Spectacle of sick, dying and starving people may turn hearts but immigration rules are tough

People of Haitian origin queue outside a Montreal immigration firm that promises to help accelerate the immigration process for those affected by last week's earthquake. (CBC)

With TV news showing us images of the poor in Haiti, law makers in the United States and Canada are being asked to step up the plate and allow more immigration.

In the past both countries have eased immigration quotas during times of international crisis. Often the annual quota each country has for immigrants is not changed, the government just allocates more to one country than normal.

Humanitarians argue the time is now to ease the rules. People are starving. Naturalized Haitians are literally jumping on planes for Haiti hoping to convince consular officials to let them take relatives back to North America.

There will likely be little work for them in Haiti, some say, and people are in dire straits now.

Others balance that with the amount of reconstruction that will create a construction boom unlike one Haiti has never seen before.

They say the place for Haitians to be is in Haiti, taking advantage of the money the US, Canada, Europe and the world will donate for reconstruction.

The fear is that Haitians will displace American and Canadian workers jobs and then eat up already over-extended budgets for social services. As one pundit put it “Send me your huddled masses” was a good ideal before the social safety net.

United States

The United States has a cap of 25,000 immigrants from Haiti per year. Relatives come first and there are approximately 55,000 already approved for immigration with 19,000 more in the queue. However, they have to wait until there is room under the annual Congressional quota. Estimates are it will take years to clear the back log.

“Still, Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that if the United States doubled for the next five years the 25,000 Haitians who have been coming to the United States annually, it would substantially increase the remittances sent back, providing critical help as the nation tries to rebuild. Such help streaming home to families is more reliable and more likely to be spent efficiently than the ebb and flow of foreign aid, he said. Abrams suggested that to satisfy critics of increased immigration, the United States could offset the influx of Haitians by temporarily slowing immigration from elsewhere.” Washington Post

Haitian children in desperate need of medical care are being fast-tracked into the US. That amounts to about 200 children according to reports. Some members of Congress and the Senate are pushing to have that changed, moving the number higher.

“Late last week, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said Homeland Security officials had told him the agency would grant “humanitarian parole” to about 200 severely injured Haitian children. Even after that, Nelson said, he got a late-night e-mail, with the subject line “HELP,” from a Miami neurosurgeon doing relief work, saying the U.S. Embassy in Haiti would not allow three critically burned children to be flown to a Miami burn unit. Nelson also said the State Department had issued a memo saying that a 17-year-old named Samantha, with a broken back and a father in Michigan, “would be ineligible to board an aircraft to the United States.” “Typical bureaucratic crap that needs to be cut through,” Nelson said in an interview.” Washington Post

The US is accelerating the granting of protected status so that Haitians resident but not allowed to work in the US can work for up to 18 months while their immigration status is sorted out.

Canada

In the week after the Haitian earthquake, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper was quite compassionate to the plight of Haitians.

Harper offered to match private relief donations up to $50 million. Since then he has upped Canada’s contribution to meet the current total of about $67 million in private donations. The total government commitment to Haitian relief is $153 million.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenny was less than heart-warming with his focus on potential negative effects of immigration. “We’re going have to use due diligence and what we call risk management to assess people who are applying to come to Canada,” he told CTV’s Question Period Sunday speaking about criminals slipping into Canada. (Toronto Sun)

Opposition leaders called on the government to be compassionate. “We’re saying let’s step up and do something exceptional in this case,” said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

“Here we are with a crisis where the longer the folks have to stay in Haiti,” said Jack Layton NDP leader “and not be with their extended families here, the more their lives are at risk. So we think this is a case for an extraordinary effort on the part of the government.” CBC

Kenny refused over the weekend to widen the definition of relatives to allow more Haitian refugees. As for orphans, Kenny says he has no intention of rushing adoption for Haitian immigrants.

“There is not going to be any fast-tracking of adoptions for post-earthquake out of Haiti,” he said. “We’re going to have to organize this properly to make sure the interests of all of the children come first.” (Toronto Sun)

90 percent of Haitians in Canada live in the French Province of Quebec. “Premier Jean Charest’s government has decided to open the door wider to Haitian immigrants. His Immigration Minister, Yolande James, will use her discriminatory “power of selection” (a rarely used clause of the 1991 federal-provincial accord on immigration) to allow, for example, the sponsoring of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews – categories that are not included in the federal family reunification program.” Lise Gagnon in The Globe and Mail

For a discussion of past immigration of Haitians to North America, see Wikipedia.