DHS Kelly: Repatriation of Haitians Is Good for Haiti

Breitbart.com ^ | 2 Jun 2017 | Neil Munro

[Rockitz]

Foreigners who were given emergency refuge in the United States should go home when their emergency is over, says John Kelly, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

That is a dramatic reversal from prior administrations, which have repeatedly extended the supposedly “Temporary Protected Status” stays of roughly 300,000 Haitians, El Salvadorans, Hondurans and others who have fled since the 1990s from natural and man-made disasters to the United States.

Kelly’s spokesman, David Lapan, highlighted a second dramatic policy change when he said that Kelly recently told Haitian government officials that the return of 50,000 U.S.-based Haitians would be a plus for their homeland. “He talked to them about the fact that a number of Haitians who are living in the United States … have education and skill sets that would be helpful to the country as it continues to rebuild,” Lapan told reporters.

Kelly’s comments show he is trying to build a public case in the United States for returning sheltered foreigners to their homelands, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies:

It is not necessarily a message directed at the Haitians but is directed at American public opinion to make the case for letting supposedly temporary status finally lapse … [to show that] a lot of the people who will go home will help their country develop…

The way that this issue is usually framed [by the media] is if the administration lets TPS finally lapse for Haitians, the sob stories will all be about people who have been here for a long time, and ‘Isn’t it terrible and cruel and all of that,’ so [Kelly and his deputies] are probably trying to preempt that narrative.

Overall, U.S. immigration and refugee policies tend to pull the best-educated people out of developing countries, Krikorian said...

[livius]

That’s true. Mexico had a campaign a while back trying to get Mexicans to stay in their country because it suddenly dawned on them that the most energetic and enterprising, hence the ones that Mexico needed most, were leaving. Unfortunately, Mexico did nothing to improve opportunity for these people, and remained the dysfunctional, socialist kleptocracy that it has always been - so Mexicans with smarts and determination kept on leaving.

And Haiti makes Mexico look like paradise...lots of luck convincing Haitians to stay there! Thank you, Bill Clinton, btw...

[Rockitz]

It's a Caribbean island. There should be plenty of opportunity there.

[Organic Panic]

How can Haiti be such a mess when there are no evil white people running the show?

[Little Ray]

There SHOULD be.
But the locals cut down most of the trees to make charcoal for cooking. With the loss of so many trees, much of the topsoil eroded. So they can’t grow a surplus of food to sell. They have a hard enough time growing enough to eat. The soil runoff also killed or ran off the fish close inshore so fishing is not particularly successful, either.
The local culture is not amenable to a tourist industry. What resorts exist there are fenced off, practically fortified, and staffed by outsiders.
I have been known to say that the UN should be moved to Haiti, so they would at least have a service industry servicing the UN.