(Photo: Litherland/flickr)

After last year’s earthquake, the Obama administration allowed Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to apply for Temporary Protected Status. TPS is a temporary visa, and it removes the threat of being deported back to a country that is overwhelmed with rebuilding efforts. But young Haitian immigrants soon discovered the reprieve actually made it harder to pursue their dreams of success in the US.

Haitian high school and college students found themselves in an immigration straightjacket: TPS makes it almost impossible to pay for an American college education.

Why is it so hard to pay for college if you are an immigrant under Temporary Protective Status?  And what does this mean for the future of young Haitian immigrants?

In this podcast episode, Fi2W executive producer John Rudolph poses these questions to Martha St. Jean, a Feet in Two Worlds education reporting fellow, and Christina Bonne-Annee, an attorney who has been working with young Haitians under TPS.

Listen to the podcast:

Subscribe to the Fi2W podcast on iTunes ¦ or Podbean ¦ Download this episode

Fi2W podcasts are supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundationwith additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Sirus Fund, and are produced in association with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and CUNY-TV.

(Photo: Litherland/flickr)

Listen to the Podcast:

Reporter’s Notebook:

Who are we as a people? Who am I? Haitian. American. Haitian-American. First generation Haitian-American. The diverse pieces of which I am composed constantly lead me to wonder about the effects of being a descendant of the Haitian people. How does my culture and heritage affect my reality?

Having gone through the higher education system, I wanted to know, how does familial and cultural history affect racial relationships between different black groups?

President Barack Obama,  whose father was from Kenya, was immediately called an “affirmative action president” and the “poster child” for affirmative action. In this story, I set out to find whether immigrant blacks are benefiting disproportionally from affirmative action programs and scholarships that were set up to reduce racial disparities between whites and African-Americans. If so, what are the consequences?

In March of this year, Harvard announced that over eleven and a half percent of its admitted class is African-American. But how many fit into the traditional definition of “African-American,” referring to the descendants of American slaves?

As an undergraduate attending college under an economically directed affirmative action program, my personal experience was that the majority of beneficiaries of the scholarship were not African-American, rather, they were immigrant blacks.

That experience was reflected in a study conducted by Pamela R. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University and Amy Lutz of Syracuse University, which found that African-Americans are enrolled at selective colleges at a rate of 2.4 percent compared to 9.2 percent for immigrant blacks.

“Things such as affirmative action were designed to redress the history of African-American inequality. But that emphasis on African-American shifted certainly by the late 60s and early 1970s whereby affirmative action in many respects represented diversity and the label diversity was used to incorporate black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa,” explained Hunter College, professor of Africana studies Anthony Brown.

The discrepancies are not only found in selective institutions, but at colleges and universities across the country. An Economic Policy Institute brief released earlier this year found that a little more than sixteen percent of U.S born blacks in the 25-years-and-older population attain a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Compare these numbers to African immigrants who achieve the same level of education at a rate 36.6 percent, and the one in five West Indian immigrants who have college degrees.

What happens when the different black groups meet on college campuses? Is there contention or cooperation?

The response of Onleilove Alstin, an African-American who recently graduated from Columbia University’s School of Social Work, echoed ideas I had encountered as a college student. “I think some underlying tensions exist,” Alstin said.  “If you go on your average campus it may seem that the black students are very united and for the most part they are.  But some tensions arise between the groups when people who are of African descent try to stereotype African-Americans based on what the dominant culture thinks.”

Alstin said those negative stereotypes include beliefs that African-Americans are lazy and unproductive, and do not value education. In response, immigrant blacks often try to distance themselves from these stereotypes. But Alstin points out that there’s a common struggle of being a person of African descent in a majority non-black country. Blacks in America , no matter their heritage, still face systematic racism, poverty and violence.

