Meeting the Challenges of Restricted Welfare and Immigration

NCHR's 1997 Strategy for Community Development

Contents
Introduction
Protect and Promote the Rights of Haitian Immigrants
Promote Naturalization & Citizenship Involvement
Provide Accurate Information
Develop the Haitian-American Community Action Network
Provide Leadership Training;
Generate Support from Within
Conclusion

Introduction

The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 ("the 1996 Welfare Act") and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 ("the 1996 Immigration Act") sent shock waves through immigrant communities in the United States. These Acts, which claimed radical reforms of both welfare and immigration, reserved their harshest provisions for the population of legal immigrants who until then enjoyed the same rights as U.S. citizens except for the right to vote.

Haitian community enclaves in New York, Miami, Boston, Chicago and along the eastern seaboard are estimated at about a million people since their inception in the 1960s. The New York metropolitan area earns the distinction of having the largest concentration of Haitian immigrants and citizens of Haitian descent: about 600,000. While Haitian communities have grown in size, contributing to the richness and diversity of the aforementioned urban centers, they remain extremely vulnerable to federal and state policy fluctuations. Indeed, their development has occurred in an hostile environment, marked for example by consistent attempts by federal authorities to deny Haitian asylum-seekers due process rights, isolate and stigmatize them as carriers of the deadly AIDS virus in the early 80s, and by the political convulsions that rocked Haiti in the last three decades. At great cost to themselves and their loved ones, Haitians have struggled against discrimination and for fair treatment in the United States. In the process, they have set both policy and legal precedents that have brought benefits to themselves and to other refugees and asylum-seekers. On the other hand, they have not fully integrated American society and shine by their absence in the public policy debate. Thus, as the nation steers away from a generous welcoming spirit toward immigrants, Haitian find themselves ill-prepared as a community to respond adequately to the policy changes.

Gaining citizenship through naturalization will undoubtedly save many from losing the safety net that limited welfare benefits provide to those in need. Nonetheless, many Haitians who meet the residency requirements for citizenship will be prevented from doing so because, among other things, of the inability to meet the language requirements due to limited English proficiency because of old age or lower than average literacy levels. Thus, citizenship is not a panacea and many will continue to live as legal immigrants in the United States. The changes in public policy will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the private sector which will be forced to review its policies and develop a more guarded relationship with legal immigrants.

Anticipating such an environment, the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) launched its Community Action Program in 1995. Through this program, NCHR developed the Haitian-American Community Action Network, which it hoped to further develop into a truly national movement that will embark on an aggressive citizenship campaign, embrace civil rights promotion and education, build leadership through collective action fundamental to the Haitian community's advancement, and gain a more influential role in public policy-making in the United States. NCHR also set out to support this effort through leadership and organizational development training, and through research and reporting on the state of affairs in Haitian communities. More recently, a grant from the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, has enabled NCHR to add art and culture as important instruments to its efforts of building community.

In 1997, NCHR plans to:

• Promote and protect the rights of Haitian immigrants;
• Promote naturalization and citizenship involvement in local, state and national affairs;
• Provide information and education on welfare, immigration and citizenship issues;
• Develop the Haitian-American Community Action Network; and
• Provide leadership and organizational development training.
• In addition to these programmatic initiatives, NCHR seeks to challenge Haitians to be more supportive financially, rather than continuing to rely overwhelmingly on outside support. We would consider our efforts a major failure were we not to achieve this result in our endeavors.

Protect and Promote the Rights of Haitian Immigrants

Under this project, NCHR plans to monitor implementation of the welfare and immigration measures by the designated state and federal agencies, assess and report on their impact on Haitian communities. Armed with the "intelligence" resulting from monitoring, NCHR will seek to develop and promote a coordinated community-wide response that truly reflects the needs and aspirations of Haitian immigrants. Their concerns will be brought before the relevant immigration and welfare agencies, and satisfactory results will be sought. NCHR will join with local and national coalitions and organizations to ensure both due attention to Haitian concerns and gain maximum exposure and benefits from collaborative efforts. In short, the role of the staffer charged with carrying out this agenda is to bring forth the Haitian response in the public policy debate.

Promote Naturalization and Citizenship Involvement

While the project above seeks to prevent a dramatic erosion of the rights and benefits enjoyed by Haitian immigrants, this effort seeks to provide a pro-active response to the changing environment by asserting Haitians' rights to fully participate in the affairs of this country, as citizens. The rate of naturalization of Haitians is slower than the rate for Dominicans, for example. This is due to many factors, in part because of the strong patriotic bonds Haitians maintain with the first Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere, and because of the adverse circumstances under which Haitian communities developed in the United States. NCHR will seek to promote naturalization through fairs and workshops extolling the virtues of both naturalization and citizen involvement. More importantly, NCHR will encourage and organize meaningful Haitian participation in strategically key areas so that they can develop increased access to city, state and federal government agencies, while trying to steer greater resources toward their communities. NCHR will also encourage strategy development through its web site on the Internet (http://www.nchr.org) by hosting discussion groups where Haitians can share their concerns, learn from each other and continue to develop a sense of community despite the limitations of time and distance.

Provide Information on Welfare, Immigration and Citizenship

To develop full awareness of the rights and benefits Haitians are entitled to under the welfare, immigration and citizenship laws, NCHR plans to develop a comprehensive distribution of information on these issues in Haitian Creole. NCHR will seek maximum use of the Haitian media, and the facilities of Church and community associations to provide accurate data to Haitians and steer them to credible institutions and associations that serve Haitian immigrants or provide other needed support. NCHR will develop and distribute fact sheets that inform and educate Haitian immigrants on:

• Benefits of citizenship;
• Welfare eligibility, restrictions and implementation;
• Immigration benefits, restrictions and implementation;

These fact sheets, related information and calls to action will be also made available through NCHR's web site for easy downloading, replication and distribution by Haitian and non-Haitian groups alike.

