Laws: July, 2003 - Number #7

Cuba. Under the so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Cubans who reach US land are allowed to stay as immigrants, while those intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba. As a result, Cubans who near US land sometimes scuffle with the Coast Guard, which is trying to intercept them. In the first case of its kind, a Florida grand jury in May 2003 indicted two Cuban migrants on charges of assaulting Coast Guard officers who tried to keep them from reaching shore.

Cuba arrested 75 dissidents in April 2003, prompting the US government to consider suspending the bilateral migration agreement negotiated in 1994-95 that guarantees at least 20,000 immigration visas a year for Cubans. The US was also considering a suspension of charter flights between the two countries, and cutting or ending an estimated $1 billion a year that Cuban Americans send to family members on the island.

Dominican Republic-Haiti. The Dominican Republic is expected to begin issuing matricula consular cards to its citizens in the US in June 2003, which would help unauthorized Dominican Republic citizens in the US to open bank accounts and travel. There are an estimated 600,000 Dominican Republican citizens in New York City.

Haiti continues to flounder. Per capita incomes of the 8.3 million residents are half what they were in 1994, when the US intervened to restore current President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Many say that the US will now have to oust Aristide to put Haiti on the road to democracy and growth; Aristide's Lavalas Family Party says that US policy is to oust them from power. Haiti has refused to pay interest on its foreign debts, with Aristide asserting that "poverty is how we guarantee our freedom today."

AIDS is spreading in the Caribbean, and some of the hardest-hit areas are bateys or camps in the Dominican Republic that house mostly migrants from Haiti. In Haiti, about six percent of adults are believed to have AIDS, and the infection rate among Haitians in the bateys, who earn about $2 for each ton of sugar cane they hand cut, is much higher. Haiti is demanding $21 billion in reparations from France; in November 1803, Haitian slaves defeated French forces and proclaimed the world's first independent black republic.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft in April 2003 overturned a Board of Immigration Appeals decision and said that the US government would detain foreigners who arrive by sea and seek asylum, citing national security concerns as resources are diverted to deal with foreigners arriving by sea. On October 29, 2002, some 219 Haitian and Dominican migrants sailed into Biscayne Bay; most applied for asylum and were detained.

An immigration judge ordered an 18-year old Haitian applicant released while his asylum application was considered, and the BIA upheld the decision to have individual bond hearings. Ashcroft reversed this BIA ruling, but the 18-year old was nonetheless released in June 2003 by immigration officials on humanitarian grounds.

Honduras. Honduran President Ricardo Maduro in April 2003 asked the US to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 82,000 Hondurans. In March 2002, Honduras asked for a fourth extension of TPS since it was first granted in 1998 because of the damage caused by Hurricane Mitch. In 1990, Congress allowed the US Attorney General to grant TPS to foreigners in the United States who are temporarily unable to return to their homeland because of ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters or other extraordinary and temporary conditions.

The Honduran government announced that it will use $350,000 donated by the US and Canadian governments to repatriate 1,000 Honduran children who were kidnapped and taken to Mexico, Canada and the US. Police in Fort Worth, Texas, broke up a smuggling ring in 2002 that brought Hondurans into the United States illegally to work as sex slaves. Authorities detained 29 women and five girls as part of the investigation.

Jennifer Babson, "Migrants face assault charges," Miami Herald, May 29, 2003. "Honduras to repatriate 1,000 children forced to work in international drug trade," Associated Press, April 27, 2003. Jacqueline Charles, "U.S. won't release detained Haitians," Miami Herald, April 24, 2003.