My spouse and I went on a church trip to Haiti a number of years ago. Looking back, it was just another useless junket. We sang songs, distributed juice boxes, and performed manual labor that the natives ought to have done for pay. It has been an extremely deadly location for years, even before then. The Haiti that lies beyond the cruise ship ports in Port-au-Prince is not the same as the actual Haiti. This isn’t the Caribbean of Jimmy Buffett. For a native of the United States, there is an unbearable level of poverty. If we weren’t engaged in any activities, we were told to stay inside the compound. A guy with a makeshift nightstick and a sawed-off shotgun without a stock was watching over the compound itself. We once drove by a dead body that was lying in the street after hearing that someone could kill someone for as little as $10. The villagers informed me that the UN peacekeeping force just caused inconvenience and annoyance to everyone.
The events of February 29 and those that followed have only made Haiti’s already dire situation worse. The country is a failure. According to the New York Post, hospitals have shuttered or run out of medication as gangs take control of the nation. Food and water are becoming scarce, and businesses, banks, government buildings, and schools have all closed. There, stranded American missionaries appear to be receiving no assistance. “I worry that we’ll end up in the center of something really hazardous,” remarked one missionary. We’re in a dangerous place and already on the front lines of it. It’s a little melancholy. There is constant firing. Despite the fact that the US sent troops for protection and carried out an airlift from its embassy, missionaries in the nation have not received any word.
The State Department has not yet commented on the situation, and the missionaries’ fate is still unknown, but the Pentagon stated on Tuesday that it expects a spike in the number of people fleeing the unrest and violence. Members of the Department of Defense testified before the House Armed Services Committee that they are ready for a wave of Haitian refugees. Matt Gaetz of Florida was naturally worried about how this would impact his own state, according to the Post Millennial:
An information document from the State Department details how Haitians may be eligible for a “family reunification parole procedure.” “An individual who is paroled into the United States (who) has not been legally accepted into the United States for purposes of immigration law” is the definition of a person on parole in this instance. We’ll handle this admissions procedure case-by-case. And sure, it does not include the approximately 3,000 immigrants from Haiti who are traveling there with other nationalities.
Although it is easy to point the finger at the Biden Administration’s shortcomings, Haiti has been in a state of breakdown for a long time. In fact, the circumstances there serve as an illustration of what occurs when governments get fixated on corruption and fail to keep an eye on crime. Haiti is both a tragedy and a cautionary tale.
Author: Blake Ambrose
