Obama Slams Door on Haitian Migrants

Let Them In! No Deportations!

On September 22, President Barack Obama abruptly closed U.S. borders to Haitians uprooted by the succession of natural disasters (including cholera brought in by UN troops from Nepal) that have ravaged their impoverished homeland. Since the 2010 earthquake that left more than 200,000 dead and over one million homeless, most Haitian migrants have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). That allowed them to enter the U.S. and work legally while requesting permanent status. With the sudden reversal of that policy, thousands of desperate Haitians are stuck in border towns like Tijuana, sleeping in shelters or on the streets. Others, who present themselves at border crossings, are locked up in detention centers and put on a fast track for deportation. A journalist for fusion.net aptly observed: “The U.S. policy change is like getting invited over to someone’s house then getting arrested when you ring the doorbell.”

Most of the Haitians arriving at this country’s southern border have come from Brazil, where they had gone by the tens of thousands after the devastating 2010 quake in search of work. Many toiled there building stadiums for the World Cup and the Olympics, but those jobs have dried up. Thousands of men and women, often with their children and even newborns, set off on the arduous overland journey, traversing dangerous jungles, mountain ranges and as many as ten national borders, in the expectation that they would be granted TPS upon their arrival at the U.S. border. Among those now stuck at the border are Haitian men who have been separated from families because many women and children were granted priority to enter the U.S. before the door was slammed shut.

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, sought to justify the deportations by claiming that conditions in Haiti had “improved sufficiently.” That cruelly cynical statement was made barely a week and a half before Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti, killing more than a thousand people, uprooting crops, leveling homes and triggering another widespread cholera epidemic. A New York Times (17 October) report described hundreds of villagers on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti forced to seek shelter in caves and scavenge the fields for remnants of destroyed crops to stave off starvation.

The huge number of people killed and left homeless by “natural” disasters in Haiti is a direct result of the imperialist plunder that has left the country destitute and lacking in basic infrastructure. In contrast to Haiti, there was not a single death in Cuba when it was also hit hard by Hurricane Matthew. A social revolution in Cuba overthrew capitalism more than 50 years ago, establishing a bureaucratically deformed workers state. The advantages of Cuba’s collectivized economy over capitalist free-market anarchy are evident not least in the way Cuba deals with natural disasters.

The real reason for the racist targeting of Haitian migrants by the Obama administration has nothing to do with conditions in Haiti and everything to do with pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment in the run-up to the U.S. elections. The choice between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as we headlined our previous issue, pits a “Racist Bigot vs. Imperialist Hawk.” On immigration policy, while Trump revels in racist demagoguery, Clinton has expressed no significant differences with Deporter-in-Chief Obama, who has expelled more immigrants than any president in U.S. history. We call for full citizenship rights for all who have made it here. No deportations! As for the thousands of Haitians now stuck at the U.S. border and across Central America, we say: Let them in! Down with Obama’s racist exclusion of Haitian migrants!

The U.S. imperialist rulers have a long history of discrimination and abuse directed against Haitian migrants. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement with infamous Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier allowing the U.S. to patrol Haiti’s coastal waters and repatriate any Haitians it picked up. Over the next decade, under that program some 25,000 Haitians were interdicted at sea. During the early 1990s, Haitians were targeted in the racist, anti-AIDS hysteria: in the U.S. they were banned from donating blood, and hundreds trying to enter the U.S. were imprisoned based on their HIV-positive status.

In September 1991, masses of Haitians took to overcrowded boats desperately seeking to flee the reign of terror unleashed following the coup against radical populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the U.S. presidential election campaign the following year, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton denounced President George H. W. Bush’s interception of Haitians at sea and promised to grant “temporary asylum” to all those fleeing the murderous regime. As president, Clinton cynically dismissed his earlier promise as “campaign rhetoric” and maintained Bush’s racist policy. Forty thousand Haitians were intercepted and most were transported by the U.S. Coast Guard back to Haiti where the military torturers awaited them on the docks.

The racism and anti-communism underlying U.S. policy are underscored by the contrast between the abuse meted out to Haitians and the reception accorded to Cubans, who are welcomed with open arms. Counterrevolutionary Cuban gusanos (worms) are automatically declared political refugees and put on a fast track to permanent residency, social benefits and, ultimately, citizenship (historically, a similar policy applied for the Vietnamese “boat people”). This policy is in the service of the U.S. imperialists’ longstanding goal of overturning the Cuban Revolution and re-establishing capitalist exploitation in that country.

A Century Under the Boot of U.S. Imperialism

Haiti was born of a great slave rebellion against the French colonial overlords from 1791 to 1804, out of which emerged the first black republic in the modern era. For over two centuries, the vengeful rulers of the U.S., at first including slaveowners, and other major capitalist powers have been making the Haitian masses pay in blood and gold for their successful revolution. Over the last one hundred years, Haiti has been subject to repeated imperialist military occupations. The first U.S. occupation lasted from 1915 to 1934, during which U.S. troops drowned an anti-imperialist revolt in blood. Washington installed and backed a series of brutal, corrupt dictatorships, including that of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. His son, “Baby Doc,” was driven from the country in 1986 by a popular revolt, and others in his cabal took over. Massive social discontent eventually led to the election of Aristide in 1990—seven months later, he was overthrown by the military. In 1994, following a starvation embargo imposed by President Clinton, American Marines invaded the country to quell growing turmoil. Aristide was reinstalled on condition that he agree to a drastic austerity program.

Clinton imposed the virtual abolition of import tariffs, flooding the country with cheap American-grown rice. Masses of ruined farmers and their families were driven off the land. Haiti, once self-sufficient in production of this staple food, now imports up to 90 percent of its rice. Not content with Aristide’s prostration before the imperialists’ demands, “peacekeeping” troops led mainly by the U.S., Canada and France landed in Haiti in 2004 and the deposed Aristide was whisked out of the country on a U.S.-chartered jet.

A UN occupation force was installed in 2004 and bolstered following the 2010 earthquake. These UN forces were responsible for introducing cholera to Haiti, as the UN only recently saw fit to admit (see “UN Admits Causing Cholera Epidemic,” WV No. 1095, 9 September). Since Hurricane Matthew, at least 1,000 more Haitians have died from cholera, bringing the total death toll from the disease to over 9,000. UN “peacekeepers” have repeatedly backed violent assaults by the Haitian police on demonstrations and poor communities.

It was to shore up this bloody occupation force that President Obama dispatched 20,000 combat troops in the guise of a “relief effort” soon after the 2010 earthquake. U.S. officials also ordered a naval blockade of Haiti to prevent the desperate population from fleeing to the U.S. In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, more than 2,000 U.S. troops were again dispatched to Haiti, supposedly for “disaster relief.” The imperialist occupation of Haiti under whatever guise can only reinforce the abject conditions endured by that country’s population. We demand an end to the UN occupation of Haiti and call for all imperialist troops and police forces out now!

We support the struggles of the Haitian masses against their oppressors. At the same time, we understand that their oppression will not be overcome through struggle limited to Haiti itself. The only way out of the misery imposed on neocolonial Haiti lies through proletarian socialist revolution throughout the Caribbean and, crucially, extending into the North American imperialist heartland. Haitian workers in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere, many of whom are organized within major trade unions, can serve as a vital bridge linking the struggle for national and social emancipation in Haiti with the fight for socialist revolution in the imperialist centers of North America. The key is to build revolutionary workers parties to lead the workers in this struggle.