Thread: Migrants from Haiti going against tide

Posted on Tue, Apr. 24, 2007
Migrants from Haiti going against tide
BY FRED GRIMM
Four weeks ago, I watched as firemen, like pallbearers, carried away the body of an anonymous immigrant who had washed up on Hallandale Beach. Nothing remained of his futile attempt to reach Florida but a tragic irony: If he had survived his journey, he would have been sent to federal lockup to await deportation.
By his actual funeral in Miami on Saturday, Lifaite Lully had become a symbol of the maddening disparity in the treatment of Haitians able to make landfall in the U.S. and the wet-foot dry-foot policy that allows Cubans to stay. Lully's 101 surviving companions have been under arrest since they came ashore.

Two weeks later, 20 Cuban boat people who made it to Miami were paroled the next day.

It was Lully's funeral Saturday, but the eulogies were really about the living, full of demands for justice and equal treatment for Haitian boat people. Down here in South Florida, where local civic and religious leaders rail about the stark unfairness of wet-foot, dry-foot, a change in the policy seems almost inevitable.

COLD NEW ATTITUDE

But we live in a bubble, away from the harshening national attitudes toward leaky borders and undocumented immigrants. Even as ministers at Lifaite Lully's funeral spoke of brutal inequities facing Haitian immigrants, Rudy Giuliani, a one-time champion of immigrant rights, was on the campaign trail in Iowa paying homage to a cold new attitude. The New York Times reported that Giuliani, in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, has adopted a hard line toward amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Giuliani and other national political leaders know an unforgiving sentiment on immigration has roiled the country.

Stateline.org reports that so far this year, legislatures in 18 states have passed 57 new laws aimed at employment and benefits available to illegal immigrants. More than 1,100 bills, some stunningly onerous, are still pending. Legislators frustrated with Washington's failure to deal with illegal immigration are taking matters into their own clinched fists.

Arkansas has prohibited the state from doing business with any company that hires illegal immigrants. The Georgia Senate passed a bill forcing judges to investigate defendants' immigration status. Tennessee senators approved a bill requiring employers to verify a worker's immigration status. A bill pending in the Alabama House would allow police to impound illegal immigrants' vehicles. The Texas Legislature may rope local law enforcement into enforcing federal immigration laws. A referendum proposal gaining momentum in Arizona would revoke the business license the first time any company is caught hiring illegal immigrants.

A TURN TO THE MEAN

The climate, outside South Florida and a few other urban enclaves, has turned mean. Even a cheery-sounding USA Today-Gallop poll last week finding 78 percent of respondents approved giving illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship dims on closer examination.

That majority includes 42 percent who would first require illegal immigrants to return to their home country.

That's also reflected in the only immigration reform bill with life in Congress, which would require immigrants to learn English, pay back taxes and go home before they get a shot at legal residence. And that's way too permissive for politicians riding the anti-immigration wave.

It makes talk of a special exception for Haitian boat people seem a little wistful.





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That majority includes 42 percent who would first require illegal immigrants to return to their home country.

My percentage says they should return home AND STAY