Develop the Haitian-American Community Action Network

During this period, NCHR will continue to mount a systematic effort to endow the Haitian-American Community Action Network with a national structure and competent and representative leadership. In the course of the grant's year, NCHR will hold a second national meeting and a couple of town meetings in the NY metropolitan region. Meanwhile NCHR must concentrate on developing leadership, broadening and servicing membership, and establishing affiliates and chapters in other states.

Provide Leadership and Organizational Development Training and Assistance

NCHR will offer leadership and development training seminars in New York City involving 10-15 people each for an average of 120 participants in a 12-month period. We plan to deliberately keep attendance at the seminars low to encourage uninhibited exchange of ideas and allow for greater participation. The ground rules already established for this project include a provision that all information shared during the training shall remain confidential. During the first training we held, this proved immensely useful as it allowed participants to open up to others and to learn from each other. Through this project, NCHR is striving to focus on the impediments that blocked the progress of many a worthy Haitian organization and speeded their decline. Eventually, NCHR plans to develop a booklet on leadership and organizational development specifically tailored to the needs of Haitians.

The seminars are currently structured so that in the course of two to three days participants deal first with a review and assessment of Haitian community organizing since Haitian emigration to the United States began in the 60s, and secondly with a hands-on approach to developing strategies, effective leadership, and fundraising potential in Haitian communities.

In addition to these group training sessions, NCHR plans to offer individual evaluations of the needs and strategies developed by the groups which are represented at the training, provide them with additional technical assistance or refer them to groups which provide such assistance.

Generate Support from Within

NCHR believes that resources exist in Haitian communities to support initiatives such as those described above that are designed for the benefit of Haitian immigrants and Haitian-American citizens. Armed with a challenge grant of $75,000, NCHR will seek to generate an equivalent or superior amount within the one-year grant period exclusively from Haitian contributions and develop a winning strategy for securing more support in the long run.

Conclusion

NCHR is uniquely qualified to carry out these projects. Throughout its 15 year existence, NCHR has demonstrated the ability to develop leadership and a national perspective on Haitian issues in collaboration with a wide range of groups and institutions.

On October 25 and 26, 1996, we held a meeting at New York University with the goal of launching the Haitian-American Community Action Network (as set forth in our initial plans for CAP). The meeting brought together over 300 participants, many from outside the New York metropolitan area. Over the two days, we held substantive discussions on several issues of note to the Haitian community. The high level of the discourse, and the tolerance manifested toward diverging viewpoints generated excitement and enthusiastic responses from the participants. The meeting created excellent opportunities for meaningful agreement on problems identification and ways in which we could collectively address them. As a result, the assembly resolved to establish the Network.

With the establishment of the Community Action Network, we have taken an important step toward greater involvement on the part of people of Haitian descent to:

• Develop strong, professionally-led institutions, rather than continue to make do with poorly-staffed makeshift agencies;
• Seriously address problems most pertinent to the well-being of Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Americans in the United States;
• Develop common ground and take collective action with other immigrants and advocates of immigrants rights.

NCHR thus enjoys a great deal of respect and credibility among Haitians. Through the projects described above, NCHR seeks to respond adequately to current needs and strengthen Haitians' ability to respond to changing, often adverse circumstances by developing strategies and building viable institutions. Such is the role that the Haitian-American Community Action Network is called on to fulfill under our guidance.

In the near future, we will seek to further develop support for the program's objectives with a research and assessment project that brings to the fore the state of affairs in Haitian communities. We hope that by the time we hold the second national meeting of the Haitian-American Network, we will have secured the financial support necessary to produce and distribute a monograph that, based on readily available data and innovative analysis, summarizes for Haitians the state of development in their communities.

We expect that the study would accurately describe the development of Haitian immigrant communities in the United States in the context or in spite of harsh refugee and immigration policies, the positions occupied by Haitian-Americans in the media, in education, in politics, in the corporate world and the public sector, and in the arts and entertainment world. We generally believe that Haitians have reached critical mass. By supporting this notion with substantive and verifiable data, we hope to build confidence among Haitians that they have both the resources and the ability needed to transform their communities and empower themselves.

We will also seek funding to support new research whose results, released yearly would be among the key sources of information that Haitians and non-Haitians alike use to chart a course of action for meeting the needs of Haitians.

In the mix, there will also be a project developed with Edwidge Danticat. Indeed, the renowned Haitian-American novelist has teamed up with NCHR to promote community development and cohesion by encouraging support for Haitian arts, bringing Haitian writers, poets and researchers to engage in a dialogue with their community, encouraging the emergence of new writers of Haitian descent and their embrace and celebration by the Haitian community. NCHR plans to hold two events a year for the next three years under Danticat's patronage, in the Spring and in the Fall.

To fulfill our objectives under this project, NCHR has assembled a group of distinguished Haitian-Americans to work in committee with Ms. Danticat. They are Joel Dreyfus, former editor of PC Magazine who is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Our World News, a new African-American weekly which will debut this year; Patricia Benoit, a filmmaker whose latest documentary "Courage and Pain" premiered last February at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Martine Denis-Dioulot, an event planner and fund-raiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and Patricia Francis, a bookstore owner.