The Special Forum on Haiti

I am going to use this blog post to talk about a campus event I attended several days ago.  Knowing what kind of trouble figures as diverse as Paul Shirley and Pat Robertson got into when discussing the sensitive topic of Haiti, it is my goal to be as sober and careful as I can be in laying out my commentary here.
 
This past Thursday, Preston Mui and I attended the Special Forum on Haiti: From Relief to Recovery.  The forum consisted of eight panelists talking about the various aspects of relief and future rebuilding efforts that concern their professional fields.  The forum started with a video greetings from Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), followed by 5-10 minute speeches from the panelists.  The panelists included an alum who recently traveled to Haiti, as well as people from World Food Programme, World Health Organization, Jesuit Refugee Service USA, Save the Children, the university History Department, School of Nursing and Health Studies, and Pan American Health Organization.  Each speaker tried to analyze the complex social, political, and economic conditions of Haiti that contributed to the plight of that nation and highlighted an important aspect of what it is going to take for Haiti to recover and rebuild successfully.
 
After the forum, several things stood out in my mind.  First, Mr. Allan Jury of World Food Programme mentioned the importance of economic recovery.  He mentioned encouragement of entrepreneurship, direct investment into Haiti and its infrastructures, agricultural reforms, and better environmental protection as aspects of this.  I think this was a very important point.  As the tragedy in Haiti uncovered, the problem with Haiti was not just that Haiti sits on a fault line; there are myriad economic, political, and social issues that contributed to the political turbulence and widespread poverty in the country.  I believe that Mr. Jury is right in pointing out a need for economic reform.  There needs to be investment, trade, and economic development for Haiti to be able to feed its population, grow economically, and be able to pay for things like infrastructure that can better withstand earthquake shocks.  To do so, I think that a step that the United States can take is to expand CAFTA-DR to include Haiti.  This would open up a large regional market for Haiti to export its goods to so that Haitian enterprises can grow and contribute to the overall well-being of the Haitian people.  Foreign companies should also look to Haiti as a possible destination of outsourcing.  Haitian people need jobs for their economy to grow, and foreign companies often need inexpensive labor.  Foreign companies that do business in Haiti would not just be providing jobs, but also investing in infrastructure, for their own good if not for anything else, so that the overall impact on Haiti would be positive.  An example is port structures that would become enlarged and more modernized, allowing Haiti to have greater trade capacities with its neighbors.  Agricultural reforms and environmental protection are connected issues.  According to the panelists, Haiti can only feed 43% of its population despite abundant arable land.  This is often caused by land mismanagement, which is tied to both agricultural reforms and environmental protection.  I know that some of my friends on the right do not consider the environment to be a serious issue, but I believe that we can all agree that, at least on the basis of better land management for the sake of better food production, taking better care of the environment is not such a bad thing.
 
An issue related to this, as pointed out by several panelists, is the political issue.  Haiti has suffered political turbulence for a long time.  I can still remember reading about the 2004 coup d'etat and thinking to myself, "Coup d'etats still happen in the 21st century?"  Obviously, that was not the only instance of political troubles brewing on the western half of Hispanola.  All the instances of political turmoil can be tied to the economic underdevelopment of Haiti, because an argument can be made that without a stable government and a strong rule of law, foreign businesses are unlikely to invest in Haiti and domestic businesses are unlikely to succeed under political unpredictability.  Thus, politics and economics have a symbiotic relationship.  A stable government that promotes rule of law and stamps down on corruption invites economic development, and economic development helps bring about more stable society and government.  Obviously, this is a tall order for any developing country, especially for a country like Haiti that has suffered these problems for decades.  But without tackling these, not only can Haiti not have stable politics and substantial economic growth, but even more basic objectives like raising literacy levels and cutting down infant and maternal morality rates are exceedingly difficult to achieve.
 
A third issue that stayed with me even after the forum was the American domestic legal and political role in helping the Haitians, especially regarding immigration.  As a first-generation immigrant myself, the issue of immigration fascinates me, and in the case of Haiti, the issue seems to involve the temporary protected status.  According to one of the panelists, the Haitian diaspora in the United States remits over $1 billion a year, which is a substantial sum of investment for a country like Haiti.  Thus, it becomes an important issue for Haitian economic development that Haitian refugees who live and work in the United States have a legal status.  I applaud the Obama administration for the decision to extend the temporary protection status to the Haitian refugees, as this will allow them to escape their earthquake-torn homeland, come to the United States legally, contribute to our economy by working in the United States, and contribute to the Haitian recovery by sending money back.  This is both an important humanitarian and practical gesture on part of the United States.  The question, however, always arises whenever these temporary protected statuses are granted, and that is, should these people be forced to go back to their country of origin when the status runs out, or should they be allowed to stay since their home, family, and work are now in the United States?  As a general rule of thumb, I believe that they should go back to their country of origin, since they were granted the temporary protected status with the understanding that the status was temporary.  However, under certain circumstances where the situation in the country of origin has not improved at the time that the status expires, I think that it would be the right thing to do to renew the status.  In addition, I believe that children who are receiving education in the United States at any level, pre-K through graduate school, at the time that the temporary protected status runs out should be given permission to finish their education.
 
In the end, the forum was an insightful and engaging event that showed me the many issues that make the recovery that much more difficult in Haiti.  It is my fervent hope and my firm belief that Haiti will someday be able to break out of the poverty cycle, that it will be able to develop its economy and stabilize its political situation, and that it will someday no longer need foreign aid to feed its people and provide basic services for its people.  However, that day is still far off, and it is both a practical concern and a moral responsiblity for us, as private citizens, the private sector, and the public sector, to help the Haitian people help themselves.