.S. citizen 
son with him or leave him here without any means of support. It is a 
solomonic choice that Mr. Rene should not have to make, especially 
because his dilemma is the result of a simple oversight in the law.
  The difference between the way we treat Haitians and the way we treat 
refugees from other nations is inconsistent and unfair. The elimination 
of this kind of inconsistency and unfairness was the primary motivation 
for the passage of HRIFA in 1998. Clearly, the exclusion of Haitians 
who entered with falsified documents was an oversight that must now be 
corrected.
  The second purpose of the Improvement Act is to respond to another 
legislative oversight that left Haitian children and dependents 
unprotected from ``aging out'' of HRIFA eligibility. HRIFA allows 
children and unmarried dependents of approved applicants to adjust to 
legal permanent residency. However, the Bureau of Citizenship and 
Immigration Services has taken much longer than was expected to approve 
the many applicants who had eligible children and dependents when they 
applied. As a result, many of those who would have been eligible had 
their parents or guardians been approved earlier have now ``aged out'' 
of eligibility or gotten married.
  Currently, these ``aged out'' individuals face the immediate risk of 
deportation. Their ineligibility is a result solely of administrative 
delays and is neither their fault nor the intent of HRIFA. The 
Improvement Act addresses this unforeseen injustice by permitting these 
individuals to apply for adjustment of status or move to have their 
cause reopened.
  Finally, the HRIFA Improvement Act of 2004 also ensures fairness by 
extending the protection from deportation to applicants under this Act. 
This is consistent with the protection extended to applicants under the 
1998 HRIFA legislation.
  All those who come to the United States fleeing political persecution 
and violence deserve to be treated fairly and equally. This country is 
built on this principle of justice and we should give everyone, 
regardless of his or her national origin, an equal opportunity. That is 
what this legislation intends to do.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Associated Press, Dec. 29, 2003]

         Flaw in Law Threatens Deportation for Haitian Refugees

                            (By Ken Thomas)

