Führer Trump immigration agency wants to kick 50,000 Haitians out of the US...

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stringer bell
stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/20/trump-agency-temporary-protection-haitians-united-states/100709428/
Trump immigration agency wants to kick 50,000 Haitians out of the USA

President Trump's immigration agency is recommending that the U.S. end temporary protections by next January for 50,000 Haitians allowed to remain in the United States following a series of natural disasters that have crippled the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation.

James McCament, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, concluded in a letter last week that conditions in Haiti have improved enough to end "temporary protected status" for Haitians, according to a copy of the letter obtained by USA TODAY.

The Obama administration first offered temporary protection to Haitians following the devastating 2010 earthquake. The protection has been extended several times, the latest set to expire July 22. McCament proposed an extension to January to allow for a "period of orderly transition" but said the program should not be extended beyond then.

A final decision on the Haitians' fate rests with Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. Spokesman David Lapan said Thursday that Kelly has not yet made that decision.

The recommendation upset Republican and Democratic members of Congress who have pleaded with Kelly to extend the protections. Last month, 10 lawmakers from Florida, where many Haitians reside, wrote to Kerry outlining recent disasters that have slammed Haiti.

That started with the 2010 earthquake that displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed government buildings throughout the country. Haiti was struck by Hurricane Matthew six months ago, killing 1,000 people and crippling ongoing reconstruction work. All the while, Haiti has dealt with the worst cholera outbreak in its history, which has killed 9,000 people and continues to plague the country.

"Haiti is still struggling to recover from two major natural disasters that killed more than 200,000 people. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and right now it’s unable to support the roughly 50,000 Haitians that are currently receiving protected status here in the U.S.," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said Thursday. "The U.S. should be focused on helping Haiti recover, not sending people back to a country that can’t support them."


Temporary Protected Status is offered to foreign nationals, including legal residents and undocumented immigrants, who cannot return to their home country because of armed conflict, a natural disaster or "other extraordinary and temporary conditions."

The U.S. is currently giving protection to those from 13 countries: El Salvador, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The recommendation is a sharp departure from the immigration agency's report in December, when President Barack Obama was still in office.

"Many of the conditions prompting the original January 2010 ... designation persist, including a housing shortage, a cholera epidemic and limited access to medical care, damage to the economy ... political instability, security risks, food insecurity, and environmental risks (as exemplified by the impact of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016)," the report said.

That prompted then-Secretary of State John Kerry to ask the Department of Homeland Security to extend protections for Haitians because "certain extraordinary and temporary conditions related to the 2010 earthquake continue to exist."

In the new report, agency acting director McCament said he tried to solicit a recommendation from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson but received no response.


McCament said Haiti has not completely recovered from the earthquake, but enough progress has been made. He said the Obama administration started sending some Haitians home in 2016.

The conclusion came as a shock to Esther Olavarria, a senior counselor at Homeland Security under Obama who helped institute the first protected status for Haiti in 2010. She said if Kelly follows through on the recommendation, "it would be a travesty."

"What they're trying to argue is the temporary aspect of this has ended and we've returned to, 'Haiti as it was, always poor,'" she said. "But that's just not the case."

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  • Plutarch
    Plutarch Members Posts: 3,239 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    This seems stupid and unconstitutional.

    I don't think the U.S. federal government should be responsible for Haiti, but humanitarian efforts can be made in a reasonable and constitutional manner.

    And whether Obama was right or not, his promises to those people should be honored to a good extent.
  • brown321
    brown321 Members Posts: 1,439 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    7figz wrote: »
    But no that can't be, Trump cares about foreigners.

    Anyway, inb4 "but Hillary's foundation didn't do anything for Haitians. They stole all the money.... Pay to Play... EMAILS !!!"

    If there was anyone Haitian who voted for this fraud, it's reflection time.

    My homegirl let her white husband convince her to vote for him. If she say anything about this I'm going to let her have it.
  • Max.
    Max. Members Posts: 33,009 ✭✭✭✭✭
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  • OmegaConflict
    OmegaConflict Members Posts: 39,030 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    All Haitians are criminals
  • Like Water
    Like Water Members Posts: 5,265 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    All Haitians are criminals

    Go up to one, say it to his face, and please record the interaction.
  • playboy buddy rose
    playboy buddy rose Members Posts: 2,844 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    All Haitians are criminals

    Ou se inyoran
  • The Lonious Monk
    The Lonious Monk Members Posts: 26,258 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    This dude is busy doing a bunch of nothing. How will getting rid of 50K Haitans help the country?
  • Copper
    Copper Members Posts: 49,532 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    This dude is busy doing a bunch of nothing. How will getting rid of 50K Haitans help the country?

    You sure dont wanna look at it from the other side?
  • The Lonious Monk
    The Lonious Monk Members Posts: 26,258 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    Copper wrote: »
    This dude is busy doing a bunch of nothing. How will getting rid of 50K Haitans help the country?

    You sure dont wanna look at it from the other side?

    Sure, do you know what the other side is?
  • Idiopathic Joker
    Idiopathic Joker Members, Moderators Posts: 45,691 Regulator
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    All Haitians are criminals

    Ou se inyoran

    "Oh the irony."?
  • SimplyKrys
    SimplyKrys Members Posts: 763 ✭✭✭✭
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    Copper wrote: »
    @SimplyKrys entire boarding house bout to be deported

    I doubt that will be happening. My bf was born here and the rest of his family are legally here.
  • 2stepz_ahead
    2stepz_ahead Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 32,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    SimplyKrys wrote: »
    Copper wrote: »
    @SimplyKrys entire boarding house bout to be deported

    I doubt that will be happening. My bf was born here and the rest of his family are legally here.

    you need a non creole speaking chicken frying long dicking American dude to open your eyes.
  • stringer bell
    stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    https://apnews.com/740ed5b40ce84bb398c82c48884be616
    AP Exclusive: US hunts evidence of Haitian immigrant crimes

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has begun hunting for evidence of crimes committed by Haitian immigrants as it decides whether to allow them to continue in a humanitarian program that has shielded tens of thousands from deportation since a devastating earthquake.

