Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 13 décembre 2017

 Haitian folk singer who had sharp words for politicians dies in Miami Beach

BY GLENN GARVIN

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Joseph Emmanuel “Manno” Charlemagne, whose acerbic folk songs about Haitian politics kept him in exile — often in South Florida — for much of his life, died Sunday in a Miami Beach hospital where he was being treated for cancer.

The death of Charlemagne, 69, prompted Haitian President Jovenel Moïse to pause in an official visit to Europe to tweet that the demise of “the committed singer Manno Charlemagne is a great loss for the country and for the cultural sector in particular. My sympathies to the family and loved ones of this patriot who loved his country with passion. Haiti is grateful to him.”

That was a significant departure from the way most of Haitian officialdom regarded Charlemagne throughout his life. Rare was the Haitian politician who didn’t feel the sting of Charlemagne’s pungent lyrics, which were anything but subtle.

His songs portrayed the various members of the Duvalier dynasty, which ruled Haiti for three decades beginning in the 1950s, as enthusiastic consumers of feces.

In recent years, Charlemagne had largely disdained politics and gone back to music. He was a frequent performer at the Miami Beach restaurant Tap Tap, even after his diagnosis with multiple forms of cancer at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.

Jovenel Moise travels to Europe with a Haitian Business delegation by Rezo Nodwes

President Moise was scheduled to meet, among others, French President Emmanuel Macron and King Philippe of Belgium. The Office of Communication of the Presidency informed the population that Haitian President, Jovenel Moise, accompanied with First Lady, Martine Moise and a delegation of entrepreneurs, was to begin an official European tour in Europe from December 9 to 15 with stops in Paris, France and Brussel, Belgium.

In the French capital, on December 12, the President was scheduled to participate at the summit on financing of the Climatic Action (One Planet), which was to gather several heads of state and of government. Outside the summit, the Haitian President was to speak to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron and discuss bilateral cooperation between France and Haiti.

He was also scheduled to meet the Managing Director of the French Agency of Development (AFD), Rémy Rioux, the General Secretary of the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF), Michaelle Jean and the Chief Executive Officer of the UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay.

The Head of State was to introduce members of Haiti’s private sector to representatives of France’s business community during a meeting with the association of French Entrepreneurs (MEDEF).

Before ending his French tour, President Jovenel Moise will also travel to Normandy, in the Northwest of France, where he will tour the Water Agency, an important institution which "finances the works and the actions which contribute to protecting water resources and fighting against pollutions."

On Wednesday, December 13th, the President was scheduled to travel to Belgium where a busy itinerary was awaiting him. First, the Haitian Head of State and the members of the Haitian private sector were to speak to representatives of the Chamber of Commerce of Brussels and Antwerp. He was then to attend lunch with Secretary-President of Wallonia / Brussels, Rudy Demotte.

Then, the President was to travel to offices of the European Union (EU) where he was to have an interview with Madam Frederica Mogherini, the second Vice-president of the European Commission and the High representative of the Union for the Foreign Affairs and the Safety policy.

Shortly after, the Head of State was to meet Pim Van Ballekom, Vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB)((BEI),(EUROPEAN INVESTMENT BANK)).

On Thursday, December 14th, the President was to speak with Neven Mimica, European Commissioner for the international cooperation of development before ending his Belgian tour by a meeting at the royal palace where he was invited by their majesties King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium.

President Jovenel Moise was scheduled to return to Haiti on Saturday, December 16, 2017. 

Note from the U.S. State Department

The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to carefully consider the risks of traveling to Haiti due to its current security environment and lack of adequate medical facilities and response. This is an update to the Travel Warning issued on September 12, 2017.

Kidnapping remains a threat, and armed robberies and violent assaults reported by U.S. citizens have risen in recent years. Do not share specific travel plans with strangers. Be aware that newly arrived travelers are targeted. Arrange to have your host or organization meet you at the airport upon arrival or pre-arranged airport to hotel transfers. Embassy personnel are prohibited from visiting public banks and ATMs, which are often targeted by criminals.

Fewer incidents of crime are reported outside of Port-au-Prince, but Haitian authorities' ability to respond to emergencies is limited and in some areas nonexistent. U.S. Embassy employees are discouraged from walking in city neighborhoods, including in Petionville, during daylight, and are prohibited from walking in city neighborhoods, including Petionville, after dark. Visit only establishments with secured parking lots. U.S. Embassy personnel are under a curfew from 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Embassy personnel must receive permission from the Embassy security officer to travel to some areas of Port-au-Prince, thus limiting the Embassy's ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens.

