Haitians in U.S. may lose safeguard

Temporary status given to over 58K in wake of quake expires in July

MIAMI — Betty Versannes is one of the lucky ones: When a powerful earthquake buried Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jan 12, 2010, she was here, a world away. Her sister and cousin died in the rubble. Her other relatives moved into tents, and some live there still, in a country that is far from recovered.

Days later, recognizing the depth of Haiti’s misery and the complexity of the rebuilding effort, the U.S. government extended a seldom-used lifeline to Haitians in the United States — temporary protected status, or TPS. The program allows people, like Versannes, who were visiting or were living here illegally before the earthquake to live and work in the United States until conditions back home improved.

More than 58,000 Haitians registered for the program, many in South Florida, which has the largest Haitian community in the country.

That safeguard could end soon. By Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly is expected to announce whether to let Haitians’ temporary protected status expire July 22 or extend it again. (If he does nothing, it extends six months automatically.) By law, the decision should be based solely on conditions in Haiti — the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere — and its ability to absorb a large wave of returnees, not on immigration policy.

“It would be a big mistake,” Versannes said about the possibility that she and others would lose their temporary protected status. “Haiti is not fine. Everybody knows that.”

Versannes has reason to worry. In April, James W. McCament, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote a memo to Kelly recommending that he “terminate Haiti’s TPS designation” because conditions related to the earthquake “have been largely ameliorated,” according to a copy obtained by The Miami Herald. McCament recommended delaying the deadline until Jan. 22, which would give Haitians time to return home.

The same determination will soon play out for foreigners in the program from nine other countries that, at some point, were ravaged by natural disaster, disease or civil strife, including Honduras, Somalia and Syria. Haitians are the first under the Trump administration to confront an expiration date.

The prospect that 58,000 Haitians could be forced to return en masse after spending more than seven years in the United States has raised a rare bipartisan outcry among state and federal lawmakers in Florida, including Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican. Elected officials from Massachusetts, New York and Utah have also weighed in, as have numerous faith-based refugee or aid groups.

Haiti is still reeling not just from the earthquake but also from a cholera epidemic that killed 9,000, a long drought and last year’s Hurricane Matthew, the biggest storm to hit Haiti in 50 years. The Category 4 hurricane smashed Haiti’s southwestern coast and wiped out homes, roads, crops, livestock and fish stocks on the southern coast, exacerbating food shortages throughout the country.

With only days to go before a decision, Versannes, 44, who is now married and pregnant, and who has a 5-year-old Miami-born daughter, can think of little else. If her status changes, it will upend the life she has built a few miles from Little Haiti. She will lose her job as a nurse’s assistant and her ability to renew her driver’s license. She will be forced to contemplate leading an invisible life.

Worse, though, is that the money, food and clothes she sends to her three children and mother in Haiti will dry up.

“I left Haiti to try to care for my family and my children,” said Versannes, who arrived here with a visa. Now, she has no home in Haiti. “That earthquake, nobody has fixed what it did — nobody can.”

“I hope Trump can touch his heart to Haitians and Haiti,” she said, referring to Trump’s vow to the community.