Like the H-1B bill, Haitian Amnesty legislation came back to life after it appeared finished for the year. This summer we reported that the Senate had added Haitian amnesty relief to the Treasury and Postal Appropriations bill. The House/Senate Conference Committee considering the bill had agreed to include the provision, but the Conference bill was defeated earlier this month in the House. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, spoke out against the Haitian amnesty language and actually distributed flyers to House members asking them to vote against the appropriations bill if the Haitian language was included. A number of prominent Florida Republicans, including Florida Gubernatorial Jeb Bush, son of former President George Bush and brother of Presidential contender Texas Governor George W. Bush, lobbied hard in favor of the bill. Nevertheless, a number of Republican Congressmen voted against the Conference bill and the bill went down to defeat.

Rather than voting on the measure again, the Postal/Treasury appropriations bill was incorporated into the massive budget bill voted on at the tail end of the session. The language of the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act remained in the final bill.

The Haitian Amnesty bill comes after a year of intensive lobbying by a broad, bipartisan coalition that sought to prevent the deportation of more than 48,000 Haitian refugees in this country. The final bill will largely accomplish that. To benefit from the legislation, a Haitian must have been in the US since 1995 and meet one of the following four categories:

• orphaned, abandoned, or an unaccompanied minor at the time of entering the US;
• determined to have had a credible fear of persecution and thus, legally permitted to be in the US;
• applied for asylum before December 31, 1995, or
• previously been paroled into the US by US authorities for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed to be in the national interest.

The bill's foes had earlier attempted to include language requiring a showing of "extreme hardship" if deportation occurred, but such language was defeated. Applicants for the amnesty program would have until April 1, 2000 to apply for permanent residency. The process should be similar to the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act amnesty procedures.

In a related story, more than 400 Haitians were picked up by US Coast Guard officers last month when they were caught trying to reach Florida in a wooden freighter. Their 75-foot boat was spotted and stopped off of Key Largo, Florida and the passengers were transferred to Coast Guard boats. They were repatriated a few days later. Nearly 700 Haitians have been repatriated this year after being found by Coast Guard cutters.