TAMPA, Fla. (WFTS) — Inside That's Wat'Sub, Kathleen Jeanty brings a taste of her home country to Tampa.
She takes joy in sharing a piece of her culture with the community. It's even more special to her to show the positive sides of Haiti.
"It's just absolutely beautiful. Lush, green, but the rest of the world hasn't seen that because we're so busy highlighting the negative of Haiti," she said.
The violence in the country is making headlines right now.
At Florida's borders, there's heightened law enforcement presence, at the request of Governor Ron Desantis.
He joined Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and others Friday, telling of one capture.
"Our FWC officers interdicted a vessel that had 25 potential immigrants from Haiti with fire arms, drugs, night vision gear," he said.
The presence at the border keeps any Haitian from entering the state.
"All we want is to be able to live a life that is worthy of living. Are those doing what they shouldn't do? Yes. But that's with every group in society. Should we all be punished for the actions of a few? Absolutely not," Jeanty said.
She was born in Haiti. She moved to the United States when she was just 8-years-old. When a devastating earthquake shook the country, she returned to help. She remained there for years.
"I just felt I had to be on the ground, I had to go home. And I had to do my part in the rebuilding. And this would also give me a chance to actually live and be an adult, a grown up in in my home country. I was there for eight years, worked in a lot of different projects, and organizations, ended up having a business there," she said.
She says the earthquake changed a lot for the country.
"That earthquake, you know 14 years ago, set us back a lot. And we really felt that this would be a rallying cry, that we would come together and really focus on developing the country. But unfortunately, we're seeing that it's just more of the same. Constant struggles, constant conflicts. And unfortunately, it's, it's the most vulnerable, who are, you know, being victimized by all of this?"
Jeanty says watching innocent people in her home country is heart breaking. That's especially knowing they can't seek help easily in the United States.
"The part that's really disheartening is seeing the violence. It's against folks that look and sound and live in the communities that we do. They're not fighting against the oppressors. They're they're literally, they're hurting ourselves. And for me, I think that's just, that's truly one of the most hard like disheartening things. The other piece also is, you know, wondering, When will Haiti be allowed to self govern, right? When will Haiti be allowed to do what it needs to do for itself," she said.
Just a couple of years prior, the United States saw a similar issue in Ukraine; where people looking to escape their war-torn country found safety in the United State's open arms.
But that's not exactly the reality for Haitians. Florida Gulf Coast Professor Tom Felke explains.
"One of the issues that we have here is a definitional issue. It's how we define individuals that are going through some type of transit pathway. We hear phrase, we hear terms like migrant immigrant, refugee, asylee or asylum seeker. There's also another designation out there of an internally displaced person," he explained. "All of those are technical legal terms, except for migrant. That actually doesn't have a universally accepted definition even globally."
Refugee is the phrase that is thrown around most commonly. But there's three criteria points to meet before being considered a refugee.
- You must be fleeing from your home country due to persecution or fear of being persecuted just for affiliation with the political group or some other type of social group.
- The crisis is recognized.
- You must be unwilling to want to repatriate or return to your home country.
Felke adds another layer is if the country will even recognize the need to seek refuge.
"No country and no international organization; and generally the international organization we look to here is what we call the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees," he explained. "Neither UNHCR or any country has said there is a refugee crisis in Haiti. So this is why we see individuals from Ukraine, for example, able to come into the United States, whereas in Haiti we don't have that designation, and therefore we have this difference in perspective."
University of South Florida Anthropolgy Professor Kiran Jayaram added additional context.
"Historically, U.S. policy has basically had a very narrow definition of what would qualify someone for refugee status having to apply for asylum. It's usually all along very specific political lines, and there are some other categories. But effectively, they want to know if you are being threatened because of your political stance or actions more specifically, your actions."
He adds there are other cases where we have seen this.
"For example, the controversy with the Cuba- Haiti difference in policy, the so-called wet foot, dry-foot policy is that Cubans were picked up between Cuba and Florida, then up until 2017, when President Obama ended that policy," he added. "They were allowed to be picked up and taken to Florida, and then they could apply for asylum whereas Haitians have never had that opportunity. We can talk about it as being the political will of the United States, and the sort of implications of that."
Even if Haitians want to try to make the case for refugee, typically there would need to be a mass migration into the country.
"In order to be a refugee, you actually have to make it across an international border or across a designated border. So in this case, the individuals that are fleeing Haiti would actually have to make it to the United States in order to then declare themselves as this fear of persecution. We actually use something called fear interviews as a screening technique," Felke explained.
But the Governor's team stationed along the state's border makes it more difficult.
"When we're looking at these situations, we're looking at human rights situations. So when we're putting these, you know, barricades in, we're kind of reducing the ability for someone to avail themselves. These are fundamental human rights issues that individuals from Haiti are facing. And we kind of almost criminalize their behavior by the terminology that we use," he added.
Professor Jayaram explains there is another avenue that Haitians could take.
"When Biden had his decree recently to allow for Humanitarian Parole for Nicaraguans, Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans to basically allow them to apply and come to the U.S. directly rather than going to a third country or a fourth country, like Mexico. And the idea was to take the pressure off the southern border of the U.S."
Even through that program, there's still a nuance that could hinder Haitians.
"At the same time that the Biden Administration made this available, they tightened the processes at the border. For those people who came across undocumented or just came across and released. A lot of them are being deported or not being allowed to apply, so that that did not apply in Ukraine, but it did when it came to Haitians trying to cross the border," he added.