       Nearly a decade after leaving Haiti, Regaud Rene ends each 
     day with a prayer. He gives thanks for his wife and young son 
     and their life in America--and prays that their time together 
     will endure.
       Rene, a former political activist on the island, faces 
     deportation following a lengthy legal battle with immigration 
     authorities.
       He says deportation would devastate his family, forcing him 
     to take his 1\1/2\-year-old American-born son to Haiti and 
     leave behind his wife. He also will lose a job that helps him 
     send about $300 a month to support family members in Haiti.
       ``Some people pray to Jesus for miracles,'' Rene said 
     during a recent interview. ``They are not more special than 
     me. So I hope that God can help me, too.''
       Rene, 41, is one of about 3,000 Haitian migrants ensnarled 
     in what activists call a flaw in a 1998 law to help provide 
     permanent residency--called green cards--to illegal aliens 
     from Haiti who lived in the United States before 1996.
       The bill didn't include waivers for Haitian migrants known 
     as ``airplane refugees'' who used forged documents to flee 
     revengeful abuses and killings in the impoverished island 
     after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first 
     freely elected leader, was deposed in a 1991 coup by Gen. 
     Raul Cedras.
       In Rene's case, immigration officials have maintained that 
     the altered documents make him ineligible to live here 
     legally because he committed fraud to enter the country.
       But local activists contend that pro-Aristide Haitians 
     arriving by air had to use altered documents to escape 
     possible harm in Haiti because the U.S. Coast Guard was 
     interdicting refugees who came by sea and returning them.
       ``All these people knew they were being looked for,'' said 
     Steven Forester, a senior policy advocate for the Haitian 
     Women of Miami, a nonprofit organization. ``If you're being 
     looked for by a regime that's chopping people's faces off, 
     you don't get into a boat.''
       Those who worked on the 1998 Haitian bill said the 
     ``airplane refugees'' were not supposed to be left out. Paul 
     Virtue, who served as general counsel at the former INS in 
     1998-99, said he thought ``it was an oversight that they 
     were excluded.''
       ``I don't think anyone really thought about the problem 
     that people would face who came by aircraft,'' Virtue said.
       The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees 
     immigration, declined comment on Rene's case. But Dan Kane, a 
     department spokesman, stressed that every case is judged on 
     the individual merits of an applicant's arguments.
       Rene initially sought asylum when he first entered the 
     United States in 1994 but was ordered deported by an 
     immigration judge for using a forged passport. His appeal was 
     pending when Congress passed the 1998 law to help Haitians. 
     Rene sought a green card under the new law but his claim was 
     rejected in July 2001.
       He appealed the decision and Tuesday his case was sent back 
     to be reheard by an immigration judge. But Aristide's return 
     to power has weakened his argument in the past and his lawyer 
     cautions that Rene could be deported at any moment.
       ``It's very desperate. They could pick him up today,'' said 
     Clarel Cyriaque, a Miami lawyer handling Rene's case.
       Rene tried to get a green card through his wife, Sonie 
     Octalus, who came here in 1996 and is a legal permanent 
     resident, but the family failed to demonstrate deporting him 
     would result in an ``extreme hardship.''
       U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat, introduced 
     legislation in October to expand the Haitian law to include 
     those who arrived by air and to prevent the government from 
     deporting anyone with a pending application. But Meek said it 
     faces an uncertain future.
       Meek said ``the only real flicker of light'' would come if 
     the Bush administration embraces Homeland Security Secretary 
     Tom Ridge's recent suggestion of support for an amnesty for 
     illegal immigrants.
       Thousands of Haitians have applied for green cards under 
     the 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act. But the 
     majority of the cases have yet to be adjudicated. A U.S. 
     General Accounting Office report in October found that more 
     than 11,000 of the 37,851 applications have been approved.
       Rene was an active Aristide supporter when the Haitian 
     priest ran for president in 1990. He led 300 Aristide 
     supporters in his hometown of Le Borgne and joined the pro-
     Aristide National Front for Change in Democracy. He passed 
     out leaflets and photos supporting Aristide.
       A month after the coup, Rene said he was visited at his 
     home by five members of the military. The men, who were 
     carrying revolvers, threatened him and pushed him around, 
     according to court documents. Rene then went into hiding for 
     two years, staying with a friend in the northern city of Cap-
     Haitien.
       ``I was scared to go back to Le Borgne. If I go back to Le 
     Borgne, anything could happen,'' he recalled.
       He fled Haiti for the Bahamas by boat in early 1994 and 
     then used forged documents to fly to Miami International 
     Airport in May 1994, months before Aristide was returned to 
     power.

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       Rene has built a new life in America, learning English at a 
     local Catholic church, working as a deli clerk at a Miami 
     Beach grocery store and taking night classes to earn a GED 
     degree.
       Rene married Octalus in February 2001. Their son, Rikinson, 
     was born the following year. The family lives in a small one-
     bedroom apartment, where a small bed sits in a cramped 
     living room cooled by a white box fan.
       If Rene is deported, the couple will send Rikinson with him 
     because Octalus doesn't drive, has no other relatives in the 
     area and speaks limited English. But the decision has been 
     wrenching.
       ``If they send him to Haiti, it's like telling me I might 
     as well go to Haiti, too,'' Octalus said, through a 
     translator in her native Creole.
       The couple also wonders how they'll support their families 
     in Haiti if Rene is deported. Rene sends about $300 a month 
     to support two other children, two sisters and his mother. 
     His wife sends $500 a month to six sisters on the island, 
     paying their rent, school tuition and clothing.
       The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates 
     Haitians living in the U.S. send between $700 million to $800 
     million to Haiti every year. Forester, of Haitian Women of 
     Miami, worries about the impact on families in Haiti who lose 
     financial support when relatives are deported.
       ``If they really want to send a message not to flee, what 
     they're doing by deporting these people is causing the very 
     migration outflow that they say they're trying to prevent,'' 
     Forester said.
       A man of faith, Rene says his hopes have been reduced to 
     prayer. Prayer, he quips, is another part of the American 
     experience.
       ``In God We Trust,'' Rene said with a smile. ``That's what 
     the Americans say.''
                                 ______