Speech #970226784

Finally. Mr. President. the immigration debate has focused almost entire. ly on domestic issues. But immigration is as much a foreign policy problem as a domestic one. So even the strictest enforcement of the various provisions contained in this bill may have little longterm positive effect. Quite simply. these proposals do nothing to address the root causes of migration and refugee flowpopulation growth. economic underdevelopment. social inJustice. and human rights violations. Until our immigration debate addresses these serious international issues. we will never develop an adequate Immigration policy. The Haitian refugees detained in U.S. camps. which are little more than prisons. illustrate this point vividly. These refugees cannot possibly think they have entered the "golden door" of economic and social opportunity. Yet they continue to comecausing great suffering to themselves. and draining the financial resources of the States which must care for them. Still. life In the camps. with all its hardships. seems preferable to a life where social and economic opportunity are systematically denied. The dismal economic picture in Haiti is compounded by a long history of human rights violations. Repression has been a fact of life in Haiti since 1957. when Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier began his brutal regime. "Papa Doc" attacked the upper and middle classeswho made up the first wave of Haitian immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s. His successor and son. "Baby Doc" Duvalier. has shifted the focus of repression from cities to countryside. and from the upper classes to the poor. The result has been a flood of poor. uneducated "boat people" to the United States. Haiti may be unique in its combination and degree of economic underdevelopment. repressive government. and proximity to the United States. But it is by no means alone in contributing immigrants. From March 1979 to March 1981. the number of Central or South Americans in the United States increased from roughly 840.000 to 1.022.000. In the last 18 months alone. 200.000 Salvadorans have fled to the United States.