MIAMI — With federal authorities having slated Feb. 3 for the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants, they and their supporters have organized a number of actions to fight for extension of legal status in the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security says 348,187 Haitians have TPS protection in the U.S. Over 100,000 live in Florida.
The Family Action Network Movement held its annual event Jan. 12 commemorating the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010. Some 200 people turned out, not only to remember the victims of that social disaster, but also to demand Washington extend TPS protection for Haitian immigrants.
Co-sponsored by Service Employees International Union 32BJ and UNITE HERE Local 355, the event drew unionists and others from throughout the Miami area.
“Sixteen years later, Haiti is 10 times worse than it was after the earthquake,” Marlene Bastien told the Jan. 12 rally before participants marched to the Little Haiti Cultural Complex.
Bastien, now a Miami-Dade County commissioner, was the founder of the Family Action Network Movement
“Ninety percent of Haiti’s capital is controlled by gangs,” she said, “and 90% of their weapons of war with which they are killing their brothers and sisters come from here.”
When she announced Haiti’s TPS designation would end Feb. 3, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Haitians can relocate to other parts of Haiti that are outside the gang-ravaged capital.
But the brutal reality is that they would be returning to a country where more than half the population goes without enough to eat every day, where more than 1.4 million have been displaced by armed gangs, and where kidnappings and killings are rampant.
In addition to the earthquake, Haiti was hit by destructive hurricanes in 2008, 2012 and 2016, as well as a cholera epidemic. This comes on top of decades of oppression and colonial plunder at the hands of the U.S. capitalist rulers.
In response to a wave of popular protests in the early 1900s, U.S. Marines invaded Haiti in 1915, occupying the country for the next 19 years.
The U.S. government backed the dictatorships of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and then his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc,” and their brutal Tonton Macoute thugs under every U.S. administration from 1957 until 1986, Republican and Democratic alike.
In 1986 Haitian workers and farmers rose up and overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Duvaliers, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest, was elected president in 1990. Seven months later he was overthrown by the military and driven into exile, leading tens of thousands of Haitians to flee the country, most to the U.S.
President Bill Clinton’s administration returned Aristide to power in 1994, along with 20,000 U.S. troops. But his regime was marked by a wave of corruption, and he was deposed again, this time by popular protests. He was replaced by a U.N. occupation force of 13,000.
Decades of imperialist domination
These decades of U.S. control, violent factional war between rival groupings in Haitian ruling circles, and now the murderous rule of organized criminal gangs has created a power vacuum. A small troop of Kenyan soldiers under the flag of the United Nations backed by Washington has proved utterly incapable of providing peace.
Haiti has not had a president since President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021 and hasn’t had an election since 2016.
At the Jan. 19 Martin Luther King Day Parade here thousands of working people, mostly Haitians, African Americans and Latinos, lined both sides of the streets in Liberty City. A union contingent led the floats, marching bands and dancers that took part. Marchers carried Haitian flags and handed out small signs calling for continuation of TPS, in both English and Creole, to enthusiastic onlookers along the parade route.
The crowd joined in as union organizers using bull horns called out chants, including, “What do we want? TPS! When do we want it? Now!”
Another protest, sponsored by SEIU 32BJ, UNITE HERE Local 355, local clergy, some elected officials and others, is set for the airport in Fort Lauderdale Jan. 28, as an “Urgent call to action” to “Stand up for Haitian TPS!”