Haiti: Lives on Hold

Bill Clinton's Inauguration Day was much like any other in Haiti, full of hunger, fear, gunfire and, most of all, uncertainty about the future. In the slums of Port-au-Prince, there were high hopes for "the democrat Clinton" with a small d. Deep in a warren of concrete hovels without running water or sanitation, a voodoo priest sat beneath the corrugated tin roof of his temple. The people of his neighborhood, he said, had supported Clinton despite reprisals from the army that rules the country. "A lot of people were beaten up here because we believed in Clinton, and the Haitian authorities wanted Bush re-elected," he said. "We couldn't talk about Clinton, but we believed. We still believe."

Virtually none of the Haitian boat people brought back by the U.S. Coast Guard that day had even heard of Clinton, much less his decision to continue Bush's policy of returning boat people by force, without checking if any were fleeing persecution by the thugs who run Haiti. Batteries for radios are hard to come by in the countryside where these people had lived. Elias Volcaire, a 24-year-old farmer from St. Marc, just stared blankly when asked if he was angry at Clinton's change of policy. "Clinton? Who's that?" he asked. Only one of the returnees seemed to know. "Before he was President, Clinton said he wasn't going to turn us back," he said. "But I can't be mad. That's life." A priest outside the capital was not so resigned. "We don't know what Clinton stands for," he said. "It's unbelievable that he changed his mind about the refugees."

Hundreds of boats -- some still unfinished -- that were reportedly being readied to transport thousands of refugees to the U.S. after Jan. 20 stood idle at docks all over the island last week as Haitians tried to figure out what to do. A barricade of 17 U.S. Coast Guard cutters and five Navy ships offshore has temporarily halted the threatened exodus inspired by Clinton's campaign promise to ease asylum rules. When Haitians took his election victory as a guarantee of Uncle Sam's embrace and began to build more boats, Clinton quickly announced he would follow Bush's policy of forced return "for the time being."

The Clinton team has sought to dampen expectations in Haiti while it works out a new policy. To soften criticism that the U.S. was violating international law by forcing refugees back into the arms of their persecutors -- a practice candidate Clinton had denounced as "a blow to America's moral authority in defending the rights of refugees" -- the new Administration said it would open up new refugee-processing centers around the country. But Clinton recognizes that no mere modifications of asylum rules, however humanely intended, can permanently stop the wave of immigrants to U.S. shores. It is much harder -- and much more essential -- to improve the basic economic and political conditions in Haiti that cause its citizens to flee.