HAITIANS FLEE TO CANADA
North to freedom
Fearing deportation, South Florida's undocumented immigrants trek toward the border with the hope of a new life.
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 28, 2007
A stack of white papers can usually be found in the office at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They are for the desperate, the scared, the undocumented. At this Delray Beach church, that includes at least a quarter of the congregation.
The forms can help them get to Canada. And lately, they seem to be the people's only hope.
Gary Coronado/Staff Photographer Freedom House in Detroit helps people seeking asylum in Canada or the United States.
Gary Coronado/Staff Photographer The busy Ambassador Bridge links Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. It's a lifeline for refugees. In search of asylum 319,229 Haitians live in Florida, including an estimated 48,000 in Palm Beach County. People granted asylum in the United States increased from 25,160 in 2005 to 26,113 in 2006. 11.5 percent, or 3,001, were Haitians. 1,214 Haitians were deported in 2006. |
"They're gone? But we had so many," the Rev. Roland Desormeaux says to his office assistant one October morning, rubbing his face in frustration. "OK, well, we need to get more. Soon."
Haitians from across South Florida contact Desormeaux almost daily, frustrated that they've been denied asylum, pleading for help from a church built by immigrants.
"I'm afraid to drive my car." "I had to quit my job." "How can I care for my family?" they ask.
Before, Desormeaux had no answers. He had only prayers to offer and occasionally money if the church had enough to spare.
Now he tells them about Canada.
Haitians are fleeing there by plane, train, van, sometimes by foot. Any way they can, any time they can to seek refuge in a country willing to accept them.
They uproot their families and leave belongings behind, hoping to find relief in a northern nation so very opposite of the tropical life they know.
With its frigid temperatures, winter coats and streets buried in snow, life in Canada is different.
But there they taste freedom.
'They just keep coming'
The bridge is called the Ambassador.
The link between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, it's a busy route for tourists and businesspeople crossing the Detroit River. And it's a lifeline for refugees.
You can see it through the dusty windows of an old brick building called Freedom House, home to one of many American programs that help people seek asylum in Canada or the United States.
Painted on a stake in the front yard of this house are the words "Let peace prevail on Earth." Many inside are victims of torture and sex crimes, some punished for political and personal beliefs. They are here for a better life.
Some arrive with hopes of fleeing to Canada, where a temporary rule exists that exempts Haitians from deportation. Once inside the country, even if a Haitian is denied refugee status, Canada allows that person to stay, unless he has a criminal record, because Canada deems Haiti unsafe. America does not.
News of the existence of this one simple rule has spread like wildfire this year, tempting undocumented Haitians in South Florida and other parts of the United States. Some make it to the border on their own and walk across to claim refugee status. Others use programs such as the Freedom House — modern-day underground railroad stops for the desperate and the weary.
Earlier this year in Detroit, Haitians arrived in droves.
"Sometimes we sit at the door and (see) another truckload of Haitians," Executive Director Pegg Roberts said then. "They just keep coming. And they're going to keep coming."
But when the Canadian border there lost its Creole-speaking interpreter, Haitians began flocking to other border entries, such as New York and Vermont.
Soon those programs were overwhelmed. The Vermont Refugee Assistance Program helped scores of Haitians into Canada earlier this year but had to halt its assistance in July.
"We're suspended until I can hire somebody who will just work with Canada-bound," says Michele Jenness, a program staffer. "The demand overwhelmed our resources."
From April to July, they had 299 inquiries about refugee status in Canada. In those three months, Director Patrick Giantonio and Jenness helped 166 people get into Canada. Of that number, 157 were Haitian.
"We're (seeing) a Haitian exodus," Giantonio says. "Every day we get several calls from South Florida. The word has been spreading through the Haitian community that if you want to go to Canada and seek asylum, you can do it."
'Like night and day'
Rick Goldman, an attorney and coordinator of the Committee to Aid Refugees, an advocacy group in Montreal, says an estimated 1,500 Haitians have made refugee claims to Canada this year, an increase of more than 50 percent over last year.
Sixty-six percent of those claims have been accepted, compared to an estimated 50 percent accepted in the United States last year.
"Even if the claims are rejected, Canada is not removing people to Haiti," Goldman says. "We have no idea how long that will last. Some of the people coming here, even though they realize they might not stay permanently, being somewhere without fear is in and of itself a good thing. You're not in fear of being picked up any moment. Your kids can go to school. You can get a work permit. What Canada offers compared to what the States doesn't offer is like night and day to most people."
Those who run the programs to help refugees keep low profiles and are often squeamish around the media. They have only so many volunteers and so much money. The more publicity, the more crowded their offices become.
Roberts says U.S. immigration officials know about them.
Roberts and Giantonio say that none of their volunteers has been arrested for helping refugees cross.
But late last month, Canadian officials arrested an American for driving 12 Haitian refugees to the Canada border — a warning to other volunteers that they could be next.
Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, a 65-year-old refugee advocate from Chester, Pa., is charged with human smuggling, which is punishable by life in prison.
Those destined for the Canadian border are warned that they could be arrested.
Roberts and Giantonio also advise those coming to their offices not to fly or ride a train because airports and train stations are easy targets for U.S. immigration patrols.
Have someone drive you, they tell them.
'Drive them like Moses'
In Delray Beach, two Haitian men do this.
They bought a van large enough to fit 15 people, and they began scheduling trips to the border with strangers and friends desperate to leave Palm Beach County.
Their first trip was with a family of seven last December.
The men, who did not want their identities revealed, take turns driving the 1,343 miles to upstate New York, stopping only for gas and food. They never drive people to the border posts. Instead, they drop them at the border houses.
