Speech #1020136094

What we have seen over the past several months since President Aristide was deposed Is an outflow of nearly 16.000 Haitians from the island of Halit. who have left by boat and been picked up by the United States Coast Guard cutters off the coast of Haiti. and for the most part brought to the island of Cuba to our base there at Guantanamo. There has been a dispute about the processing that has been going on. but nothing about the facts of what has happened there with those almost 16.000 people. The Government. through the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department. has been screening the people who have come to Guantanamo to determine who has a plausible claim for political asylum under the Refugee Act which is the law of the United States and has a plausible basis for making an argument in front of an immigration judge for the right to stay here on the basis that if they were returned to Haiti they could suffer and have a reasonable fear of suffering political or religious persecution. That is the Federal law. That is the guideline that this Congress passed for determining whether people can come here as refugees or seek asylum here under the asylum laws. either one. More than 35 percent of all of those who have left Haiti and been picked up by our Coast Guard cutters and taken into Guantanamo. more than 35 percent have already been screened into this process. have already been determined by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to have a plausible claim for political asylum and have been given the right to go before an immigration Judge and argue their case. which they will be doing over the next several weeks and months. It is only the remaining balance. the remaining roughly 65 percent. that this vote is about today and tomorrow. It is the remaining 65 percent who have been determined not to have that claim who we believe. and the Government. our Government. that is. the Immigration Service and the State Department and President Bush believe are truly economic refugees. people who have left not because they have a fear of persecution in Haiti but because of the economic conditions there. It is only that group which are being repatriated into Haiti. If we stop the repatriation. what we are going to be doing is drawing on the desires of thousands and thousands of people in Haiti as well as those in other Caribbean and Central American regions where poverty is so great. drawing on their desires to leave their homeland and come to the United States where obviously the economic conditions are better. We. as a nation. simply cannot take in all of the people who want to come here because they are impoverished. because their economies are bad. who want to come. That is why we have an immigration law. That is why we have a legal immigration process. and that is why we have a Refugee Act and an asylum law that says that we only take people in in those cases that are exceptions to the legal immigration process whore they are reasonably in fear that they will be persecuted if they were to be returned to their home. If we abrogate that policy by passing this bill and putting a 6month delay in the process of returning those who have been screened out and are not being allowed to continue on because they do not have that reasonable fear or any plausible claim to it. we will be encouraging more to come. and in the interim. there will be thousands who will leave Haiti. there will be thousands who will leave elsewhere. and that is the real gist of the problem that we face is the magnet effect that is here. not to mention the destruction of the principles of the law that are on the books with regard to the whole refugee processing in this Nation and around the world. So I urge my colleagues to look carefully at this. It is not a question of who Is most concerned or who is not concerned with the fate of the people of Haiti.