Protests, including tire burning and road blockages, are frequent and often spontaneous. Avoid all demonstrations. The Haitian National Police's ability to assist U.S. citizens during disturbances is limited. Have your own plans for quickly exiting the country if necessary;

Medical care infrastructure, ambulances, and other emergency services are limited throughout Haiti. Check that your organization has reliable infrastructure, evacuation, and medical support in place. Comprehensive medical evacuation insurance is strongly advised for all travelers.

For further information:

See the State Department's travel website for the Worldwide Caution, Travel Warnings, Travel Alerts, and Haiti's Country Specific Information.

Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security messages and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.

Contact the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, located at Boulevard du October, Route de Tabarre telephone: 509-2229-8000; after hours emergency telephone: 509-2229-8000;fax: 509-2229-8027; e-mail:Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.; web page:http://ht.usembassy.gov.

Call 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or 1-202-501-4444 from other countries from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).

Missionary in US custody on charges he abused Haitian boys

BALTIMORE – A Christian missionary who allegedly told a counselor in Virginia that he had sexual contact with minors in Haiti has been arrested and is in federal custody, authorities said Friday.

If the allegations are proven, James Arbaugh, formerly of the Virginia town of Stuarts Draft, would be only the latest missionary to take advantage of Haiti's extensive poverty and anemic rule of law to abuse vulnerable youngsters. He lived in Haiti for at least a decade and described himself on a personal blog as a missionary with a group called "Walking Together for Christ Haiti."

A federal affidavit filed by a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations says a counselor in Virginia reported Arbaugh to authorities in September after he allegedly disclosed sexual contact with boys. The affidavit alleges he told investigators in subsequent interviews that he "groomed" or had sexual contact including oral sex with at least 21 boys. One 5-year-old boy he allegedly molested was the son of a pastor in Jeremie, a city devastated last year by Hurricane Matthew.

"Arbaugh described sexual acts that took place with at least 15 minors which would be considered illicit sexual conduct," special agent Tami Ketcham wrote in the affidavit.

Carissa Cutrell, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Arbaugh is in federal custody. Authorities have 30 days to indict Arbaugh, ask a judge for an extension or dismiss the charges, according to Brian McGinn, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the western district of Virginia. It wasn't immediately clear if Arbaugh has a lawyer.

Teams of missionaries are a very common sight on U.S. flights to Haiti. For decades, they have done vital work running a network of hospitals, orphanages, schools and food-distribution sites in the hemisphere's poorest country. But over the years, some foreign missionaries have been arrested for sexually abusing children. Some have worked in Haiti's poorly regulated orphanages, where many youths are not orphans at all, but sent by parents who can't support them.

"I expect that what we're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg," said Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based advocacy group Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

Concannon said the Haitian government needs to do a far better job of protecting its most vulnerable citizens, but the first line of defense against sexual predators preying on children should be the church groups that send missionaries overseas in the first place.

"They need to step up to ensure they are not supporting child abusers," he said.

On his blog, Harbaugh has photo galleries that show him lying on what appears to be a beach with naked or half-naked children. He described himself as an evangelist and religious film producer.

The affidavit, which was published by The News Leader newspaper, alleges that he would swim naked with Haitian youngsters while traveling around the country, "and at times genital skin-to-skin touching would take place beneath the water."

A spokesman for the Haitian National Police could not be contacted for comment. A website for the group "Walking Together for Christ Haiti" was not functional.

David McFadden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmcfadd

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 20 décembre 2017

 Haitian women seek support for children fathered by U.N. troops in Haiti

By Reuters

PUBLISHED: 18:51 GMT, 12 December 2017 |

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA, Dec 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Lawyers representing 10 Haitian women who say they had children with United Nations peacekeepers have filed the first legal actions in Haiti against the U.N. and individual peacekeepers for child support and paternity claims.

The lawsuits filed by the Haiti-based human rights group Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), is part of a legal battle by Haitian women to force peacekeepers who they say fathered their children to contribute to their upbringing.

"Having and then abandoning children is not within the official capacity of a U.N. peacekeeper and therefore we argue that this does give a Haitian court jurisdiction to resolve paternity and child support claims," Nicole Phillips, a lawyer at the U.S.-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), who is working on the case, said on Tuesday.

Ten mothers of 11 children who they say were abandoned by U.N. troops are seeking financial support from them. One of the mothers was 17 when she gave birth, which amounts to statutory rape under Haitian law, the IJDH said.

