Month: November 2002

Former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II led a group of Haitian immigrants in calling for President Bush to end his policy of incarcerating Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

Prompted by the dramatic news footage of some 200 Haitians arriving in a rickety wooden freighter in the waters off Miami Tuesday, Kennedy said the U.S. detention policy singles out Haitians while allowing refugees from other countries to remain free until they have a court hearing on their requests for asylum.

“Nothing could justify the dual standard that has been set for the Haitian people,” Kennedy said at a rally outside the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Dorchester.

“I am embarrassed as an American,” Kennedy said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said she could not comment “on policy.”

Kennedy also said the Bush administration could do something to help diminish Haitians’ desires to flee their nation — release $500 million in foreign aid money earmarked to build the Haitian economy.

“It is a dumb, dumb, dumb policy,” Kennedy said about the decision to hold up the money because of concerns about how it will be spent.

State Rep. Marie St. Fleur (D-Dorchester), who was born in Haiti, said the policy of immediately incarcerating Haitians who flee to this country “is discriminatory. It is based on the national origin and — I dare say — race.”

The local activists said Boston ahs the nations’ third-largest community of Haitian immigrants, behind Miami and New York City.

Kennedy, who now runs Citizens Energy, has remained supportive of the Haitian community despite his no longer being in public office.

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Cries of protest, man of them in French, resounded in Dorchester yesterday as community leaders and Haitian advocates, including former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, rallied in support of more than 200 Haitian migrants placed in federal detention after swimming ashore in Miami earlier this week.

“We’re going to tell the federal government that our people cannot die quietly,” state Representative Marie St. Fleur, a Haitian immigrant, told a spirited crowd of more than 60 people, many of whom clutched miniature Haitian flags.

St. Fleur and Kennedy called for the Bush administration to change its treatment of the refugees.

Under a policy instituted last December, Haitians applying for asylum must now wait in US detention centers for their cases to be heard instead of being released to friends and relatives. The new rules are aimed at discouraging an exodus form the impoverished nation.

On Tuesday, 211 Haitian refugees reached the Florida coastline via a crowded wooden freighter that ran aground near downtown Miami. As they swam together, police and US immigration officials took them into custody and placed them in a federal detention center, sparking protests from Haitian-American groups nationwide.

Critics say the policy shift smacks of discrimination. They pointed to the government’s treatment of other immigrants, particularly Cuban refugees, who are free to travel and seek private legal counsel in their efforts to remain in the United States.

“What we need is for the administration to recognize that the policy is immoral,” Kennedy said.

He also called on the government to release $500 million in aid it promised to Haiti. The money was withheld to protest alleged corruption in Haiti elections. Advocates say the aid would bolster Haiti’s ailing economy and help stem the tide of immigrants seeking relief from widespread poverty.

“We’re calling on the world community to assist in the Haitian people as they are being engulfed in an economic nightmare,” said Pierre J. Imbert, executive director of the Haitian Multi-Service Center, which hosted the rally.

Reynolds Lucien, who came to the United States from Haiti with his family in 1980, stood at the edge of the crowd and listened intently to each speaker. After the rally, the 56-year-old Dorchester resident expressed bewilderment that the US government, and President Bush in particular, would block aid and “punish all Haitians” because of a flawed election system.

Bush, she said, had problems with his election, too.