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DO BETTER FOR HAITI
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett) for 5 minutes.
Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, as the Member of Congress who represents the Virgin Islands, the only congressional office within the English-
speaking Caribbean, the plight of my Haitian brothers and sisters is very close--not just the ones presently enduring egregious and unfair treatment at the U.S.-Mexico border, but our brothers and sisters in the nation of Haiti itself.
The crisis unfolding before our eyes at the border is woefully symbolic of our Nation's inconsistent and superficial response to the reoccurring calamities in Haiti specifically and the Caribbean generally.
The nation of Haiti faces a tremendous, ongoing crisis: the recent natural disasters, including a major earthquake, tropical storms, and hurricanes; the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; health insecurity; the assassination of a Prime Minister and the accompanying political instability; gang violence; along with large-scale deterioration of infrastructure; and poverty.
As we watch our fellow human beings seeking a better life, we need to ask ourselves: Do they deserve the dignity of listening to their story, understanding their desperation, and working to find sustainable, long-
term solutions to the problems that cause tens of thousands of people to leave their country, live in abject and hostile poverty in South America, and make the dangerous trek to try to come to America?
I believe, and I think some of you do as well, that our Haitian neighbors deserve that, and that, in some ways, we owe them that, and that it is even in our own self-interests.
We must remember that Haitians fought with us in the American Revolution. They sent troops to be at our side. Then, in 1825, 20 years after they received their own independence, the United States agreed with France that they, as a new independent nation, should be forced to pay back the slave owners of France, who, they believed, needed reparations for lost income from slave labor. Until almost 1940-
something, the people of Haiti have been paying that money back. In today's dollars, that would be over $20 billion that this small island nation has paid to the people of France for their freedom.
Imagine if we had been forced to pay England for our own independence.
America has significant trade agreements and economic support with our neighbors to the north and the south, Canada and Mexico. However, when it comes to our third border, the Caribbean, that becomes an absolute afterthought, if they are thought of at all.
America wants these nations to be stable and support them at multinational forums but lacks the forethought to engage them as partners in the first instance. We intervene in political instability without meaningful engagement in civil society.
Hurricane relief and support for resilience, vaccination support, support for trade and educational alternative energy partnerships, infrastructure investments, those are the things that Americans should be engaged in at the first instance so we do not have what we have at the border happening now.
China, of course, is all through the Caribbean, giving lasting and meaningful investments there and demanding support from the Caribbean nations at the U.N., the Organization of American States, et cetera.
It is well-researched fact that rural infrastructure investments can lead to higher productivity, employment, and economic opportunities. Solid infrastructure powers business, encourages trade, provides much-
needed protection for countries from the unpredictability of a natural environment, all things that Haiti is missing to date.
Substantively, the U.S. has neglected to develop meaningful, substantive trade relationships in Haiti and the larger Caribbean that could help them and help us. We need to do better.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 165
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