Under the U.N.'s "zero-tolerance policy" sexual relationships between peacekeepers and residents of countries hosting a U.N. mission are strongly discouraged.

Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation responsibility for child support rests with those "individuals who have been established to have fathered children."

"... the United Nations itself cannot legally establish paternity or child support entitlements... compensation is a matter of personal accountability to be determined under national legal processes," Haq said by email.

The 13-year U.N. mission left Haiti in October after being sent in to stablilize a country plagued by political turmoil. The mission introduced a cholera epidemic that killed some 10,000 people and has been dogged by accusations of sexual assault.

The Haitian mothers are struggling to bring up their children they say were fathered by soldiers from the U.N.'s peacekeeping force stationed in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, who came from Uruguay, Argentina, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, said their lawyer Mario Joseph at BAI, who filed the lawsuits.

"These mothers and their children face severe economic difficulties and discrimination," he said, adding that six of the mothers were left homeless after Hurricane Matthew devastated the Caribbean island last year.

(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney @anastasiabogota, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Manno funeral at Little Haiti (Miami)

Miami bids farewell to folk singer Manno Charlemagne, the Bob Marley of Haiti

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

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DECEMBER 14, 2017 09:08 PM

UPDATED DECEMBER 14, 2017 09:42 PM

They came one last time to pay homage to the firebrand folk singer whose politically charged lyrics set to acoustic guitar melodies put corrupt politicians on notice and inspired a generation of Haitians.

Joseph Emmanuel “Manno” Charlemagne was their Bob Dylan, their Bob Marley — and his stirring lyrics became a shield as they battled dictatorship, struggled with democracy and dreamed of another Haiti.

Now Charlemagne and his deep, crooning voice are gone, taken by cancer in Miami Beach where, for years, he entertained diners at South Beach’s Tap Tap Restaurant with his songs of protest.

His death at 69 on Sunday came after multiple stints in exile, many assassination attempts and a star-studded international campaign by the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme to free him from the Argentine Embassy where he sought haven after a military coup toppled Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. An avowed Marxist who was dubbed the “Caged Bird of Haiti,” he had an unsuccessful tenure as mayor of Port-au-Prince in the mid-90s.

Over the years, his storied activism on behalf of Haiti’s poor — and his political missteps — became the subject of books and films that elevated him to folk-hero status.

“This makes me sad,” said Jean Chaperon, 53, a longtime friend fighting back tears as he stood in the sanctuary of Little Haiti’s Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church, steps away from Charlemagne’s open casket. “He fought hard for the country to change and that didn’t happen.”

Katia Barnave, Charlemagne’s younger sister, said the family decided to hold the public viewing and memorial Mass in Miami before flying his body next week to Haiti. 

“He’s been so well known and recognized for decades that it’s just a way for people to pay their respects and honor him in the way that he deserves to be honored,” she said.

Still, Charlemagne, who shuttled back and forth between Miami and Haiti, had a conflicted relationship with the land of the blanc, or foreigner. In one of his most popular tunes, Alyenkat (“Alien Card”), Charlemagne railed against the treatment of Haitians seeking refuge in the United States, a country that he and others accused of invading Haiti on multiple occasions. 

“He really loved his country,” said Barnave, who was trying to reconcile how she was unable to fulfill his wish to die in Haiti.

Charlemagne came to Miami in July to go to the doctor. He was fighting lung cancer that had spread to his brain. 

“He was who he was, all the way up to the end — a fighter to the last days,” Barnave said. 

Jean Michel Lapin, the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Culture, said the government will pay to bring Charlemagne’s body back to Haiti, and has taken charge of his funeral “to permit the entire country to pay a final homage.”

While South Florida artists and Charlemagne’s Tap Tap band will honor him — and the late Haitian painter Joseph Wilfrid Daleus, who also died Sunday in Miami — at Sounds of Little Haiti on Friday, the Haitian government has organized a musical tribute in Charlemagne’s honor on Tuesday on the Champ de Mars in Port-au-Prince. 

His government-sponsored funeral is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 22, also on the Champ de Mars, across from the grounds of the National Palace. Still undecided, Lapin said, is whether Charlemagne will be given a state funeral, the highest honor.

Former Haitian President Michel Martelly, who had been pushing to bring Charlemagne back to Haiti before his death and was instrumental in getting the government to pay for the funeral, said he deserves the state ceremony.

“Based on the dimensions of Manno and how huge he is, why not consider something national?” Martelly told the Miami Herald in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince. “He deserves it.”

Martelly, also a singer who goes by the stage persona “Sweet Micky,” said prior to Charlemagne’s death, plans had been in the works to fly him back to Haiti.

