[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.
[[Page S2550]]
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.''
______