By Claire Lalanne
The Harlem Times recently sat down with a Haitian American to look at what the loss of TPS is doing to the Haitian community, and what it will cost America in the long run. And after much soul searching, we found links to our common heritage, as well as our common humanity. Below, in her own words, is her story.
By Claire
Where do I begin? We are now the new Jews under persecution.
I was in an Uber on my way home when my aunt asked me, “Claire, do you have your passport?” I replied naively, “At home, ma tante, why?”
Then she began to tell me the story of a Haitian citizen who had owned a store for over 30 years and was also a U.S. veteran; he was wrongfully arrested last year along with many others.
“Claire, make sure you have a copy of your passport on your phone, my dear.”
My mother called to tell me the same thing: save your passport, keep it ready at all times. Sadly, I obeyed, and texted myself a picture of my U.S. passport. In that moment, it occurred to me on a cellular level that something nefarious and insidious was happening in real time.
“Claire, don’t forget your passport!” my good friend reminded me before we were to meet at a Haitian concert in December to celebrate my birthday together. This was my third warning; my third message from God. Slowly, something was shifting, brewing, cooking. And it was not nice.
A new friend told me alarming and appalling news about Haitian bodies washing ashore in Miami. She had heard these were Haitian people who were supposedly deported but pushed off the plane, never making it home to Haiti. These are true and unreported stories of real people, without a voice. These are human beings; displaced, indigenous people fleeing their motherland, seeking to save their lives, yet losing them because of TPS. Refugees crossing borders in a desperate attempt to find a better life in a safe place. Some Haitian women have now resorted to suicide rather than return to Haiti, their land of origin.
There is a Tetela proverb from the Democratic Republic of Congo: “A guest is like rain.” Sometimes a guest brings blessing, and sometimes hardship; a guest is still received, still sheltered, still treated as human. That is the standard we are failing to meet.
Haiti has contributed priceless resources to the United States. Haiti is the only country in the history of the planet that had to pay for its own independence. Haiti was forced to pay billions of dollars in gold to Citibank under President Boyer. Two hundred and twenty-two years ago, on January 1, 1804, Haiti won its freedom from France under Napoleon Bonaparte, having already defeated the British and Spanish empires. Because of Haiti’s victory, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Purchase to the United States. Haiti sent troops to fight in the American Civil War. Haiti fought for freedom around the world; it helped Greece win independence from the Ottoman Empire, and aided Peru and Venezuela in their own fights for independence, amongst many others. Haiti equaled freedom. It didn’t matter where you were from or what color your skin was. Haiti was the only country during the Jewish Holocaust that served as a lighthouse, offering amnesty to whomever sought it.
I was born in Haiti but immigrated here legally in 1981 with my parents, at eighteen months old. America is my home. I was raised and educated here. I am proud to be a Haitian American for almost fifty years. After the 2010 earthquake, I volunteered in Haiti; my first visit since I had left as a child. It was cathartic to see where my family tree is rooted, where my fabric and rich heritage came from. It was marvelous to give back to my motherland and the people who made me, during their most desperate time of need.
Haiti never had gangs before. Under the Duvalier dictatorship, where he appointed himself president for life and ran his own private secret police, the brain drain of the 1980s, born of his violent reign, sent many of Haiti’s intellectuals: doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, educated people, to the U.S. The gangs of today are young men recruiting young boys to terrorize, rape, and kill their own mothers. They are soulless now, committing unspeakable acts across Haiti, not only in the capital of Port-au-Prince. This anguish is being fueled by AK-47 military machine guns sent from Miami by the U.S. government. The sinister narrative blaming Haitian people for AIDS, and for eating their neighbors’ pets in Ohio, is offensive. It is exactly like when Jews were blamed during Nazi Germany; propaganda and media weaponized once again, out of sheer fear of the first Black republic, Haiti. The Black Jacobins, Haiti’s great forefathers: Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, cannot die in vain.
There is another proverb worth remembering here; one closer to how Nelson Mandela put it: a nation is not judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but by how it treats its lowest, its most vulnerable, its guests. By that measure, we have work to do.
The cost of losing TPS will not stay confined to Haitian households. TPS holders work, pay taxes, run businesses, staff hospitals and nursing homes, and raise American-born children. Stripping their status does not send that labor and those tax dollars back to Haiti; it simply erases them from the economy that has come to depend on them, a cost America will feel long after the headlines fade.
This is why the bridge cannot be built by Haitians alone. Our history is not separate from the histories of others who have crossed borders seeking safety; it runs alongside them. A multiethnic coalition, one that includes other immigrant communities, civil rights organizations, faith leaders, and everyday Americans who believe in fairness, is what will be needed to protect TPS and the people who hold it. Haiti stood for freedom that did not care about the color of the person asking for it. It is time that principle was returned to us, in kind.