“But he was too weak and could not travel. We had to wait until he recovered — which never happened,” Martelly said.

On Thursday, South Florida’s Haitian community paid tribute to Charlemagne by quoting his lyrics and reminiscing about their time together. Florida Sen. Daphne Campbell, a Haitian American, announced that she was naming N. Sherman Circle in Miramar, where one of Charlemagne’s sons lives, in his honor.

Gary Sanon-Jules, the former general manager of Tap Tap, said that honor, however, belongs in South Beach.

“I’d rather name a street where he lived than where he died. He performed at Tap Tap for 20 years, lived upstairs overlooking Meridian Court,” Sanon-Jules said. “That street embodies a lot of our memories as we all illegally parked our cars to go and listen to Manno Charlemagne and the Tap Tap Band. That street should be renamed Manno Charlemagne Court”

Haitian musician Beethova Obas, who recorded the song Nwel Anme (“Bitter Christmas”) with Charlemagne, said he didn’t know he was so connected to his longtime friend until he appeared to him in his dreams two days before his death.

“He said, ‘I was wondering when you were going to come see me,’” said Obas, who lives in Belgium. Hours later, Obas, onvacation in Port St. Lucie, was at Charlemagne’s bedside “playing all the songs that whenever he was around, he wouldn’t let me sing.” One of the final songs, Obas said he played, was his song Kè’m poze (”I am at peace”).

“I told him, ‘You are facing the light; you have to go to the light. You were sent to do a job. You did your job,’ ” Obas said. “Even if I knew he was going to die, I wasn’t prepared for him to go.”

Not all those who came out Thursday were luminaries. Some were regular people like 87-year-old Gerard Antoine, who despite his cane, said he needed to pay his final respects.

As Antoine ambled toward the gray casket where Charlemagne, dressed in a navy suit, white shirt and green-striped tie lay surrounded by white roses and daisies, the singer’s song, Lan Male m’ Ye, (“I am in deep trouble”) played.

“People tend to recognize people when they die,” Martelly said.

A fan of Charlemagne since he was a teenager, Martelly, 56, who often sang about the country’s misery before his successful 2010 presidential bid, said he often drew inspiration from Charlemagne’s songs and guitar-based twoubadou melodies.

“You don’t hear his type of songs. Manno was unique in the way he spoke about problems in Haiti, the reality in Haiti … He talked about real stories of life, stories that could touch you, and make you, whether man or woman, cry,” Martelly said.

“He marked our time, our culture,” the former president added. “He opened a lot of young people’s minds to Haiti’s problems and on how to dream, how to think. He was a real talent.”

2

USAID Announces New Project

in Support of Safe Water and Sanitation for Haiti

For Immediate Release

The United States took another step to support access to clean water for Haiti’s citizens and continuing the fight against cholera. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Water and Sanitation project supports the goal the United States shares with the Government of Haiti to expand safe water and sanitation access to vulnerable communities, the most important battlefront in the eradication of cholera and other waterborne diseases.

The USAID Water and Sanitation project represents a $41.8 million investment aligned with the priorities of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and the water and sanitation directorate. It aims to improve the health of Haitians, to build on previous United States investments in Haiti and to start a longer-term, more comprehensive approach to water, sanitation, and hygiene that will strengthen local and national Haitian institutions working in this sector.

The Project is part of the U.S. Government’s Global Water Strategy vision for a water-secure world. It aims to promote sustainable access around the world to safe drinking water and sanitation services, the adoption of key hygiene behaviors, and the strengthening of water sector governance, financing, and institutions.

Haiti, is designated a high priority country under the United States’ Water for the World Act of 2014. That law, which reinforced and refined the implementation efforts of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, ensures that water, sanitation, and hygiene programming contributes to long-term, sustainable results.

This project will focus on increasing access to improved water and sanitation services in priority cholera “hotspot” communes identified in Haiti’s National Mid-Term Plan for the Elimination of Cholera, and in communes recovering from natural disasters such as Hurricane Matthew. It will also engage the private sector in creating solutions for expanding access to water and sanitation services. 

The four-year project will be implemented by Development Alternatives, Inc., an international non-governmental organization, well-known for providing technical and managerial support to social and economic development programs around the world.

(End of text)

Brooklyn Chrch wants tu help victims of child slavery

Dec 10, 2017 · by Cindy Rodriguez

Haitian community leaders say it is all to common in their island nation for poor children to be sent to live with upper class families who use them as domestic servants and worse. These victims of child slavery are known as restaveks. The Courtelyou Road Church of God in East Flatbush wants to identify and help survivors now living in Brooklyn.

