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HAITIAN REFUGEES: _ A DILEMMA FOR THE UNITED STATES Eulalia D. de Conde No contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers ofterritories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account ofhis race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. 1 UN Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees . raditionally, the United States has been a haven for refugees and, in the past, the American people have responded generously to the plight of the uprooted. U.S. laws have provided for the acceptance of large numbers ofimmigrants and refugees, and have granted discretion to the attorney general to abstain from deporting persons who would be subject to persecution in their homeland. Refugees themselves have preferred the United States over other countries because of its freedom of activity and opportunities for work. In 1968, the Senate ratified the UN Protocol Refating to the Status ofRefugees and committed itself to the doctrine of nonrefoulement. In 1980, the Refugee Act codified the protocol standards into U.S. statutory law. The prohibition against expulsion of a refugee ceases to exist ifhe may be dangerous to the security of the United States. 'Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status ofRefugees, HCR/INF/29/Rev. 3 (New York: United Nations, 1978). Eulalia D. de Conde is a candidate for the M.A. degree at The American University. She has served as a staff member of the Economic Commission for Latin America in her native Chile. The text ofthis article is drawn from a paperpresented before the Association ofProfessional Schools in International Affairs (APSIA) in March 1981. 71 72 SAIS REVIEW Usually, there is little difficulty involved in identifying a person as a refugee. The term refugee means: "any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality . . . who is unable or unwilling to return, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself ... of the protection of that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." But fleeing from economic deprivation is not yet a legal basis for asylum privileges under U.S. or international law. It may be a motivating factor, but it is not necessarily a determining one. A situation has arisen since the early 1970s that has elucidated the problem of applying certain criteria in the granting of asylum status. The matter refers to the Haitian nationals who have fled their homeland and survived treacherous sea voyages, only to be detained as they landed in the United States. Are the Haitians who seek asylum in the United States political or economic refugees? Until now there has been no agreement on this question and cases have been reviewed individually. The mere existence ofhuman rights problems in the home country does not necessarily substantiate an applicant's claim for political asylum. All applications for political asylum are reviewed to determine the likelihood ofpersecution upon return. Most refugees in the past decade have had the deplorable status of "boat people." The fact that many ofthem have been forced to return to the high seas shows the degree of inhumanity that can be reached. Though the Haitians have not received the same wide publicity as the Cubans or the Vietnamese, their plight has been no less dramatic. Haitians are not only coming to the United States, but to Canada as well. There are over 500,000 refugees in the Dominican Republic, 80,000 in the Bahamas, and countless others scattered throughout the Caribbean islands. On November 16, 1980, televised news showed the Bahamian police clubbing and tear-gassing 100 Haitians stranded on one oftheir islands, in an effort to get them back on a boat. These people had survived five weeks after the sinking oftheir ship, largely by means of food and water provided by the U.S. Coast Guard. On their arrival back in Haiti, they were suffering from severe dehydration, weakness, and various injuries. The political situation in Haiti partially explains this vast migration wave. Jean Claude Duvalier, president-for-life of Haiti, inherited...

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