MIAMI – Haitian-American leaders and others are using Wednesday’s anniversary of Haiti’s massive earthquake to implore the Obama administration to welcome tens of thousands of Haitians who were promised visas but remain in the crippled Caribbean country on waiting lists.
Immigration authorities had approved requests from 55,000 Haitians to join relatives in the United States before the earthquake. But because the U.S. caps the number of visas it grants per country annually, it can take a decade for an approved request to produce a visa.
Supporters want the State Department to waive the visa limit and thereby bolster the ranks of expatriate Haitians.
The argument is based on more than compassion: Haitians abroad already send more than $1 billion back home each year, about a sixth of the gross domestic product for the hemisphere’s most impoverished nation.
“They’ll be able to send money to help their families back in Haiti,” said North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre, whose city of 57,000 is roughly a third Haitian and would anticipate absorbing thousands of the visa-holders if they were bumped to the front of the immigration line. “Then (their families) won’t have to be constantly asking the United States government and other international communities for help, constantly trying to get aid from them when they can help themselves.”
Pierre, himself a Haitian immigrant, put forth a resolution last year that his colleagues in the U.S. Conference of Mayors approved urging the administration to issue the visas it has promised.
Federal officials are reviewing the issue, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.