They charge $500 per person, which they say is a good price because they know of others who charge as much as $1,000.
On the way to Buffalo, where most request to go, they pray together in the van.
"So they don't worry about police on the road," one of the men says.
His cellphone rings.
"Bonswa?" he asks.
It's someone asking about Canada.
"How much it is?" the person on the other line asks. "What do we need? How long does it take?"
He answers their questions and hangs up the phone. Another appointment has been made.
They say they are not afraid of what they do.
"We put our faith in the Lord's hands," one says. "We have to drive them like Moses."
Uprising halts deportations
Is it true what they say about Canada?
This is what Haitians want to know.
They are undocumented immigrants who have been living in America for dozens of years. Most are noncriminals, some with U.S.-born children, who work and live productive lives and send thousands of dollars to relatives in Haiti, where most people live on less than a dollar a day.
Some fled the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere because they feared they would be killed. Others left for political reasons, and some fled because the country is so poor and jobs are so scarce, there is no hope there for a better life.
Now many are afraid the United States will force them to return.
So they wonder, in Canada, will they be safe?
The answer, many say, is yes.
The temporary freeze on deporting Haitians was put in place in May 2004, three months after a violent political uprising led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Haiti is on a list of countries that Canada labels unstable. If citizens from any of those nations are in Canada, regardless of their legal status, Canada will allow them to stay unless they have a criminal background.
The refugee claimants are eligible for basic social assistance and emergency health care once they enter Canada.
Besides Haitians, Canada also protects those fleeing war-torn Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Liberia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Janet Dench, executive director of Canadian Council for Refugees, a nonprofit group in Montreal, says Haitians finally are starting to learn about Canada's exception for them, which is why so many are heading north this year. She says many making refugee claims are from Florida, but she doesn't know how many.
"The government doesn't make the information too readily available," Dench says. "They have this nervousness it would serve as a draw factor."
She adds, "Someone who comes here fleeing persecution ... we have to give them support."
Advocacy groups in the United States have been fighting for the past few years for Haitians to receive similar treatment in this country.
They've asked the government to grant Haitians temporary protected status, especially in 2004, after Haiti had been hit with the uprising and tropical storms that drowned sections of the country, killing more than 3,000 people.
The status was never granted.
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, has been vocal against Haitians' receiving protection status. His group believes most people flee Haiti because the country is so poor, not because of persecution.
And being poor, he says, does not make you a refugee.
"Once you open the door, what you would have are these endless floats," Mehlman says. "Anything that can float (will be) coming across from Haiti."
'Trying to cheat you'
Those living illegally in America are so desperate to leave that they will do anything and pay anyone who says they can help.
People posing as immigration consultants in Palm Beach County have been known to charge as much as $3,500, giving their clients forms to fill out to claim refugee status in Canada. Often these applications are fake, and if they are real, the clients don't realize that they can be downloaded free off the Internet.
Scammers also take advantage of those crossing into Canada illegally.
Swindlers are selling maps that highlight border crossings where they say an immigrant can walk across and cannot get caught. They've been known to charge anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 per map, says Goldman says, of the Committee to Aid Refugees. These maps are downloaded from Google.
Scamming has been so prevalent lately that some Canadian groups have tried to spread the word by informing advocates in the U.S. and by placing warnings on their Web sites.
The Canadian Council for Refugees warns:
"If anyone tries to charge you money to assist you with admission to such a program, they are misleading you and trying to cheat you."
'I am a refugee'
They told Pegby to come in March.
It will be the first time her daughter will see snow.
The soft-spoken woman is on her way to Vermont. She's escaping her home in North Miami because America did not grant her the asylum she expected. A victim of violence in Haiti, Pegby thought that would be enough to persuade a judge to let her live in the U.S.
So here she is with her 7-year-old daughter, who keeps asking why they're going to this very cold place where strange faces greet them with smiles, treating them like friends.
They are Giantonio and Jenness and some of the 60 volunteers at the Vermont Refugee Assistance Program who have offered to help Pegby and her daughter get to Canada.
Pegby was so afraid of getting caught by immigration officials in Florida that she quit her job and stopped driving. Whenever she'd hear a knock at the door, her heart would flutter.
"In Florida, they take people away. They bother people more," she says. "I stopped living."
One day she Googled "refugee to Canada" and discovered the Vermont group. When she learned she did not have to pay for its help, she wondered if it was a scam to deport her. But Pegby was so miserable, she decided to take that chance.
At the border with her daughter, officials asked Pegby, "Why are you here?"
She took a deep breath and said, "I am a refugee."
For Pegby, that word means freedom.
"I was very happy to say it," she later says, "because I was in prison in my own house."
'I tell them, "Get out" '
At Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Delray Beach, Desormeaux preaches about Canada in his sermons.
After the readings and his homily and the passing of the collection plates, he tells his congregation of 3,000 that Canada does not deport Haitians because, for now, Canada believes Haiti is not safe.
In Canada, he stresses, you are welcome.
"As a priest, I want them to stay," Desormeaux says after a service. "But when I have all of these people who are illegals, and they are sick or hungry or have no money, they come to me. What am I going to do?"
He tells them about the border houses and the people in New York, Vermont and Detroit who help guide refugees to Canada. He speaks of other Haitians who have fled there and now lead safe, happy lives. He passes out sheets from his dwindling stack.
Go get them, he encourages, consider them. And if you think you have no hope in America, then pack your bags and go.
"Some churches are afraid to lose their people, but I tell them, 'Get out.' People need to leave," he says. "Because here they are afraid."
~ dianna_smith@pbpost.com