Professor Brown has found that over time, as immigrant black students mix with African American students on campus a new community often builds. “My students are very candid and they talk about narratives that were told to them by their parents. Well, you often hear, ‘My parents said this about African-Americans, stay away from them,’ all the pejorative stereotypes,” Brown told me.  “The opportunity to socialize with native born African-Americans in a competitive environment as peers helps to mitigate and demystify many of those stereotypes.”

Aneicka Bookal, who immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica and attended university in Michigan has a different perspective. “Regardless of the minority status that African-Americans hold in this country due to years of racial, socioeconomic, and political oppression in this country, there is a completely different barrier that you have to cross as an immigrant. As a consequence, the sense of unity and community that you would feel with someone who shares your racial background is completely different,”  she said.

Martha St. Jean is a Feet in Two Worlds education reporting fellow.  Her work, and the work of other Fi2W fellows, is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

The Haitian Times Editor and Publisher, Garry Pierre-Pierre. (Photo: Cristina DC Pastor)

The Internet and the long-running recession may have killed the American newspaper, but ethnic newspapers remain very much in business.

In New York, where hundreds of small newspapers serve the city’s diverse communities, the ethnic media stubbornly continues to publish issue after issue, selling copies at cost or just giving them away. The city’s nearly 3.5 million (out of a total  population of 8.3 million) immigrant residents largely depend on these newspapers for news, services and entertainment.

Today FI2W begins a series on how these newspapers are adapting to changes in the economy and the revolution in news gathering and distribution.

“The Internet is not the enemy,” declared Haitian Times editor, publisher and founder Garry Pierre-Pierre, in a measured, soft-spoken voice trying to rise above the cafeteria patter at the City University of New York (CUNY).

The Haitian Times, a maverick on the ethnic media landscape in New York, actually began as a fee-based website for readers who wanted news about the Haitian diaspora community.  After a few months spent defining its readership and market, Pierre-Pierre published the first print edition in 1999.

As the weekly paper is aimed at Haitian Americans, Pierre-Pierre made the decision to publish it in English with one page devoted to French. His innovative model is the opposite of many ethnic papers in this city which follow the philosophy of ‘print first, web second,’ and are written in languages other than English.

Pierre-Pierre, 48, who shared a Pulitzer for The New York Times’ team coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He told FI2W he needs to “do other things” besides publishing the Haitian Times in order to provide for his family. Being editor-publisher, although a prestigious title for this seasoned journalist, is not enough.

So as an adjunct professor and newspaperman, Pierre-Pierre divides his time between the CUNY campus on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the Haitian Times office in Flatbush, Brooklyn in a decrepit building it shares with a staffing agency, a dance school and a bargain clothing store.

It costs $50 for an annual subscription to haitiantimes.com, while the print version is free and distributed in community centers, stores and public places. Pierre-Pierre’s says for the most part, his readers are second generation Haitian-Americans with access to technology. The website gets an average of 100,000 hits a month. However, there is a segment—”older and more Haitians than American”—who prefer the paper version of the Haitian Times.

“We believe the kind of journalism that we practice should be paid,” said Pierre-Pierre, who is trying to educate readers about the need to pay for quality journalism. “We don’t just rely on commentary, we have reporters on the ground. And that costs money,” he said.

Despite ambitions to pay his staff for high quality journalism produced online or in print, Pierre-Pierre described the Haitian Times operation as “very bare-bones.” A dozen people are involved in putting the paper out week after week. There are no staff reporters—news is reported by freelancers who are paid per story. The administrative staff is paid, but nowhere near a monthly salary. Columnists volunteer their time and professional insights.

“It’s really a labor of love. I don’t get paid. I do other things to feed me and my family,” he said, which is partially why Pierre-Pierre started teaching at CUNY.

Pierre-Pierre isn’t just thinking about how to convey news to the Haitian diaspora, he’s also concerned with building a new journalism model.  His view is that what’s in the newspaper shouldn’t necessarily be online. The website and the print edition appear to co-exist as two separate entities, and Pierre-Pierre is proud that his weekly paper and the website complement—as opposed to copy—one another.

“We don’t want to cannibalize ourselves,” he explained. “Unlike all other publications who just put everything on the web, and then there’s only 12 people who pick up the paper, you need to give people reason to go to the website and also to pick up the paper.”

But since the recession began about four years ago, there’s been less money to run the paper. Haitian Times lost $30,000 to $40,000 in annual advertising revenue that it used to receive from New York State, which paid community newspapers to publicize anti-smoking and other public service campaigns. “It’s our biggest hit,” he said.

Small businesses have continued to pay for advertising space because, Pierre-Pierre said, they need the paper’s core audience to reach young Haitian Americans looking to connect with their Haitian heritage. The ads are mostly for airlines and money transfer companies along with classifieds and legal notices.  The immigration lawyers who had previously been a significant source of revenue are not advertising in big numbers anymore, Pierre-Pierre noted. Their presence peaked when record-numbers of Haitians were applying for special Temporary Protected Status (TPS) visas that allowed them to stay in the U.S. and work here.

The economic recession seems to have affected readership too: the paper’s circulation has dropped to about 15,000 from a high of almost 25,000 four years ago. Pierre-Pierre attributes the decline to people spending less on media and partly because the paper stopped mailing subscriptions to cut postal costs. But he estimates actual readership to be much higher—45,000—due to people sharing copies among friends and family. If that’s accurate, it would mean The Haitian Times reaches a significant portion of the Haitian immigrant population in New York, which according to the American Community Survey is 128,750. And in spite of substantial financial obstacles, Pierre-Pierre has stubbornly continued to turn out the paper week after week.

The recession may have meant less income for the paper, but Haitian Times managed to survive the recession without any layoffs. The newspaper’s size did not shrink, and the page count remained steady with a constant source of content. Haiti, with its cycles of natural disasters and political upheavals over the past few years has made for no shortage of news. Just last month exiled dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier made an unexpected comeback to the island, prompting wonder among the diaspora.

“The Haitian Times is a respected paper,” said Brooklyn native M. Skye Holly, whose family is from Haiti. “It does serve the Haitian community and is able to meet several generations of Haitians.”

Garry Pierre-Pierre, Editor and Publisher of The Haitian Times, at the CUNY Journalism School. (Photo: Cristina DC Pastor)

The fact that the paper from the beginning had a “bare-bones” structure may have actually helped it weather the economic downturn.

“If we lay [people] off we wouldn’t publish any paper. Our operating expenses are not that much, so cuts won’t make a difference,” Pierre-Pierre said.

“One of the ways we survive is through special events,” he continued, recalling a music festival they initiated about 10 years ago that brought in a flood of sponsorships and readers. Haitian Times is currently organizing three events in Brooklyn, where many Haitians live—an art exhibit, a business seminar, and a luncheon honoring women in the community—hoping to earn modest revenue for the paper.

Wrestling with a new journalism model for ethnic media has been a learning process for Pierre-Pierre. While he says the website is “fairly popular,” it has not picked up the volume of advertising generated by print. Pierre-Pierre had the vision to adopt a fee-based Internet newspaper business model way before mainstream newspapers and the perseverance to stick with it, but the community he’s serving hasn’t entirely kept pace with his embrace of technology.

Yet despite the shaky finances and a drop in readership,  Pierre-Pierre is confident that Haitian Times will be “well positioned” once the economy improves, having put in place an integrated web-and-print media organization. He believes that as long as the people who run the paper get some form of compensation, the paper, in both its online and print versions, will press on.

“We’re not on strong ground, never been on strong ground, but we’re OK,” he said. “We operate from the margins. There are no fats, so when the lean time comes, we just roll with it.”

Cristina Pastor is a Feet in Two Worlds business and economics reporting fellow.  Her work, and the work of other Fi2W fellows, is supported by the New York Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with additional support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, or "Baby Doc," the former president of Haiti, greeted people at his hotel upon his return to Haiti. (Photo: Ilio Durandis)

Like the headless horseman from Sleepy Hollow, former president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier resurfaced on January 16 in Haiti, a quarter century after Haitians revolted and removed him from power.

He was spotted in a Port-au-Prince hotel that afternoon enjoying a relaxing meal with a small coterie of friends, making no effort to shield himself from the crowd and the cameras.

“I was in Haiti at the time,” recalled Ilio Durandis, founder of the grassroots organization Haiti 2015. “I thought it was a rumor. Everybody was shocked. I texted some friends: Have you heard? Is CNN on it?”

As Durandis was leaving the country on the same day, he decided to drop by Duvalier’s hotel, not far from the airport. There, he saw the former dictator waving to the people.

“No one knows why he’s back,” Durandis said. “There’s a lot of speculations.”

Duvalier was charged by authorities on January 18 with corruption, embezzlement and wrongful association committed during his regime, from 1971 to 1986.

Like the rest of the world, Haitian immigrants are trying to make sense of Duvalier’s intent: Is he out to make peace and stake a forgiving place in history, or is he intent on reclaiming power as Haiti assembles a government in disarray? Why now as the country remembers the first anniversary of the fatal earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and left nearly 3 million without homes?

Whatever the reasons, Durandis believes the United States and France knew about Duvalier’s movements, and were complicit.  France is where Duvalier has lived in exile since a popular uprising overthrew his dictatorship in 1986. A U.S. military aircraft transported the family there.

Like Durandis, many Haitian Americans are too young to have personally experienced the brutality of Duvalier’s regime, inherited from his father, the ruthless Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier who ruled from 1957 to 1971. Both dictators were spectacularly vicious and violent, and stories about them are like moralistic folk tales, passed down by generations of Haitians.

“For me the Duvalier regime was a source of enigma,” wrote Haitian Times editor & publisher Garry Pierre-Pierre. “I remember François broke my aunt Christine’s tooth when he threw a bunch of coins at her while we were standing in our courtyard in Ruelle Alerte. From time to time, Francois would tour the city and throw money at pretty women.”

Pierre-Pierre left Haiti after Baby Doc became president in 1971 and came to New York to live with his mother.

M. Skye Holly, a student at The New School, said her mother made sure to remind the family of what it was like to live in fear and defiance under the Duvaliers.

“He was greatly despised,” the Brooklyn native said of Baby Doc. “He inherited the dislike and disgust that so many Haitians had for his father. Local artists would depict him in paintings as a cross dresser, which was supposed to be an ultimate insult.”  Human Rights Watch cited estimates of 20,000 to 30,000 civilians killed by Duvalier’s private army.

Holly says many Haitians were offended by Duvalier’s ostentatious lifestyle while most of the population was living in dire poverty. “When Duvalier married, it was a lavish wedding, and locals were upset that he could spend so much money on a wedding while so many Haitians were living in horrible conditions.” Duvalier spent an estimated US $3 million on the state-sponsored affair.

But not all Haitians feel negatively about Duvalier’s legacy. Florida business owner Serge Pamphile, who spoke sympathetically of Duvalier, said the country needs a strong leader and that most Haitians “behave and respond better under strong authorities.”

“For the past 25 years, we have tried every kind of president, and it has not worked,” he said. “So, that’s why we need someone like Duvalier to take over and run the country.” In November, Haiti held the first round of presidential elections, but after accusations of widespread fraud, the political scene is gridlocked.

Some say Duvalier’s return is the latest catastrophe the country did not need, like the earthquake, the cholera epidemic, and the widely disputed November elections, but Pierre-Pierre sees it as an opportunity for the country to process its past and move forward.

“Haiti has been stuck since then, partly because the people have never exorcised the demons that were the Duvaliers. Jean-Claude left the country not having been held accountable for anything, and his absence has been jarring to Haitians. If he is forced to face justice, Haitians can begin the arduous task of rebuilding their nation,” he said.

For many Haitians, as they look at a country that still bears the scars of victimization and poverty, the questions remain.

“Is it shock, desperation or regret?” asked Holly. “If he saw the images of the earthquake’s devastation, could he see the devastation that he caused? I’d like to know.”

Durandis said the former strongman has every right to return and live in Haiti if that’s what he wants, but he must be held accountable for his family’s abuse of power over seven decades.

A public apology or an acknowledgement of remorse for the violence the family had inflicted would be a start, said Durandis.

“History is there, our parents are still around. I don’t think we can forget, but we can forgive,” he said.

Note: The original version of this article has been corrected to report that Duvalier was charged by authorities, but not arrested, as originally reported.

A man repairing his roof in Haiti. (Photo: Oxfam International)

Feet in Two Worlds wants to know what Haitians in the U.S. are thinking and feeling about the elections. We invite you to leave a comment below.

For many frustrated Haitian citizens, and Haiti watchers, election day was a continuation of the strife the country has suffered over the past year, beginning with the devastating earthquake in January and the current cholera outbreak.

Voters poured into the streets with allegations of fraud and corruption at the polls, and at least 12 of the 19 candidates vying for the presidency came together on Sunday to call for the results to be canceled. The candidates accused the INITE party, represented by Jude Célestin, who is the favorite of the outgoing President, René Préval, of “massive fraud,” including stuffed ballot boxes and voter intimidation. Many hopeful voters were upset to find that their names were not located in the rolls at their local polling places, and more than 200,000 new and replacement ID cards required for voting hadn’t been delivered by election day morning. Yet on Sunday evening, the Haitian electoral commission said that the irregularities were too small to annul the election.

Preliminary results aren’t expected until December 7 at the earliest, so the candidates will surely be voicing their grievances further. The Haitian diaspora community in the United States is anxiously awaiting to hear the outcome, many of whom contributed funding and other means of support for candidates in their home country.

Damage after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. (Photo: United Nations Development Program).

“It makes me feel bad,” said Lucia Anglade, a Haitian immigrant and founder of the Long Island, NY non-profit Life and Hope Haiti that supports a school in Milot, a town in the north of the ravaged Caribbean country. “Again we have a lot of people dying.”

Anglade is like most Haitian immigrants who are in despair over the  cholera outbreak barely nine months after a powerful earthquake flattened their homeland in January, killing nearly 230,000. The spread of the bacteria-borne disease has killed at least 1,300 people with about 57,000 confirmed cases reported.

The country, which has hardly had a chance to catch its breath from back-to-back crises,  is now heading into a national election on November 28.  Some say the election is distracting leaders from dealing with the cholera outbreak. There are 19 candidates for president and at least four of them have asked that the voting be postponed until the epidemic becomes more manageable.

Anglade was in Haiti in October visiting the Eben Ezer school she founded, when the cholera outbreak began. While there, she and the school’s teachers began to educate people, especially parents, about the importance of basic sanitary practices that can help stop the spread of the disease, such as washing hands, keeping the house clean, and thoroughly cooking food.

She will be back in December, along with a volunteer doctor from Maine, bringing boxes of soap donated by communities from Long Island and Maine familiar with her work.

When she returns, Anglade said she would move on to the next phase of her project: making sure that water from a well near the school is safe to drink. “I want to build something to give the community,” she told Fi2W. “We already have a well, we want to see purified water from the well.”

“The response requires technical, highly enlightened health specialists who know what to do with cholera,” said Catholic Bishop Guy Sansaricq of Brooklyn. “You don’t simply send aspirin.”

The bishop pointed out that hundreds of humanitarian agencies, among them the Catholic Relief Services, are already in Haiti, providing assistance to people with infections or those needing to be relocated to avoid contamination. Sansaricq said the community is concerned, but for most Haitian immigrants with relatives who may be affected, cash may be the only way they can really help.

Community organizer and columnist for the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times newspaper, Ilio Durandis, said the response to the cholera outbreak, while generally “not well organized,” can be seen at the grassroots level, through hometown associations that are collecting medical supplies and mobilizing networks of volunteers who might travel to Haiti to help with health education.

“Not on a larger scale,” he told Fi2W, “but getting people to come to Haiti and help educate people about not drinking dirty water, how to dispose of waste, or how to put in IVs is what we do.” He said people in Haiti are “panicking” and don’t know how to use IV needles to help people suffering from dehydration, one cholera’s principal symptoms.

Following the January earthquake and now the cholera outbreak, Haitians are feeling angry and tired, said Durandis, founder of Haiti 2015, a community organization in Boston advocating for social empowerment.

“It’s more like tiredness kind of anger. Why always us? Who do we blame?” he said. “It’s that kind of anger.”

“The best thing is to send money,” he said. “Water is expensive in Haiti.” While the capital, Port-au-Prince, has access to clean, potable water, the same cannot be said of rural areas where people drink from “clean-looking” but “untreated” water from pumps and rivers.

The election may seem inappropriate at a time of great human suffering, said Durandis, but “it’s one of those things that have to go on.” He said the election had already been rescheduled after the January earthquake, and another postponement could create a leadership vacuum resulting in a political crisis.  He conceded that many Haitians are angry that millions are being spent on the election.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men in Brooklyn said it is organizing a 40-day vigil starting on December 3, expressing sympathy for the victims and also gratefulness to the international community for continuing to support the country through all the turmoil. There will be a rally in preparation at City Hall on December 2.

“The 40 days of prayer is for all the Haitians in the Diaspora,” Episcopalian Pastor Philius Nicolas explained to Fi2W. Interdenominational churches, groups, homes and individuals will hold prayer meetings with Haiti as their special intention.

He said prayers are what Haitians need at this time. “Haitians see the hand of God in everything. But we don’t want to blame God, we don’t say that God is wicked, that he would give us catastrophe. But when we feel despair, we need and have the human capacity to call for prayers.”

SB 1070 is a defining issue this election season. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr)

Tuesday’s primary results are in and many Republican candidates who emphasized opposition to illegal immigration in their campaigns are now winners.

Senator John McCain, the former GOP presidential candidate who is running for re-election in Arizona, won with 56% of the Republican vote after a rough few months battling J.D. Hayworth, a conservative former talk show host. Hayworth came down hard on McCain for his previous support of a path to legalization for the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants. McCain was so intimidated he switched course, supported Arizona’s strict law SB 1070, and released an ad in which he championed border enforcement, declaring, “complete the danged fence.” McCain’s reading of the conservative political tide in Arizona was successful, but he’s changed his position on immigration so many times now it’s unclear what he really thinks, or what he’ll do if re-elected.

Also in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer, who gained nationwide notoriety for signing SB 1070 and vigorously opposing undocumented immigration, sailed to victory with a whopping 87% of the Republican vote. SB 1070 was her ticket to success at the polls–before it became her signature issue there had been talk of a Democratic knock-out this November, an outcome that seems very unlikely at this point.

In Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary, long-time politician Bill McCollum was not so lucky. His challenger, a wealthy health care executive, Rick Scott, painted McCollum in TV ads as being soft on illegal immigration. In return, McCollum, the current state attorney general, who initially said SB 1070 wouldn’t work in Florida, changed course and proposed his own, even harsher version of the law, saying “Arizona is going to want our law.” But that wasn’t enough to convince Florida’s conservatives, who chose Scott over McCollum 46% to 43%. If Scott is ultimately elected he is somewhat of a wild card, since he has never held office before. He’ll be facing Democrat Alex Sink in the general election.  Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, says she is against laws like SB 1070.

Illegal immigration is guaranteed to be a major issue in the race to fill Florida’s open U.S. Senate seat as well. U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who beat billionaire Jeff Greene last night to become the Democratic nominee, will be facing tea-party favorite Republican Marco Rubio in November as well as Governor Charlie Crist, who is running as an Independent. Meek and Crist have spoken out against SB 1070, but Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, supports it.

And lastly, in another primary race Fi2W was following closely, the replacement for Meek’s congressional seat in District 17, State Senator Frederica Wilson defeated eight other candidates, including four Haitian-Americans, who split the vote.

(Photo: Ferret111/flickr)

Florida could be on the verge of making history by electing the first Haitian American to Congress. Four out of nine candidates vying to win the Democratic Primary in the 17th Congressional District are of Haitian descent.  The winner in the overwhelmingly Democratic district in South Florida is all but certain to go to Washington in 2011.  The only opposition is coming from attorney Roderick Vereen, who is running without party affiliation.

The abundance of Haitian American candidates reflects the district’s population–it has the largest concentration of Haitians in the country, and by some estimates they account for a quarter of the vote.   The seat is being vacated by Kendrick Meek (D-FL), who has held it since 2003.  Meek, who is running for the U.S. Senate, took over from his mother, Carrie Meek, elected to the seat in 1992, after the district was redrawn.

Over the past 10 years Haitian Americans have made gains in the Florida legislature.  And while this is the first time they have a shot at a congressional seat, some in the Haitian community fear the four candidates may be their own worst enemies.

Community leaders say there’s a lot of momentum among Haitian immigrants in the district to elect one of their own, but with four to choose from, its quite possible the vote will be split–and the candidates, all popular, will cancel each other out.

Gepsie Metellus, executive director of Sant La, a Haitian American community center in Miami, says an initial effort to unify the community around one candidate was unsuccessful.

“I’m disappointed that we couldn’t convince the four of them that they needed to make a sacrifice for the benefit of the community,” she said. But Metellus believes the failure to unify was a natural growing pain that many immigrant communities go through as they mature into a political force.

The four candidates are state Rep. Yolly Roberson and former state Rep. Phillip Brutus (who used to be married to each other), long-time community leader Marleine Bastien and health care entrepreneur Dr. Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Moise. Four of the remaining five candidates are African-American, and one is white. The Miami Herald has endorsed Shirley Gibson, the mayor of Miami Gardens who, like Rep. Meek, is African American.

Rudy Moise has raised and spent the most money on the race by far, and has bought a tremendous amount of radio and television ads. Yves Colon, a Haitian American journalist and lecturer at the Miami School of Communications, says the fact Moise is running complicated the race for the other candidates–who in the past sought him out for campaign contributions. “People used to hit Rudy up for money, but now he’s running,” he said.

Colon says the four Haitian American candidates have similar positions on the issues–but the community tends to vote based on personality rather than issues. “In the Haitian community everybody has partisans, everyone has fans, it’s like Facebook friends,” Colon said.

Dessalines Ferdinand, who hosts a radio show and is editor and publisher of Le Floridien, a Haitian newspaper in South Florida, agrees. “Most Haitian Americans don’t vote on your program, they are more focused on your relationship with leaders in the Haitian community.” The problem, Ferdinand says, is all four of these candidates are popular.

All of the candidates are talking about immigration reform, and finding a solution for the thousands of Haitians who have applied to come to the U.S. after the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti in January.

What to do about undocumented immigrants in Florida (many of whom are Haitian) has become  a major issue in the state’s Republican gubernatorial and senate primaries, also taking place on August 24.  In the GOP gubernatorial race, State Attorney General Bill McCollum and his challenger Rick Scott are battling to be seen as the most hard-line on illegal immigration.

Though she says it will be difficult, Metellus remains hopeful that voters will choose an advocate for the Haitian community next Tuesday. “It would be an historic victory, a historic moment for the Haitian diaspora.”

