Rep. John Conyers Pledges "Zero Tolerance" for Immigration Double Standards; Continues fight for Haitian Refugee and Immigration Fairness Act

At a September 15 Press Conference in Washington, DC, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) issued the following statement:

I am delighted to be here with my colleagues Carrie Meek, Donna Christian-Green, Gregory Meeks, and Corrins Brown. It's also great to be collaborating With Jocelyn McCalla from the National Coalition for Haitian Rights and Wade Henderson from the National Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.I want to extend special recognition to Pierre Absalon, a Haitian parolee who came down here all the way from New York to share his story and remind us that how worthy the refugees in question truly are. Thank you for coming, Mr. Absalon. Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to the National Immigration Forum, the Equal Treatment Coalition  and many organizations and individuals who have been tirelessly working to protect the rights of Haitian immigrants with this legislation.

Thanks to the diligence of Senators Bob Graham and Carol Mosely-Braun we took a recent step forward in the Senate toward protecting Haitian refugees. We're not going to allow the double standard being set by the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration to prevail. This group pledges zero tolerance and demands fairness.

When a September 1991 coup d'etat overthrew Haiti's democratically elected government, the United States made a commitment to thousands of orphans of democracy who fled Haiti by boat, Over 40,000 Haitians were interviewed at Guantánamo Bay and approximately 10,000 met a "credible fear" asylum standard and were paroled into the United States by the Attorney General Thus this group of Haitians is legally in the country but their status is only temporary. Thanks to cooperation by the Department of Justice, they have regularly received an extension of that status, but the situation has left them in an intolerable limbo for several years. I won't allow us to break our promises and abandon these people now.

That's why I introduced H.R. 3049, a bi-partisan bill to resolve the parolee status problem by granting legal permanent residency status to those who came through Guantánamo Bay. It will also permit Haitian asylees who are not otherwise covered by the bill to seek similar relief The companion legislation, contained in the Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 1999, passed the Senate 91 - 5 on September 3.

The Haitians covered by the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act are entitled to this parity not only because they came to the United States at the invitation of the Attorney General but also because similarly situated nationalities have received a blanket adjustment in their status. Most notably, Nicaraguans and many Cubans received full amnesty when the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act became law in November, Why should these groups get special treatment? It's time to remedy the situation.

I am not going to abandon Haiti and I will not allow a duplicitous refugee policy to prevail. In the last year alone I have been to Haiti three times. During those congressional delegations which I chaired, we solicited the views of Haitians with regard to their political crisis, and shared with them the dramas of our own representative government. Now it's time to show them that we have our own house in order. Without passage of this legislation for Haitian refugees, I believe we will fall to convey to this nascent democracy to the South that our own democratic processes reduce fair and just solutions!