Facing America’s Haitian Immigration & Asylum Policy: With Komité Ayiti’s Garry Aime
Thank you so much for joining me this week on the Tara Lake show.
Today, I’m honored to bring you a special interview that addresses a compelling issue that made America pause and consider our complicated Immigration policy — and forced us ask difficult questions about the impact of race, ethnicity, and centuries of history on the specifics of that policy.
Garry Aime is President of Komité Ayiti Inc, a Baltimore-based Haitian Grassroots Organization, and he joins us this week to shed light on the experience of Haitian Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylees.
The treatment of over 14,000 Haitians seeking asylum in Del Rio, Texas at the US Mexico border last month, in September 2021, has been burned into our minds — and the image of Border Patrol agents wielding horse reins like whips sparked historic shame and outrage.
Despite condemnation from Pres. Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the current administration appears to be continuing the highly controversial policies that have been directed at Haitian asylum seekers since the 1970s, and most recently with the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. The realities of political unrest, natural disaster, economic instability — and the impact of American corporate, political, and military presence in Haiti — have caused many Haitians to flee the island nation for decades.
In recent years, Haiti has faced a string of new difficulties that have driven many to flee the country, including a horrific earthquake in 2010 and a disastrous combination of a devastating events over the summer of 2021, including a tropical storm, a 7.2 earthquake, and the assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
Despite this, Haitians are still the least likely of any nationality to have their asylum petitions granted in the United States. 2021 is not the first time we have seen the spectacle of Haitian Americans being denied due process in our immigration system. In the 1990s, an estimated 12,000 Haitian refugees were detained at Guantanamo, and the practice of arresting or ejecting Haitian refugees migrating by boat of the coast of Miami has led to a cycle of images of hundreds of Haitians being denied access to the right to seek asylum on a consistent basis, despite what many see as overwhelming evidence for their claims.
America’s approach to immigration has changed a great deal in the period since 2008. While we have also seen troubling policy toward Latin American refugees migrating through the Texas border, the circumstances of Haitian immigration to the United State represent a unique policy history, which we explore in this episode.
Mentioned in this Episode:
https://www.komiteayiti.org/
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