MIAMI – With many dead and injured protesting exorbitant food prices, and Prime Minister Alexis’s ouster, Haiti still is scheduled to pay $48.7 million in 2008 — nearly $1 million every week (money needed to feed her people and restore her economy) — to multilateral financial institutions to service onerous debts incurred by rapacious dictators who for decades stole from her people to the blind eye of the international community. This is wrong.
The United States must do everything possible now to assist Haiti’s democracy, whose stability and success is in the direct interest of Florida and the United States. Haitian American leaders will address these concerns Monday.
1) The US Treasury Secretary should instruct the US executive directors at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and other multilateral financial institutions to use the vote and influence of the United States to cancel completely and immediately Haiti’s debts to these institutions!
2) Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Alcee Hastings, Kendrick Meek, and 101 other co-sponsors of the Jubilee Act, HR 2634, should be joined by all of their South Florida colleagues to support the bi-partisan Jubilee Act on Tuesday when Congress votes on it! The Act urges debt cancellation so the world’s poorest nations, including Haiti, can use those monies to alleviate extreme poverty. Instead of servicing onerous debts which compound her people’s misery, Haiti under the Jubilee Act would spend it to feed her people, stimulate her economy, and assist her recovery.
3) Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians would have similar beneficial effects. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, remittances to Haiti from the US were $1.26 billion last year — 24 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product — dwarfing the $129 million Haiti got in foreign aid from USAID. By temporarily halting deportations, TPS keeps crucial remittances flowing, sustaining relatives whose desperation otherwise could lead to risky sea voyages. Since President Preval wrote President Bush requesting TPS on February 7, the editorial boards of the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Tampa Tribune, and South Florida Sun-Sentinel on April 2, March 16, March 8, and February 21 respectively have urged President Bush to immediately grant Haitians TPS and urged Governor Crist and other Florida elected officials to ask President Bush to do so. U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings has championed TPS by introducing the Haiti Protection Act, H.R. 522, which would grant it; his bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Kendrick Meek, among others.
Haitian leaders at Monday’s press conference will urge support for the Jubilee Act when Congress votes on Tuesday. They will urge President Bush to immediately grant Haitians TPS to keep crucial remittances flowing at a time of crisis for Haiti’s democracy and people. And they will urge Governor Crist and other Florida elected leaders to use their influence to urge President Bush to do so in order to protect Florida’s families and borders.