"After they were raised in Haiti, they come here to the United States, many of them here in this community and then they raise children without being treated for PTSD and many other things that they suffer," said Pastor Diane St. Surin during a press conference on Sunday.  

Surin said she knows of at least 10 survivors who attend her church.

"I've seen them become very intimidated very quickly. They cannot advocate for themselves and they lean on the church. I'm also an attorney so they lean a lot on me," said the Pastor. "I don't see how they're surviving in this type of an environment with that trauma."

Surin said the goal is to connect survivors to mental health services in the community and to teach mental health clinicians to understand the Haitian culture so they can help in an appropriate way.  

City councilman Jumanee Williams, who represents the Flatbush area where many Haitians live, said that 60 percent of restaveks in Haiti are young girls who have no rights or identity, and who are verbally and sexually abused. 

"When natural disasters effect this country, like an earthquake, like a hurricane, like cholera, all these things are exacerbated," he said.

Williams said the US should not be sending people back to Haiti when child slavery continues to happen there. He was referring to the Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of Haitians living in the US. Those with TPS have been given 18 months to leave and return home. 

There's no data on how many restaveks are living in Brooklyn but community leaders said their efforts would help determine that and raise awareness about the problem in the Haitian community.

"Our goal in this action is to begin to look at this data, begin to talk to this community, begin to assess...and see what can be done," said Fabiola Desmont of Restavek Freedom Foundation.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 27 décembre 2017

A Return to Haiti, and Broadway via Edmonton: The Canada Letter

By Jan Austin, Dec 15, 2017 – NYT - Many of you may know that Catherine Porter, our Toronto bureau chief, was in Haiti immediately after the 2010 earthquake and returned there several times afterward.

She has gone back to produce a moving, richly reported look at the people who bring dignity to the dead in a country where even death offers no escape from poverty.

It’s part of The End, a series of articles looking at what our deaths tell us about how we live. Those stories include Ms. Porter’s similarly in-depth reporting on assisted death in Canada that appeared earlier this year.

Ms. Porter shared some thoughts about her latest visit to Haiti:

A few weeks before I started this job as The New York Times’s Toronto bureau chief in February, I went to my second home — Haiti.

I was finishing research for a memoir I’m writing about my relationship with a Haitian girl named Lovely and her family, and I was saying goodbye.

I didn’t think I’d be back for a while. I was heavy-hearted.

My first trip to Haiti was on an aid flight, 11 days after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The first story I wrote was about a 2-year-old miracle girl who survived six days beneath the rubble. That was Lovely.

I returned to Haiti a second time, three months later, to find that Lovely wasn’t orphaned, as all the medical workers had assumed. Her parents and younger brother had survived. But they were living in a tin shed that leaked every time it rained. Her story captured readers and drew me back to Haiti repeatedly.

By the time I joined The Times, I’d been to Haiti 18 times. On one of those trips, I brought my then 6-year-old daughter Lyla with me to meet Lovely and her family. Then, in 2015, I came for the baptism of Lovely’s cousin, Lala — named after my daughter. I am her godmother.

Clearly, Haiti was no longer just a story for me.

In some ways, I feel very comfortable there. I speak enough Kreyòl to hold a conversation on the street, know my way around the capital despite few street signs, and have a fat stack of contacts and some very close friends.

In other ways, Haiti is a very uncomfortable place for me. The thing that upsets me the most is the poverty — kids who are so malnourished their hair has turned orange, people dying from simple illnesses because they can’t afford treatment, the lack of basic education because parents can’t afford the school fees.

So when my editors asked me to find a story on death from Haiti, I was thrilled for two reasons. I’d get to see Lovely and Lyla again this year — not just once, but three more times.

And I could shine a huge spotlight onto the gruesome face of Haiti’s poverty — which, ironically, makes the dead faceless — and share my heartache with Times readers.

Ms. Porter’s book about Haiti, “A Girl Named Lovely,” will be published in early 2019 by Simon & Schuster.

The Citadel Theatre in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, is giving another chance to something it last attempted more than 30 years ago: developing plays for Broadway. Our theater reporter Michael Paulson went to see its production of “Hadestown,” a musical he described as a “folk-and-politics-infused riff on an enduring Greek myth.”

So far everyone seems happy. Actors at the Citadel get to work with Broadway talent and the audience gets to see a production it otherwise couldn’t. For the producers, the value of the Canadian dollar and Edmonton’s comparative isolation from New York have both been attractions.

