WASHINGTON – The recent kidnapping of missionaries in Haiti illustrates just one of the many dangers that Haitians are trying to escape from and are being sent back to — and that bipartisan legislation in Congress is seeking to address.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday passed legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that aims to build relationships among independent civil society groups in Haiti to combat corruption, crime, violence and human rights abuses. The measure also requires the State Department to report human rights abuses in Haiti.
“Everyday life for the Haitian people remains a constant struggle as one disaster piled on top of another,” Cardin said in a statement after the bill passed. He is a member of the foreign relations panel.
“We are greatly concerned that an unstable Haitian government, rife with corruption, will ignore or even enable further human rights abuses,” the senator added. “UNICEF has reported that 1.6 million people, including 800,000 children, in Haiti are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The United States must take a more active role in helping our neighbors emerge from this ongoing crisis.”
Rubio, also a member of the committee, said that “a secure and stable Haiti not only benefits Haitians on the island, but also America.”
“We must continue to support Haiti’s democratic process, push for transparency and accountability in the ongoing investigations, as well as help strengthen Haiti’s future,” he said.
The Haiti Development, Accountability, and Institutional Transparency Initiative Act was introduced in April, as Haitians continued to flee what many international observers consider a failed state.
The passage of the bill came just two days after a Haitian gang kidnapped 17 missionaries near the capital of Port-au-Prince. The group, working through the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, includes 16 Americans and one Canadian.
“The recent kidnapping in Haiti of U.S. missionaries and their children is horrible,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Mechanicsville, said in a statement to Capital News Service Friday.
“They must be released immediately. I am thankful the FBI and State Department are engaged. I am hopeful their work, in collaboration with local authorities, can bring these individuals home safely and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice,” Hoyer said.
Haiti has a perfect storm of factors leading people to migrate, according to Dr. John Ciorciari, associate professor of public policy and director of the International Policy Center and Weiser Diplomacy Center at the University of Michigan.
“It’s a good illustration of how weak the security provision is in the country if a gang can kidnap a large number of American missionaries, and the authorities cannot either prevent or immediately address the situation,” Ciorciari said.
Ciorciari said Haiti has suffered from abusive and ineffective security services that are unable to pinpoint violence linked to gang conflict, drug trafficking and political rivalries.
“You layer on top of the insecurity in the country, the economic crisis, this relatively unchecked spread of COVID-19 and another devastating earthquake — there are simply many reasons why ordinary Haitians would be seeking to flee the country,” Ciorciari said.
U.S. organizations working in Haiti have also experienced this violence and instability first-hand.
“The dangers are not just for people who come into Haiti, but for the people who live on the ground also,” said Katiana Anglade, development and operations director at the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a Washington-based nonprofit that provides resources to Haitian grassroots efforts.
Anglade said Haitian gangs will block off roads, which prevents the organization from getting to Haiti’s rural areas.
“The only way that Lambi…is able to continue the work that we do in the countryside is because we have regional monitors who are stationed…closer to the areas of the projects that we support,” Anglade said.
The recent kidnapping of missionaries in Haiti comes just weeks after the controversial apprehension and mass deportation of Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Photographs depicted Border Patrol agents using horse reins as whips and corralling Haitian migrants like sheep.
“Most of the Haitians who were in those terrible pictures that surfaced a few weeks ago were not coming directly from Haiti; they were mostly coming from Central and South America,” Ciorciari said, speaking to the often long and difficult journey to get to the United States.
U.S. immigration policies continue to prevent Haitian migrants from entering the United States.
One such policy, called Title 42, began in March 2020 out of concern for the spread of COVID-19 at border facilities. It prohibits asylum seekers at land borders from entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
But Ciorciari said a special category called Temporary Protected Status could provide a solution for Haitians fleeing the country.
“(TPS) is not the same as granting people asylum, but it provides, as the name suggests, temporary protection for people who are in dire circumstances, often because of natural disasters or because of other crises of that nature,” Ciorciari said.
“That’s something the (Biden) administration can undertake without necessarily granting asylum, which is a much narrower category that depends on a well-founded fear of future persecution based on politics, race, nationality and so on, and TPS is a vehicle very much at the administration’s disposal,” Ciorciari said.
Anglade emphasized how Haitian migrants want to make a life for themselves in the United States.
“No one is looking to just come live for free, but they just need an opportunity to live and take care of their families,” Anglade said.
“All they’re looking for is a chance,” she said.