Immigration Tragedy on the High Seas

By DAVID ELLIS

If Haiti were ruled by communist dictators rather than military tyrants whose only ideology is power, the multitudes who have set sail from that downtrodden country in a desperate bid for freedom in the past month might well have found refuge in the U.S. Instead, those who dared the perilous 650- mile voyage toward America found that America has no place for them. Since the latest outpouring of Haitian refugees began, the U.S. Coast Guard has plucked them by the thousands from their leaky vessels and held them in detention centers or aboard American ships. And then, until a federal judge ordered a temporary halt to the practice last week, the U.S. shipped hundreds of them back to the benighted nation they had tried so desperately to escape.

The exodus is in large part an unforeseen result of a well-intentioned U.S. policy. After the September coup that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected President, the country plunged even more deeply into violence and deprivation. The suffering has been worsened by a U.S.-backed trade embargo by the Organization of American States designed to pressure the illegal government into restoring Aristide to power. Gasoline and fuel-oil supplies are scarce, and political repression against Aristide's supporters is fierce. More than 400,000 citizens have fled the capital of Port-au-Prince for the countryside. More than 3,300 have been intercepted by Coast Guard cutters as they attempted the risky passage to Florida. An untold number of others have perished, including 135 who drowned when their overloaded boat capsized off the coast of Cuba last Tuesday.

That tragedy intensified demands from refugee advocates and Democratic Congressmen for the Bush Administration to suspend the forced repatriations of the boat people and permit them to remain in the U.S. until conditions in Haiti improve and the government is restored. But the President, seeking to dissuade thousands more Haitians from taking to the water in the hope of gaining asylum, insisted that the massive interception of the boat people that started last month must continue. Allowing the boat people to enter the U.S., he warned, would only lead more Haitians to risk their lives in the dangerous journey.

Of those taken into custody by the Coast Guard, 538 have been shipped back to Haiti, 350 have been sent to camps in four Caribbean nations, and more than 2,300 are aboard Coast Guard cutters or have been transferred to U.S. troop ships and the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. According to Coast Guardsmen who took part in the rescue effort, many of the fleeing Haitians' boats are no better than floating coffins. Many of the passengers are so seasick, hungry and dehydrated that they cannot answer the questions put to them by overworked immigration officers stationed on the cutters.

Beyond its professed concern for the Haitians' safety, however, the Administration's stance on the boat people reflects long-standing immigration policies. Like most nations, the U.S. divides would-be refugees into two groups, and treats each very differently. Those with a "well-founded fear of persecution" because of their race, religion or political views are granted political asylum. But the U.S. lumps all except a microscopic number of Haitians into the category of "economic migrants," maintaining that because they are merely fleeing from poverty and generalized chaos and violence, they do not qualify for resident status. "In Haiti people are still free to practice their religion and to hold a job -- if they can find one," explains a State Department spokesman. In 1981 the Reagan Administration reached an agreement with Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier that permits -- but does not require -- the U.S. to return Haitians suspected of trying to illegally enter its territory, provided Haiti gives assurances that no reprisals will be taken against them. Through the end of 1990, more than 24,000 Haitian refugees were caught trying to enter the U.S., but only five were granted political asylum.

Some opponents of the Bush policy charge that it is shaped by racism against citizens of a black nation. Others are angered by the contradiction between this policy and the practice in other situations, when the U.S. brushed aside the distinction between economic and political refugees in order to further the fight against communism. From 1983 to 1989, for example, 12,316 refugees from Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua were welcomed by the U.S., and this year alone 2,000 Cubans have been granted permanent-resident status under an anti-Castro law passed in 1966. The U.S. has even criticized its staunchest allies when they tried to deport economic refugees from communist countries. On Oct. 17, George Bush fired off a letter to British Prime Minister John Major, reaffirming U.S. opposition to the forced repatriation of the 64,000 Vietnamese boat people who have sought refuge in Hong Kong until conditions in Vietnam improve. Four out of five of them are considered to be economic refugees.

Earlier this month, when only a relative handful of Haitians were attempting the sea trek, some members of Congress asked Bush to allow some of the refugees into the U.S. on a temporary basis. The legislators reasoned that such a quiet humanitarian gesture would ease the painful effects of the embargo without encouraging others to flee. The Administration shelved the suggestion, though it did launch a perfunctory effort to persuade Haiti's democratic neighbors to resettle some of the refugees. Belize agreed to take 100 boat people -- if they tested negative for the AIDS virus. Honduras, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago agreed to accept a total of 450 Haitians.

The legal and diplomatic niceties mean little to the boat people, who regard the voyage to America, no matter how daunting, as less risky than remaining in their own country. U.S. officials say there is no evidence that Haiti's military rulers will take revenge against those who have been repatriated. But they also admit that conditions inside Haiti have become so horrendous that the American embassy in Port-au-Prince has been reduced to a skeleton staff, leaving the monitoring of abuses to a beleaguered network of human-rights organizations. According to them, security forces under the command of Port- au-Prince police chief Major Michel Franois, the mastermind of the coup, have persecuted hundreds of young men believed to be Aristide supporters. Last week a Haitian bodyguard employed by U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams was dragged out of his house by a group of unidentified gunmen and shot to death.

Alain St. Ville, 27, a young Aristide supporter driven out by the junta, is one of just 100 Haitians who have been allowed to apply for political asylum since Aristide was toppled. A musician from Port-au-Prince's poorest % neighborhood, St. Ville left the country in a small sailboat after a neighbor warned that soldiers were looking for him. "There were 52 of us," St. Ville says. "None of us knew the sea. It was horrible. But we kept saying anything is better than staying to be shot by the soldiers."

Last week Aristide began negotiations for his return with members of Haiti's National Assembly in Cartagena, Colombia. There was little hope for a quick settlement, however, because the army leaders who hold veto power over the talks insist that Aristide will not be allowed back until the economic embargo is eased. Moreover, Jean-Jacques Honorat, premier of the illegal government, says the former President will face criminal charges if he sets foot in Haiti. For his part, Aristide has reaffirmed support for a military reform program, a pledge that triggered his overthrow in the first place. Most diplomats think Aristide will return several months after a new compromise Cabinet is appointed.

Until the government is restored to Haiti and the embargo is lifted, the exodus is likely to continue. Even if the federal judge in Miami who temporarily enjoined the Administration from sending the boat people back to Port-au-Prince eventually rules that the repatriations are legal, the U.S. must find a more orderly and humane way to cope with the problem.

One possible solution would be for Attorney General William Barr to invoke a provision of the Immigration Act of 1990 that permits the government to extend "temporary protected status" to certain foreign nationals who do not qualify for formal refugee status but who were displaced by war, natural disasters or generalized civil strife. Such protection would apply only to Haitians who actually reach the U.S., leaving open the possibility that the Coast Guard would keep on with its interceptions.

If the Administration decides to be generous to fleeing Haitians, money for a temporary refuge program has already been authorized by Congress: a $35 million fund that the President can tap once he declares an immigration emergency. The crisis now unfolding off Haiti's coast surely qualifies.

With reporting by Bernard Diederich/Miami and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington