Donald Trump to 60,000 Haitians: ‘Get out!’

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On Nov. 20, the Trump administration, after an elec­ tion campaign based on anti-immigrant hate, ordered the expulsion of 60,000 Haitians living in the U.S. who arrived after the devastation of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, which killed over 200,000. Haitians who arrived by Jan. 2011 received Temporary Protective Status (TPS) under a 1990 law and were allowed to stay 18 months. Haitian TPS status was extended four times.

Directly affected will be some 30,000 children of Hai­ tian TPS recipients, ripping families apart. TPS Haitians have until July 2019 to “prepare for departure” said the Department of Homeland Security. (TPS status of 5000 Nicaraguans expires in early January and 86,000 Hon­ durans in July 2018. Some 200,000 Salvadorans await a decision in January. TPS was granted after hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1999.)

The anti-immigrant attacks come on the heels of Trump’s racist Muslim ban and threats to deport 800,000 children of so-called “illegal” immigrants who received DACA status (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). All the while, Trump continues his vow to build a racist wall along the Mexican border. Socialists say, “No to deportations! Full citizenship rights for TPS immigrants! No to the wall! No one is illegal!”

In ending TPS status for Haitians, acting secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke asserted, “the extraor­ dinary but temporary conditions caused by the earth­ quake of 2010 no longer exist”—a contemptible lie! TPS Haitians have until July 2019 to “prepare,” says the ad­ ministration.

The ruling-class bigots could hardly have been crueler. Since arriving, TPS Haitians have gotten jobs and raised families. As a result, TPS Haitians support 250,000 rela­ tives in Haiti, says a study released in October by the Global Justice Clinic of the New York University Law School. If expelled, Haitians would be returning to a dev­ astated country.

“I received a shock right now,” said Gerald Michaud, 45, a Haitian who lives in Brooklyn, when he heard the bad news. He has been sending money to family and friends back home. Brooklyn radio host Ricot Dupuy told his lis­ teners, “This pressure to send immigrants back home, ... the idea is to whiten America.”

TPS advocate Steve Forester, immigration policy co­ ordinator with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), cites as reasons for TPS the earthquake, a post-earthquake cholera epidemic that has killed 10,000, and Matthew—a Category 4 hurricane that dis­ placed 180,000 in 2016. Forester calls it, “Three sledge hammer blows, anyone of which would have qualified Haitians for TPS.”

Marleine Bastien of Haitian women of Miami (FANM) put it this way last April as threats to TPS mounted: “If any country qualifies for TPS right now, it’s Haiti. If the Trump administration goes through with this, it will be the most distressing, anti-family, anti-Black and racist decision any administration can take. People are still dying as a result of the imported cholera epidemic, and hurricane Matthew destroyed the southern peninsula, where we have people eating dirt and living in caves.” FANM has organized several TPS protests in Miami and at Trump’s home at Mar a Lago.

Miami’s Ira Kurzban, a veteran Miami immigration rights attorney, ripped Trump’s decision, “If you look at the TPS statutes it says the Attorney General must find if there’s any earthquakes, flood, drought epidemic or oth­ er environmental disaster, and a foreign state is unable to handle it, and the foreign state has made a request [made Oct 4], then the Attorney General should grant it. Haiti fits every category and checks off every box with respect to why Haitians should get TPS. It’s a continua­ tion of the same history of discrimination.”

In April, it was revealed that the Trump administration sought criminal records of TPS Haitians to disqualify ... Russian Revolution (continued from page 8: “Relevance of the Russian Revolution Today”)

formation of soviets in some key German cities, forced the abdication of the German Kaiser, effectively nullified the onerous provisions of Brest Litovsk, and led to the withdrawal of German and allied troops from Russia. So frightened was the German capitalist class with the return of the radicalized and often revolutionary-minded sol­ diers that they were initially banned from German cities where rebellious worker mobilizations vied for power.

Similarly, stunned by the revolt of Black Sea-based French sailors, France ceased its military operations in the Soviet South. Massive working-class mobilizations in England compelled the British government to withdraw them for extending TPS and cut-off any TPS benefits they receive—but TPS Haitians do not receive any ben­ efits! Nevertheless, so-called “crime” records are irrel­ evant in awarding TPS. In general, the supposedly outof-control immigrant “crime” rate is actually lower than that in the rest of society.

Under the boot of U.S. imperialism, immigration policy toward Haitians has always been racist, including under Democrats and Republicans. Known in the 1980s as “the Black Boat People,” Haitians were initially sent to a mass detention camp in Miami. The impoverished Haitians opposed U.S.-backed Haitian elites, unlike the mostly white, anti-communist Cuban exiles who were granted virtual automatic asylum.

Haiti today: Poverty, displacement, epidemics Haiti is in no position to receive 60,000 new arrivals. Some 40,000 Haitians still live in dangerous, unsanitary post-earthquake camps; 2/3 of camp pregnancies were from rape; 1/3 of desperate camp women report trad­ ing sexual favors for basics like food and housing.

It is estimated that 2/3 of the capital’s post-earth­ quake buildings are beyond repair, but re-inhabited. The earthquake, centered in Haiti’s capital of Port au Prince, killed over 200,000 inhabitants, injured another 1.5 million, and left 2.3 million displaced in a country of 11 million.

Overall, Haiti’s unemployment rate is about 40%, and 60% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day. The countrywide minimum wage is less than $5 a day, often ignored by bosses, particularly in textile plants that are usually subcontractors to U.S. or other international corpora­ tions. The Global Justice report concluded that “hunger and malnutrition” are even “worse” than when TPS was implemented.

A cholera epidemic broke out soon after the earth­ quake caused by the U.S./U.N. occupation’s disregard for Haitian welfare. Studies revealed that the Nepalese contingent dumped faeces into a tributary of the Arti­ bonite River, used by Haitians for drinking and bath­ ing. The fast moving plague killed 10,000 and infected over 800,000, spiking again after Matthew, although now it is down from its peak. All along, the UN denied from the Soviet North. In the U.S., among the actions of the five-day 1919 General Strike in Seattle, involv­ ing 65,000 workers, was the longshore union’s refusal to load U.S. arms destined for the White Armies fighting the Soviet Government. Indeed, the longshore workers physically challenged anyone who attempted to load ships bound for Russia.

Similar and massive working-class actions across Eu­ rope and beyond cautioned Europe’s would-be Soviet oc­ cupiers to proceed with caution—indeed, to retreat from their intentions to divide up Russia for future occupation and colonization.

Thus, on every front the inspiration that the October Revolution provided to the world’s working masses, con­ sciously advanced by Soviet propagandists in every na­ tion on earth, combined with the revolutionary zeal and self-sacrifice of the Soviet masses and their army to make the impossible a reality. Terribly crippled, near starva­ Marty Goodman / Socialist Action (Above) Tent dwelling in refugee camp in Haiti. responsibility, until about a year ago, greatly undermin­ ing public awareness and a swift response.

Nothing will change soon. President Jovenel Moise, a banana magnate, was elected in 2016 by less than a 20% turnout of voters. Moise is a proponent of the sweatshop economic model promoted by the U.S.-dominated World Bank, as was his predecessor, Michel Martelly. Since as­ suming office last Feb. 7, many large mobilizations have occurred demanding Moise’s removal and an end to cor­ ruption.

Occupations by the U.S./UN have contributed might­ ily to the impunity of the corrupt Haitian regimes: first 1915-1934, then U.S./UN occupations in 1994, 2004, and 2010. President Obama sent in 20,000 troops to occupy post-earthquake Haiti to prevent food riots that never occurred, while delaying medical relief from sev­ eral countries. The despised U.S./UN occupying forces finally withdrew in October, leaving an expanded police force and a reestablished Haitian military, notorious for brutality and corruption.

Making conditions even worse, tens of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian origin in the adjacent Dominican Republic have been expelled or fled the racist, some­ times violent, campaign against them encouraged by a court decision known as La Sentencia in 2013. Domini­ can lawmakers have cited U.S. immigration law to de­ fend their racist onslaught against darker Dominicans, seen as Haitians. Little to nothing in aid is given to refu­ gees from the D.R. by the Haitian government, many of whom have never lived in Haiti.

Trump’s lies to Haitians are astonishing—even for Trump! On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump told a Hai­ tian crowd, “I want to be your greatest champion.” Hai­ tian opportunists were able to rally support for Trump based on the widespread and well-deserved hatred of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s role in Haiti.

Wikileaks revealed the Clintons’ role in strong-arming Haitian authorities to boost the status of a friend of the old Duvalierist dictatorship clique, presidential can­ didate Michel Martelly, elected in 2011. Moreover, Bill (continued on page 11, in “Trudeau’s defective apology to LGBT people”)

tion, plagued with war-induced famine coupled with an imperialist embargo and blockade, some 9.5 million Rus­ sians perished. But the revolution survived.

Among those who perished first were the central work­ ing-class cadre of Russia’s Bolshevik Party, a generation of hundreds of thousands of youth in whom the revolu­ tion inspired the greatest dedication and sacrifice. This unavoidable imperialist-imposed catastrophe and re­ sulting leadership void provided the future basis for the emergence of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

In a future article we will discuss how this bureaucracy then replaced—or better, physically exterminated—vir­ tually the entire Bolshevik Party Central Committee lead­ ership team of the 1917 Revolution. But again, the condi­ tions that led to Stalin’s rise to power, as we shall see, were above all, the product of the world imperialist invasion as opposed to any inherent flaw in the ideology or practice of revolutionary socialism. n SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2017 9

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website: http://socialistaction.ca tion to endorse the union-based New Democratic Party in the next provincial election. The amendment to the official Ac­ tion Plan carried, but was chal­ growing rejection of status quo union­ ism in Ontario.

At a lunch break, the leftist Work­ ers Action Movement hosted a well attended public forum titled “How to