Migration Ministries Will Support New Effort to Resettle Haitian Refugees
Episcopal News Service. March 17, 1993 [93044]
Nan Cobbey
In response to an urgent appeal from the U.S. State Department, Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) has agreed to resettle endangered Haitian refugees, some of whom are currently in hiding in their country.
"The State Department's Bureau for Refugee Programs has informed us of a limited number of priority-need cases of Haitians that have to leave their country urgently," wrote the Rev. Canon Burgess Carr, director of EMM, in a letter to Episcopal Church bishops.
Yet even before Carr's letter was sent, EMM refugee assistant specialist Frank Vizuette was on the phone lining up dioceses to participate. Ten dioceses already working in partnership with EMM had signed on by March 3.
Due to the escalating crisis, decisions had to be made quickly. "The Bureau is requesting that resettlement agencies provide assurances on an extremely fast-track," said Tim McCully of InterAction, who coordinates liaison between resettlement agencies and the State Department.
It is unclear how many refugees will be involved in the emergency exodus. "Even the bureau has no idea how many people we are talking about," McCully said. "This is contingency planning...so for those who need it there will be a system in place...with 48-hour turn-around. But it will probably be a small number. The vast majority will be processed according to the normal channels." McCully said that several thousand Haitian refugees may be resettled this year.
The announcement of the urgent contingency program comes just six weeks after the Clinton administration promised expanded refugee processing throughout the Haitian countryside. Establishing centers in rural areas was expected to deter the mass boat exodus Clinton feared before his inauguration.
However, those centers have not been established. "They keep flipflopping," McCully said of the administration. "Two weeks ago they [Clinton administration officials] said the [processing centers] would not endanger or jeopardize people's lives. Now they seem to be saying they will. The government has not done a lot of work on this...[that] is the bottom line."
Critics of the Clinton policy have asserted that Haitian citizens cannot safely seek asylum by visiting processing centers anywhere in the country. "You cannot expect that the reasonable, rational person in hiding will conclude that they should travel to Port-au-Prince to fill out some form and reveal the most intimate and compromising parts of their lives," Carol Wolchok, director of the American Bar Association's Center for Immigration Law, told the New York Times. "What Haiti needs is an underground railroad. For many people that railroad was the boats, and we have shut that off."
Recognizing the need and the dangers, the Episcopal Church's Executive Council recently called for an expanded effort on behalf of Haitians fleeing persecution. In a resolution approved at its February meeting, the council called on President Clinton to "adopt a humanitarian method to expedite the immigration of Haitians to the United States" and "to use all diplomatic and economic means to restore immediately the democratically elected Government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide." The resolution also urged all dioceses "to encourage parishes to sponsor the resettlement of Haitian refugees through Episcopal Migration Ministries."