Throughout this difficult time, the Haitian government requested that the United States grant temporary protected status to Haitian immigrants. Bush considered the request for a few short months, before declining it and ordering further deportation of the Haitian immigrants.
To make matters worse, many of the Haitians deported are not criminals. Rather elderly, mothers, and people who have lived in the United States for years who have no where to go once in Haiti.
My question to Human Rights Human Wrongs, spring 2009, is should there be a sixth element to being qualified for asylum including environmental disasters that the government cannot protect its people against? If people starving in jails can gain asylum because their government is unable to feed them, shouldn't natural disasters count as well? Surely IJs and ICE attorneys would see this as too large a group etc. However, Haiti is the POOREST country in this hemisphere, there should be some loophole here. That is not to say that the U.S. should invite all of Haiti here for a vacation during the rainy season. But why send innocent people back into the dangers of Haiti? Perhaps President Obama can help change this unnecessary cruelty against our weakest nation on this side of the globe.
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The situation in Haiti is absoultely terrible. It is essentially a failed state. Though they may hope for help from the Obama government there is little that I feel can be done for them. What aid they get will be squandered, and their only real profitable businesses are illegal, it has become a hot spot for human trafficking. Until something can be done about their economy and leadership there is little hope for Haiti, the land is deforested and the soil is horrible, so their agricultural business is destroyed, and they have little other resources to live off of. If the Obama government really wants to help Hiti it will take a lot more than aid, it will have to be a serious re-tooling of their government and infrastructure.
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