U-M Law Students Aid Haitian Refugees

For the past four months nearly two dozen U-M law students have spent their weekends in Lansing, helping Haitian refugees apply for asylum. They are part of the Haitian Refugee Project, founded by the U-M chapter of the National Lawyers Guild to provide legal aid to Haitian refugees. Haitlans began fleeing their country in record numbers following the Sept. 29, 1991 military coup which overthrew Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically-elected president.

Project participants are providing legal assistance to 22 Haitians who have been resettled to Lansing by the United States Catholic Conference. Nine U-M students also travelled to Florida in early January, where they helped refugees apply for asylum. Some are planning to return to Florida over spring break.

In Lansing students work in pairs, spending 15 to 20 hours interviewing each client with the help of a Creole-English translator. The students prepare drafts of their clients' testimony, which are attached to the asylum applications. Applicants are then interviewed by INS officers, who decide whether to grant asylum. Under U.S. law, to qualify as a refugee a person must prove that she or he has a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

Although the law's language is neutral, critics claim that decisions are often based on politics or race. The acceptance of most Cubans as refugees and rejection of most Haitian applicants is often cited as evidence of this. So, too, is the U.S.-Haitian lnterdiction pact, signed by the former respective Reagan and Duvalier regimes. This pact allows U.S. officials to take into custody Haitians in international waters and return them to Haiti without giving them the chance to state their claims before an immigration judge in the U.S. Refugees from no other country face such a legal obstacle.

From the Sept. 1991 coup until May 1992, about 40,000 Haitians were intercepted at sea, 25% of whom were allowed to come to the U.S. and pursue their claims. The rest were returned to Haiti. Beginning in May 1992, a new Bush administration policy mandated that all those intercepted be returned. In addition, 222 Haitians who are HIV positive (or who have a family member who Is HIV positive) have been forced to remain in a U.S. Navy prison camp at Guantanamo, Cuba. There they have no access to legal representation and have inadequate medical care.

Being allowed into the U.S. to apply for asylum is merely the first of many legal hurdles. Next, the refugees, includlng those in Lanslng, must convince the INS of their fear of persecution. If they do not, they will be forcibly returned to Haiti.

Jeffrey Dillman is the supervising attorney for the Haitian Refugee Project. For more information or to volunteer, call 763-2300.