[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8042]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          WELCOMING A STRANGER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
New York (Ms. Clarke) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, a few days ago, I received a 
letter from a third grade student at the Brooklyn Friends School and 
the Kane Street Synagogue Hebrew School named Elijah.
  Elijah wrote: At our synagogue, we learned that welcoming a stranger 
is an important mitzvah, and I know that my people were immigrants and 
sometimes refugees trying to find a new home in the USA. So it is 
important to me that we extend our welcome to refugees from Haiti.
  Elijah is right. The people of Haiti have suffered through numerous 
tragedies over the past few years alone. They have experienced a 
devastating and catastrophic earthquake, tragic cholera epidemic, 
ongoing food scarcity crisis, deadly hurricanes, and continued 
flooding.
  For these reasons, the Obama administration designated Haiti for 
temporary protected status in 2010, and redesignated it four times 
thereafter. However, Haiti's TPS designation will expire in July if the 
administration does not act immediately.
  That is why I organized with my colleagues of the Congressional Black 
Caucus and called for DHS Secretary John Kelly to redesignate Haiti for 
an additional 18 months of TPS.
  We also asked DHS to issue a new TPS designation that would include 
the tens of thousands of Haitians who are in the United States but are 
not covered by the existing TPS designation.
  The continuing humanitarian crisis on the ground in Haiti should make 
this an easy call. But news reports indicate that the acting head of 
USCIS, James McCament, is looking for evidence of crimes committed by 
Haitians to use as a pretext for ending Haiti's TPS designation. Such 
actions are part of the Trump administration's attempt to depict 
immigrants as criminals. They are also part of a flagrant effort to 
obscure the fact that TPS is based on the conditions on the ground in 
Haiti rather than the actions of some TPS beneficiaries here in the 
United States.
  I call on Director Kelly to ignore these misguided voices and instead 
listen to people like Elijah. Human decency demands that the Department 
of Homeland Security extend temporary protected status to all Haitians 
present in the United States prior to November 4, 2016, as the country 
continues to rebuild.

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