John Conyers: “let us review the urgency of what the gentleman has described as the designation of a temporary protected status for all…”

“let us review the urgency of what the gentleman has described as the designation of a temporary protected status for all Haitians who are fleeing the country. I was not able to raise this personally with Mr. Noriega, the Assistant Secretary of State for Caribbean Affairs; but he said that now that President Aristide has gone, it may be safe for people to return to Haiti. This is probably the most dangerous statement that has been uttered in a congressional hearing certainly this year and maybe all last year as well. To tell anybody that it is safe to go back to Haiti when there is no government, when the rebel leaders have announced that they are replacing the police and cooperating with the prime minister, people who led the overthrow of the first democratically elected president in the 200-year existence of Haiti, is probably the most incredible utterance of this year or last year. And the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), our ranking subcommittee person on the Immigration, Border Security, and Claims Subcommittee on the Committee on the Judiciary, and I and others on the committee have written Secretary Ridge, asking that he designate temporary protected status to the Haitians that are fleeing. To turn them around upon arriving here from hundreds of miles in an ocean always on very fragile craft, that the first miracle is that it even got to our shores, would be inhumane. And yet this is the policy as we speak tonight.”