Camp Daihatsu, an internally displaced persons camp in Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Talia Frenkel/American Red Cross)

As many as 200,000 undocumented Haitians could apply for Temporary Protected Status, granted by the Obama administration after the January 12th earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and environs. But authorities are warning against scammers who are already preying on unwitting –or desperate– applicants.

A Haitian immigrant in New York told local channel NY1 about how a local Haitian organization charged her over $500 in fees when she filed her application to obtain TPS, which would entitle her to work and travel without fearing deportation. The owner, according to the report, said he did not know it was illegal to charge so much. But the State Attorney General’s office said that even $75 has been deemed excessive in court rulings.

After the government’s announcement that it was granting TPS to Haitians, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cautioned potential applicants about possible scams. The Beyond Borders immigration blog lists useful resources for applicants provided by USCIS, including a guide to free legal advice and a list of accredited organizations.

On the bright side, many organizations are stepping forward to offer free legal help to undocumented Haitians.

Since Monday, the National Guard Armory in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was to become a resource center for the Haitian community, set up by the city and the state, according to a press release. It provides TPS assistance, Creole-English interpreters, telephones to contact Haitian and U.S. officials, grief counseling and legal information.

Other legal clinics were held last week at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and the New York City Bar.

In Connecticut, two lawyer groups will run legal clinics on TPS on Saturday in Hartford, Norwich, Stamford and New Haven, the Connecticut Law Tribune said.

Groups in South Florida are also helping out. Several groups are calling for bilingual volunteers to help assist Haitian residents and evacuees who arrive fleeing the dismal conditions in Port-au-Prince and its environs, The Miami Herald reported.

In Spring Valley, New York –which has one of the largest proportions of Haitian residents in the country–, federal immigration officials met with local leaders to address their doubts, according to LoHud.com.

As of Monday afternoon, however, only 1,500 people had applied for TPS, The National Journal reported:

… as applications trickle in, it’s becoming clear that TPS will not instantly unleash the flood of remittances that advocates hoped for. Immigrant advocacy groups in Florida say their offices are packed with Haitians looking for help with applications, but plenty of hurdles remain. The six-page application, filled with legal jargon, is “very, very time-consuming” and slowing down the process, argued Susana Barciela, policy director for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which has helped hundreds of would-be applicants already.

Jean Montrevil meets Rev. Donna Schaper of the Judson Memorial Church. (Photo: The New Sanctuary Coalition)

On New Year’s Day, Jean Montrevil was detained in an immigration lockup. Less than a month later, after being freed following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, he will stand outside another jail where immigrants are held to protest the laws that placed him a breath away from deportation.

Montrevil and other immigration activists are expected to hold a demonstration Tuesday at 12:30 pm outside the Varick Federal Detention Facility in Lower Manhattan “to call for an end to immigration policies that are destroying families.”

Haitian-born Montrevil was released last Saturday from a detention center in York, Pennsylvania, where he was being held. A couple of weeks before, The New York Times reported, he was so close to being deported to Haiti “that friends were waiting for him at the airport in Port-au-Prince.” The deportation flight was stopped because another detainee had a fever, the newspaper said.

Immediately after the Jan. 12 earthquake, deportations to Haiti were halted. Later the U.S. extended temporary protected status to Haitians already in the country.

Montrevil is now free but, according to a press release from the New Sanctuary Movement, he “still does not have permanent status and will continue to fight to change the immigration laws that tear millions of families like his apart.”

The Brooklyn resident and father of four U.S. citizens –detained on Dec. 30 during a monthly check-in with immigration authorities– has for many years been an activist against deportations and is one of the founders of the New York chapter of the New Sanctuary Coalition. His detention spurred several protests — including one that ended with eight clergy members and two activists arrested.

Tuesday, Montrevil will be joined by his family, immigration activists and religious leaders at the jail located at 201 Varick St.