Immigration Laws: October, 2003 - Number #08

El Salvador. The US DHS in July 2003 announced that 290,000 Salvadorans in the US granted TPS after two earthquakes in January and February 2001 would have their status extended by 18 months, until March 9, 2005. By the time TPS expires, these Salvadorans will have been in the US at least four years. Ecuador's president asked the US to grant TPS so that migrant remittances could help rebuild the country. Some two million Salvadorans, 25 percent of the country's population, live in the US.

TPS enables those in the US as of a certain date to live and work legally. Some 105,000 Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants who received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) after Hurricane Mitch in late 1998 received an extension of their TPS from July 2003 to January 2005. In September 2003, the US had granted TPS to nationals of Burundi, El Salvador, Honduras, Liberia, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. (www.bcis.gov/graphics/services/tps_inter.htm).

El Salvador has 11 consulates in the United States and, confirming internal migration, is closing a consulate in southern California and opening one in Las Vegas.

Guatemala sends migrants to southern Mexico to harvest coffee and other commodities. Guatemala has a very unequal distribution of income, with the richest 20 percent of the population receiving 62 percent of the income and the bottom 20 percent receiving three percent.

Haiti. Some 38,000 Haitians applied for immigrant status under the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 1998; Haitians in the US before 1995 can apply to remain, but those who used false documents to enter the US may have their applications rejected.

Haitians headed for the US increasingly use a two-stage process, first traveling to the Bahamas, and later attempting to enter the US by sea. Coast Guard authorities in the Bahamas intercepted more than 4,200 Haitians in 2002, a 50 percent increase over 2001. The 2000 Census reported 661,000 Haitians in the US, a third of them in Florida. Advocates put the number far higher, at 1.5 million or more.

Many Haitians move to neighboring Dominican Republic, often after paying bribes to the Dominican Republic military. Bernardo Vega, former Dominican Republic ambassador to the US, said "Pressures from the US have kept our military from profiting from drug trafficking, but nothing has stopped the trafficking of illegal Haitians from continuing to be a traditional business of our army." He added that the availability of Haitians had slowed mechanization in sugar cane and rice harvesting and construction, and that sugar-cane cutting conditions are so bad that Haitians normally stay only one or two seasons in the cane cutting fields. The Dominican Republic repatriates 4,000 Haitians a month, but many soon return over the 275-kilometer (172-mile) border.

Haitians are scheduled to go to the polls in November-December 2003, but opposition parties say that they will boycott the election because it is being rigged to benefit Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party. Haiti, led by Aristide in 1994 and 1995, then by his handpicked successor, Rene Preval, and again by Aristide since 2001, is on the verge of becoming a "failed state" that could send waves of migrants to the US.

Saying he wanted to "hasten the arrival of a new, free, democratic Cuba," President Bush announced that the US would make it easier for Cubans to immigrate to the US by launching a campaign to better inform Cubans of safe ways to enter the United States and allow for increased immigration.

Brazil. Brazil's Movimento das Sem Terra MST (Landless Rural Workers' Movement), founded in 1984, presses the government to provide land for farm workers. It often encourages squatting, charging that landowners are not being productive when they graze cattle rather than producing crops, or that landowners are violating environmental regulations.

Brazil has a problem with indentured servitude among internal migrants. Recruiters tour poor areas offering work at high wages in remote Amazon areas. When the workers arrive at their destination, their identity documents are taken, they are in debt for transportation, and must pay for housing and food at high rates, so that they have a hard time with the debt that must be repaid before they can leave guarded camps.

An estimated 25,000 migrants are employed under forced labor conditions in Brazil, and a Labor Ministry Special Mobile Inspection Group goes from farm to farm to free about 250 a month. Since March 2003, farmers with indentured workers can lose their land and be sentenced to four years in prison, but advocates say that few do- the normal remedy is to "regularize" the status of the workers by giving them their papers and freedom. Brazil's minimum wage rose from 200 reais ($57) a month to 240 reais ($68) in May 2003

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in August 2003 won his first major legislative victory, amending the 1998 Constitution to overhaul Brazil's debt-ridden public pension system by taxing pensions over 1,200 reais ($400) a month.

Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, has an indigenous Indian majority. They mounted a series of protests against plans to export natural gas via Chile--Chile invaded and annexed Bolivia's corridor to the Pacific Ocean in the 19th century. The US-educated Bolivian president has become the target of demonstrations organized by the Bolivian Workers Central labor federation. Bolivians migrated in large numbers to Argentina until the economic crisis there forced many home.

Elisabeth Bumiller, "Bush Promises Cuban-Americans to Keep Up Pressure on Castrom," New York Times, October 11, 2003. Mario Osava, "Lula Facing Tough Fight Against Rural Slavery," Inter Press Service, April 23, 2003.