declared almost all of them “economic migrants” and sent them back to Haiti. Nearly 5,000 Haitians charged the U.S. government with discrimination in a lawsuit, Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled for the Haitians in July 1980. The court’s detailed and scathing decision said the plaintiffs had “proven their claim” that the U.S. immigration agency engaged in “impermissible discrimination on the basis of national origin” when it used a special expedited processing program to reject their asylum claims summarily without review.
A similar program had been created for Cubans, except that it was used to swiftly approve, not reject, their cases. The court suggested “a possible underlying reason why these plaintiffs have been subjected to intentional ‘national origin’ discrimination. The plaintiffs are part of the first substantial flight of black refugees from a repressive regime to this country. All of the plaintiffs are black. In contrast, for example, only a relatively small percent of the Cuban refugees who have fled to this country are black.” The court noted that nearly all the Cubans were granted asylum, while none of the Haitians were accepted. “No greater disparity can be imagined,” the court declared.70
This decision came in the midst of the 1980 Mariel boatlift of migrants from Cuba, which coincided with a dramatic increase in the number of Haitian “boat people.” About 25,000 Haitians arrived by boat to South Florida that year. The administration of U.S. president Jimmy Carter responded by including the Haitians with Cubans in a special category, “Cuban-Haitian entrants,” and releasing them in the United States with parole status. Most of the Haitians who arrived in that period eventually became permanent residents through the 1986 amnesty.71
The administration of Ronald Reagan, inaugurated in January 1981, came up with a new policy. In September 1981 it made an agreement with the Duvalier regime allowing the U.S. Coast Guard to stop Haitians in international waters and summarily return them to Haiti. In exchange, the Haitian authorities gave “assurances” that they wouldn’t prosecute the returnees unless they were charged as smugglers. Migrants captured under this “interdiction program” were not generally offered a chance at asylum. From 1981 through 1990, during the final years of the Duvalier dictatorship and the turbulent interim regime that followed, the U.S. government stopped 22,940 Haitians at sea; only eleven of them were allowed to apply for asylum.72
In 1990 many Haitians put their hopes in the presidential campaign of the popular priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who won by a landslide but was deposed by a right-wing coup in late September 1991.73 The number of Haitians fleeing fell dramatically during the 1990 campaign, and rose again just as dramatically in the repression that followed the coup, with 37,618 Haitians intercepted at sea in 1992 alone. Between November 1991 and April 1992, a U.S. military joint task force helped the Coast Guard seize Haitian migrants and take them to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (After 2001, that same base became known worldwide as a prison where the U.S. government holds Muslim men alleged to be “enemy combatants” as part of its “war on terror.”)
Fewer than a third of the more than 34,000 Haitians who passed through the Guantánamo camp during that period were eventually found to have a credible fear of persecution and were paroled into the United States. The rest were sent back to Haiti. In May 1992, once the base was at capacity with more than 12,000 Haitians, President George H. W. Bush ordered the Coast Guard to intercept all Haitians and immediately return them to Haiti without trying to determine whether they were at risk of persecution.74
Although Bill Clinton denounced the interdictions as “cruel and unjust” during his campaign, and pledged to close the Guantánamo camp, he maintained the policy after becoming president in January 1993. At that point the Coast Guard had a fleet of at least twenty-two ships and patrol boats encircling Haiti’s coastline, along with a dozen aircraft. Aristide spokesperson Reverend Antoine Adrien called the blockade a “floating Berlin Wall, around those seeking freedom.”75
A combination of litigation, public pressure, and a hunger strike by the detainees finally led to the closure of the Guantánamo camp in June 1993. At that point the camp held about a hundred and fifty Haitians deemed to be HIV-positive or suffering from AIDS; all were flown to the United States.76 President Aristide terminated the interdiction agreement after returning to power in 1994, but the United States has continued to stop Haitians at sea, at a rate of more than a thousand a year since 1998.77
How are refugees treated?
Like asylum seekers, refugees who arrive in the United States through the resettlement program have survived persecution, torture, war, and other trauma prior to arriving in the United States. Unlike asylum seekers, they are not detained upon arrival. Resettled refugees arrive with legal status and permission to work, can apply for certain family members to join them, and are eligible for permanent residency after one year. They even get some limited temporary cash assistance to help them get on their feet, and can apply for certain other needed benefits.
But that doesn’t mean resettled refugees have it easy. They have often spent years or even decades languishing in refugee camps with no opportunities for employment or higher education. Many arrive speaking little or no English, and some have limited literacy or education in their native language. Others are highly educated but unable to make use of their qualifications in the United States. Despite these impediments, resettled refugees are required to find employment quickly after arriving; most benefits run out after ninety days. Like many other migrants, they are forced to accept physically challenging jobs with low pay, low status, no benefits, and long hours.
Refugees who are resettled in the United States are assigned to specific communities where they are “hosted” by nonprofit organizations working under contract with the federal government. Many of these communities are smaller cities, often with high rates of unemployment, where arriving refugees may face discrimination and resentment. After arriving, refugees are free to relocate on their own to anywhere within the United States, but when they do so, they may lose access to resettlement services and benefits. Still, many do move, especially to follow jobs. The meatpacking industry actively recruits recently arrived refugees.78
Are refugees sent home when their countries become safer?
In the United States, refugee and asylum status are supposed to offer permanent protection. A year after entering the United States, refugees must apply for permanent resident status; people who win asylum status may also seek permanent residency after a year but are not required to do so. After five years of residency, refugees and people who have been granted asylum can apply for U.S. citizenship.79
If they don’t become citizens, and are convicted of certain criminal offenses, even longtime permanent residents who came here as refugees can be sent back to their countries. This has happened, for example, to hundreds of Cambodian refugees—most of whom came to the United States as young children.80
In 1990, the U.S. government created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a reprieve from deportation for migrants whose homelands have suffered a severe environmental disaster, armed conflict, epidemic or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions. TPS is not for refugees who flee these conditions, but rather for migrants who are already living in the United States when the traumatic event happens, to protect them from being sent back to a country in crisis. Anyone convicted of a felony or two misdemeanors is not eligible for TPS. As of July 2014, some 340,000 people were beneficiaries of TPS, more than 60 percent of them Salvadorans (212,000).
TPS temporarily protects beneficiaries from detention and deportation, and allows them to work legally here, but it doesn’t provide a path to lawful permanent residence or citizenship. The special status can be renewed—and has been, repeatedly, for nationals of several