If you caught “Hadestown” during its run in Edmonton, I’d like to hear what you thought about the collaboration: Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser..

Students with ties to Haiti reflect on TPS program while end looms

Miami Hurricane - Emmy Petit’s story is similar to that of many other young people in South Florida. Petit was born to Haitian immigrants and raised in Miami. Her parents, like many immigrants, came to the United States looking for better opportunities than their home country could offer, such as employment and education.

More than 200,000 Haitian immigrants reside in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, accounting for the largest concentration of Haitian immigrants in the country, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015.

Petit has family members still in Haiti who she hopes will be able to come to the United States one day, she said. But that possibility seems bleak now.

The Trump Administration announced in late November the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians looking to leave the island. TPS is a humanitarian program that was signed into law by George H. W. Bush in 1990. The program grants temporary residency to nationals of countries affected by ongoing conflict, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” TPS was extended to include Haitian refugees after an earthquake devastated the island in 2010.

Approximately 60,000 Haitians have been allowed to work and live legally in the United States since 2010 and have been immune to removal under TPS, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The program is set to expire on July 22, 2019.

“The Haitians that are here, they see a possibility of creating a life,” Petit said, a graduate student in the School of Communication. “But when they think of going back, they don’t.”

Petit’s uncle and three of her cousins reside in the United States on the TPS program. The program has allowed her family members to live in the United States without fear of deportation. However, with the termination of the program for Haitians, TPS recipients must make plans to return to Haiti by July 2019. Otherwise, they will risk deportation.

A recent statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security declared that Haiti is “able to safely receive traditional levels of returned citizens.”

However, Petit said Haiti still has “a lot of work to do to create a stable environment for its citizens.” Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, with 60 percent of its population living in poverty, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.

Junior Diane Petit-Frere voiced similar concerns about the ability of Haitian refugees to return to a stable Haiti. Petit-Frere, who last visited Haiti in 2014 and still has family members there, said that the lingering effects of the 2010 earthquake are still visible on the island.

“There are still people living in tents who lost their houses; there are still roads that haven’t been constructed yet,” said Petit-Frere, a double major in political science and English.

Mirza Tanis, a junior majoring in finance from Port-Au-Prince, last returned to Haiti in 2015. For Tanis, the Trump Administration’s decision is a blow to those on the program, but also to the economy of the island nation, since so many Haitian-Americans and Haitians living in the United States were sending resources to their families on the island.

“You are taking away the ability for Haitian refugees on the TPS program to provide for their families back in Haiti, and also for them to take care of themselves,” Tanis said.

Remittances account for 29.4 percent of Haiti’s GDP, meaning that the deportation of Haitian individuals in the United States would likely strike another blow to the world’s 18th-poorest economy in terms of GDP per capita.

Even so, a common theme among the Haitian community at UM is the ability to persevere, along with the dream that one day all of their family members will be able to come to the United States legally.

“On our flag, what it says is, ‘l’union fait la force,’ which means, ‘unity creates force” Tanis said. “So at the end of the day, we still have to pick ourselves up.”

For Petit’s cousins, earning full U.S. citizenship is a dream that may never become a reality. Petit’s cousins have exhausted the legal channels to citizenship, applying for residency but spending years waiting for their applications to be processed, a wait that continues to this day. For her family members who were not born in the United States, “residency would be a dream,” Petit said.

“The majority of immigrants that I know from Haiti are hardworking,” Petit said. “They see themselves having a future here.”

December 11, 2017

Finding a sensible policy for Haitian immigrants

8

Published December 11. 2017 5:11PM 

By The Day Editorial Board  

There should be room in immigration policy for special situations, such as those confronting Haitian immigrants who have put down roots in this country and whose forced return to a struggling nation would do no one any good.

When a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, creating a humanitarian crisis for a nation already struggling as the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, the Obama administration granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians legally living in the United States.

The policy was both benevolent and practical. Why return these individuals, when their legal status in the United States expired, to a country struggling to deal with the devastation, deaths and disruptions caused by the disaster? The problem, of course, is that eight years later Haiti, while experiencing some recovery, remains a nation beset with momentous problems. It has seen new disasters from hurricanes and crushing poverty persists.

The U.S. has repeatedly extended the TPS designation, but now the Department of Homeland Security is taking a harder line. Pointing to the temporary nature of the rule, the DHS states that it will end in July 2019 and the Haitians must return to their homeland.

About 1,200 Haitians in Connecticut and 60,000 nationwide would face a return to the country.

