10 years later, promises have not been kept

Published 8:43 am Friday, January 17, 2020

Ten years after a catastrophic earthquake, Haiti is still the poorest nation in the Americas. It still has a government perceived as one of the world’s most corrupt, and it still suffers chronic political instability. Haiti’s 500-year legacy of slavery, colonialism, military occupation and dictatorship couldn’t be erased in a decade but so much more progress could have been made. The international community, including the United States, promised to help after the earthquake, and it didn’t deliver.

(…) President Donald Trump must also drop his administration’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for the 46,000 Haitians currently enrolled, and many of whom arrived in the United States after the earthquake. The conditions that caused Haitians to flee their country persist 10 years later.

Many of these people have established lives and families in the United States. Forcing them to return would be cruel and disruptive.

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So many promises were made to Haiti. It’s not too late to deliver on them.

—The Miami Herald