[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 165 (Thursday, September 23, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5097-H5098]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          DO BETTER FOR HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, as the Member of Congress who represents 
the Virgin Islands, the only congressional office within the English-
speaking Caribbean, the plight of my Haitian brothers and sisters is 
very close--not just the ones presently enduring egregious and unfair 
treatment at the U.S.-Mexico border, but our brothers and sisters in 
the nation of Haiti itself.
  The crisis unfolding before our eyes at the border is woefully 
symbolic of our Nation's inconsistent and superficial response to the 
reoccurring calamities in Haiti specifically and the Caribbean 
generally.
  The nation of Haiti faces a tremendous, ongoing crisis: the recent 
natural disasters, including a major earthquake, tropical storms, and 
hurricanes; the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; health insecurity; 
the assassination of a Prime Minister and the accompanying political 
instability; gang violence; along with large-scale deterioration of 
infrastructure; and poverty.
  As we watch our fellow human beings seeking a better life, we need to 
ask ourselves: Do they deserve the dignity of listening to their story, 
understanding their desperation, and working to find sustainable, long-
term solutions to the problems that cause tens of thousands of people 
to leave their country, live in abject and hostile poverty in South 
America, and make the dangerous trek to try to come to America?
  I believe, and I think some of you do as well, that our Haitian 
neighbors deserve that, and that, in some ways, we owe them that, and 
that it is even in our own self-interests.

[[Page H5098]]

  We must remember that Haitians fought with us in the American 
Revolution. They sent troops to be at our side. Then, in 1825, 20 years 
after they received their own independence, the United States agreed 
with France that they, as a new independent nation, should be forced to 
pay back the slave owners of France, who, they believed, needed 
reparations for lost income from slave labor. Until almost 1940-
something, the people of Haiti have been paying that money back. In 
today's dollars, that would be over $20 billion that this small island 
nation has paid to the people of France for their freedom.
  Imagine if we had been forced to pay England for our own 
independence.
  America has significant trade agreements and economic support with 
our neighbors to the north and the south, Canada and Mexico. However, 
when it comes to our third border, the Caribbean, that becomes an 
absolute afterthought, if they are thought of at all.
  America wants these nations to be stable and support them at 
multinational forums but lacks the forethought to engage them as 
partners in the first instance. We intervene in political instability 
without meaningful engagement in civil society.
  Hurricane relief and support for resilience, vaccination support, 
support for trade and educational alternative energy partnerships, 
infrastructure investments, those are the things that Americans should 
be engaged in at the first instance so we do not have what we have at 
the border happening now.
  China, of course, is all through the Caribbean, giving lasting and 
meaningful investments there and demanding support from the Caribbean 
nations at the U.N., the Organization of American States, et cetera.
  It is well-researched fact that rural infrastructure investments can 
lead to higher productivity, employment, and economic opportunities. 
Solid infrastructure powers business, encourages trade, provides much-
needed protection for countries from the unpredictability of a natural 
environment, all things that Haiti is missing to date.

  Substantively, the U.S. has neglected to develop meaningful, 
substantive trade relationships in Haiti and the larger Caribbean that 
could help them and help us. We need to do better.

                          ____________________