Southeastern Connecticut has a special relationship with Haiti and its people, with the Catholic Diocese of Norwich and other religious and charitable groups providing relief efforts there and helping the immigrant population here.

In this region many of these immigrants have jobs, children in local schools, and some of those children were born here, making them U.S. citizens. Many of these marriages include a spouse with legal status.

One might argue that allowing these individuals to remain in the country could take jobs from American citizens, but the reality is that most are working in unskilled positions not popular with the general populace and which employers are having difficulty filling given the current low unemployment numbers.

In many instances, these workers return some of their salaries to family in Haiti.

The better approach would be to look at these cases individually. If the individual has been a contributing member of our society, has strong family support and connections and is abiding by our laws, provide him or her permanent legal status.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 3 janvier 2018

 Trump Reopens an Old Wound for Haitians

By Edwidge Danticat

December 29, 2017

In the early nineteen-eighties, soon after cases of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (aids) were first discovered in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control named four groups at “high risk” for the disease: intravenous drug users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. Haitians were the only ones solely identified by nationality, in part because of twenty or so Haitian patients who’d shown up at Jackson Memorial Hospital, in Miami. “We forwarded these cases to the C.D.C.,” Dr. Arthur Fournier, who treated some of those first Haitian patients, told me recently. “The media then took off with the sensationalistic headlines.” Suddenly, every Haitian was suspected of having aids. At the junior high school I attended, in Brooklyn, some of the non-Haitian students would regularly shove and hit me and the other Haitian kids, telling us that we had dirty blood. My English as a Second Language class was excluded from a school trip to the Statue of Liberty out of fear that our sharing a school bus with the other kids might prove dangerous to them.

Last week, as many Haitians and Haitian-Americans were preparing for the Christmas holidays—some burdened by the fear that they or their loved ones might be deported in a year’s time because of the Trump’s Administration decision to end Temporary Protected Status(T.P.S.)—a  Times article about President Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts brought back these memories and more. The article described a meeting that took place at the White House in June, when Trump expressed outrage that, in spite of his contested January, 2017, executive order barring refugees, particularly those from seven predominantly Muslim countries, too many immigrants had been granted visas to enter the United States. According to the Times, Trump was angry that fifteen thousand Haitians were among them. They “all have aids,” he allegedly said.

We are used to Trump insulting people of color with callous or racist remarks. He has referred to Mexicans as criminals and rapists and, in the June meeting described in the Times, Trump reportedly also complained that forty thousand Nigerian visa recipients would never “go back to their huts,” while branding Afghanistan a terrorist haven. (The White House has denied that Trump denigrated immigrant groups during the meeting.) Still, Trump’s alleged remark about Haiti and aids cut deep, reopening a painful wound that goes back several decades.

Haiti: Charles Aznavour in concert for Haiti’s economic elite

Eric FEFERBERG / AFP

Charles Aznavour gave a sole concert on Friday, December 29^th, 2017 in Port-au-Prince. The singer, who is 93-year-old, performed in Haiti in the past but only once in 1974. Seeing his popularity with Haitians, his recent performance could have been a national event. But everything was done so that only the country’s economic elite could take advantage of Aznavour’s visit.

With our correspondent in Haiti, Amélie Baron

Aznavour cannot be any more popular in Haiti, but his concert had nothing for the larger public. The venue was accessible only by car, but the biggest deterrent was the ticket prices which range between 100 and 250 US dollars. This was totally out of reach for the immense majority of Haitians, as the writer Lyonel Trouillot expressed.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars, is more than my monthly salary at the University of Haiti. And then the chosen place, we have the impression that it recalled the Duvalier years when you had the rich displaying their money while demonstrating complete contempt for the living conditions of the majority of the population."

Lyonel Trouillot said: "The company which invited him is managed by the son of the former president of the Republic. The management of the public affairs is continually questioned. Today, I would like Aznavour to sing some songs of social character which he may have written or sang, because it is necessary to remind these people that they are rich because to the poverty of others."

This concert by Charles Aznavour's could have been a national event, instead it constitutes a new proof of the immense economic and social disparities in Haiti.

Message from American Secretary of State

In a recent press release, American Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, while at a party to celebrate Haiti’s independence on January 1^st, declared:

"On behalf of the government of the United States, I offer my best wishes to the Haitian people while you celebrate the 214^th anniversary of Haiti’s independence.

The United States and Haiti share a long history of close relations, and our future is even more closely linked due to the fact that nearly a million of Americans of Haitian origin contribute to Haiti’s economic growth.