    The inquiries into any criminal histories of Haitian immigrants were made in internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services emails obtained by The Associated Press. They show the agency’s policy chief also wanted to know how many of the roughly 50,000 Haitians enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status program were taking advantage of public benefits, which they are not eligible to receive.

    The emails don’t make clear if Haitians’ misdeeds will be used to determine whether they can remain in the United States. The program is intended to help people from places beset by war or disasters and, normally, the decision to extend it depends on whether conditions in the immigrants’ home country have improved. But emails suggest Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who will make the decision, is looking at other criteria.

    Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said Tuesday that criminal history and other information requested by policy chief Kathy Nuebel Kovarik won’t be used to make a final decision. Lapan said the questions were asked so that Kelly could have a fuller understanding of who is participating in the program.

    But Lapan’s explanation doesn’t seem to reflect the apparent importance placed on the questions by Kovarik, the Citizenship and Immigration Services head of policy and strategy, in repeated emails to her staff.

    “I do want to alert you ... the secretary is going to be sending a request to us to be more responsive,” Kovarik wrote on April 27. Addressing the inability of agency employees to gather the requested information about wrongdoing, she said: “I know some of it is not captured, but we’ll have to figure out a way to squeeze more data out of our systems.”

    The request for criminal data for an entire ethnic community is unorthodox. The law doesn’t specify it should be a consideration for Temporary Protected Status, and the government has never said it would use criminal rates in deciding if a country’s citizens should be allowed to stay under this program. Introducing new criteria is likely to cause consternation among law-abiding Haitians who may feel they are being penalized for the wrongdoing of others.

    But the request fits in with President Donald Trump’s tough-on-immigration focus that is a core demand of his political supporters. He has enhanced efforts to arrest people living illegally in the United States and has sought, unsuccessfully so far, to suspend refugee arrivals and temporarily block visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. He has accused those in the U.S. illegally of fueling criminality.


    It is unclear if the agency is asking such questions about other recipients of the temporary protection, including immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador.

    Cheryl Little, executive director of Miami-based Americans for Immigrant Justice, said the emails show that Trump is looking to deny benefits to Haitians instead of considering their eligibility for special consideration. She said her Haitian clients with Temporary Protected Status already were terrified that their benefits would be revoked.

    “Most of them have lived here upward of 15 years. They work hard. They pay taxes. They have U.S. citizen children. They contribute greatly to our economy,” she said.

    Trump courted the votes of Haitian-American citizens in the critical state of Florida. Campaigning in Miami’s Little Haiti in September, he said, “The Haitian-American community deserves our gratitude and our respect, and I want you to know, you have my respect.”

    Temporary Protected Status is intended to be just that, temporary. The Obama administration included Haiti in the program shortly after the January 2010 earthquake killed as many as 300,000 people, destroyed much of the capital and caused widespread damage in the southern part of the Caribbean nation. Since then, Haitians have been eligible to stay regardless of how they entered the United States — legally or illegally — as long as they were residing here before Jan. 12, 2011.

    Eligibility for Haitians has been repeatedly extended and is to expire July 22. The Trump administration must decide by May 23 so that it can provide 60 days’ notice about its plans.

    USCIS’ acting director has recommended letting the program expire. In an April 10 memo first reported by USA Today, James McCament said Haiti is no longer in crisis despite its poverty and political instability. However, he wants to allow the Haitians to stay until January so they have time to make arrangements to voluntarily leave. If they don’t depart the U.S. by then, the government could move to deport them.

    Still, Homeland Security’s Kelly has the final word.

    The emails inquiring about misdeeds were sent from April 7 to May 1.

    In her first week on the job, Kovarik, the policy chief, asked officials how often Haitians with temporary status have been convicted of “crimes of any kind,” and how many have taken advantage of public benefits. She asked for that information in four separate emails. She also asked how much money Haitians have sent home and how often they’ve traveled back to Haiti. Frequent travel could suggest improved conditions.

    “Please dig for any stories (successful or otherwise) that would show how things are in Haiti - i.e. rebuilding stories, work of nonprofits, how the U.S. is helping certain industries,” Kovarik wrote on April 28. “We should also find any reports of criminal activity by any individual with TPS. Even though it’s only a snapshot and not representative of the entire situation, we need more than ‘Haiti is really poor’ stories.”

    The emails were largely directed to non-political employees. They responded by saying much of the data was not available or was difficult to find in government records systems.

    Maria Odom, a former Citizenship and Immigration Services ombudsman in the Obama administration, said she was puzzled by the inquiries about criminal activities. She said the government already checks criminal histories of applicants and denies protections to those who’ve broken U.S. laws.

    “You should not craft a humanitarian policy based on the few,” Odom said.
  • 2stepz_ahead
    2stepz_ahead Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 32,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    do o need to say it?
  • VIBE
    VIBE Members Posts: 54,384 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    Trump isn't running anything. He's literally the Idiot Puppet. They just simplify everything for him and he just goes w the flow. Dude is a charlatan.
  • mc317
    mc317 Members Posts: 5,548 ✭✭✭✭✭
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  • rickmogul
    rickmogul Members Posts: 1,961 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    Gonna be interesting.