We recognize the tremendous progress realized by Haiti during the last year. The inauguration of President Moses in February and the work undertaken by Haiti to stabilize its electoral system in the future, can reaffirm the commitment of the Haitian people in favor of the democracy, the rights of man and the rule of law. We also note significant progress regarding security and greet the efforts displayed by Haiti to develop its farming sector.

As friend and long-time partner, the United States remain determined to support Haiti while it tries hard to increase economic growth and investments, by releasing all of its potential.”

The Diaspora is going to be able to look at contents by TNH

Last Friday, Gamall Augustin the Managing director of the National Television of Haiti (TNH) and Clifford Dessables who heads of Focused Media Team LLC (Florida), signed an agreement which is going to allow the Haitian Diaspora to view the contents of TNH on cable television platforms.

Under the terms of the agreement, TNH grants permission to the Focused Media Team to look for distribution spaces for the contents of TNH, with the operators specialized in the distribution of television contents. This will help open the international market to the productions of the Haitian public service channel.

In this partnership, several parameters are taken into account in particular the quality of the production, but especially the respect for the copyright guaranteeing the signature of TNH, even beyond Haiti’s borders. As a result, certain segments of productions by TNH can be part of a menu offered by big international content distribution firms on the world market.

HL/HaïtiLibre

If This Is America

Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen DEC. 22, 2017

If this is America, with a cabinet of terrorized toadies genuflecting to the Great Leader, a vice president offering a compliment every 12 seconds to Mussolini’s understudy, and a White House that believes in “alternative facts,” then it is time to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”

If this is America, where the Great Leader threatens allies who do not fall in line, retweets the anti-Muslim racism of British fascists, insults the Muslim mayor of London, dreams up a terror attack in Sweden, invents a call from the Mexican president, claims the Russia story is a “total fabrication,” then you will have to “bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.”

If this is America, less than a year into the Trump Presidency; yes, if this is still America, where Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, thanks the Great Leader for “allowing us to have you as our president,” and Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, says Trump’s will be the greatest presidency “maybe ever,” and the Great Leader celebrates a tax cut that saves his family millions but allows CHIP health insurance to expire for sick children, then you must “force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone.”

If this is not Turkmenistan, nor yet the land of Newspeak, but our America after all, where the curiously coiffed Great Leader of childish petulance accuses all media dissenters of distributing “FAKE NEWS,” and attacks the judiciary, and adores an autocrat, and labors night and day for his wealthiest cronies in the name of some phony “middle-class miracle,” then you must “hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ ”

If, beyond every abuse, this is yet America, where the Great Leader’s administration recommends that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not use the words “fetus,” “transgender,” “science-based” or “diversity,” (but can still, according to a New Yorker cartoon, use the word “moron”), and climate change is no longer a strategic threat (or even an admissible term in government circles), then it is time to heed the poet’s admonition: “Being lied about, don’t deal in lies.”

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If this is America, our America of government for the people, by the people, and you cannot believe how low the Great Leader will stoop, how much lower he will go than seemed possible, and sometimes you feel the need to wash the ambient crassness and vulgarity from your skin, for they seep into you whatever protection you may wear, and you are aghast at how the G.O.P. has morphed into palace courtiers outdoing each other in praise of their plutocratic reality-show prince, then it is time to ponder the poet’s words:

“If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; if you can think — and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.”

If this is America, where the Great Leader wants you to believe that 2+2=5, and would usher you down his rabbit hole, and struggles to find in himself unequivocal condemnation of neo-Nazis, and you recall perhaps the words of Hannah Arendt, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist” — if all this you have lived and felt and thought across this beautiful and spacious land, then you must be prepared to “watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools.”

If this is America, and you know where militarism and nationalism and disdain for intellectuals and artists, and the cultivation of enemies and scapegoats, and contempt for a free press can lead, and it pains you to see the world voting against the United States at the United Nations with the exception of Micronesia and Nauru and Palau (and a few others), then you will see that this, Trump’s American travesty, is in fact a lie and an affront and a betrayal.

America cannot be “first,” as Trump insists. It can be a thug and a bully only in the betrayal of itself. It must be itself, a certain idea of liberty and democracy and openness, or it is nothing, just a squalid, oversized, greedy place past the zenith of its greatness.

Throughout this column, I have been quoting Kipling’s poem, “If,” an evocation, addressed to his son, of the qualities that make a man. It incudes these lines:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss.

As a new year approaches, stoicism will prevail, decency will prevail, contestation will prevail, over the Great Leader’s plundering of truth and thought. This is not America. It must be fought for and won back.