The revocation will subject a half million Haitians to deportation by August of this year. The decision follows an earlier one by the trump administration that will send about 300,000 Venezuelans packing on April  2. The fact that these immigrants come from Black and Brown countries is not a coincidence. Other developing countries like El Salvador, Ethiopia and Nicaragua are also in the crosshairs.

TPS was a designation created by Congress in 1990 to offer legal reprieve to those from other countries impacted by natural disaster, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The application process is stringent but if nationals are approved, they can get work and build a life in a country that boasts of opening its shores to the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, “yearning to breathe free.”

It is important for those of us in this country to fully understand why people like Haitians have to flee their homelands. It’s not so much a love of this flawed democracy as it is a safe haven from their miserable existence. They are fleeing their homelands made dangerous and untenable by natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. The instability and violence in countries like Haiti, El Salvador, Mexico and Nicaragua can be attributed to US meddling and its foreign policies.

The small island has been catching hell ever since it fought and won its independence in 1804. There is a long and ugly history here that I’ll narrow down to two countries: France and the US.

After France’s colonial subjugation ended, the US stepped up. These white colonizers shaped the future of Haiti by manipulating the sovereign country’s economy and governance. The US is the main reason for the crippling destabilization and violence that keeps Haiti in a chokehold.

The US occupied Haiti for a generation in the early 1900’s. Haitian society was brutally altered so that the US could consolidate its financial and military power. To this date, it has funded the violence of dictators like the Duvalier family. The CIA is responsible for the exiling and assassinations of Haitian leaders who don’t play the game. US-based corporations engage in the brutal exploitation of Haitian workers, making sure the country remains the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

I am providing this background so that people in the US have some historical context for what is happening and why. Further, it must be the impetus for we, who believe in freedom, to be in staunch opposition to the administration’s perversion of the law. We cannot discriminate in the selection of who gets to breathe free. We must hold our government accountable for its vicious, self-serving actions in our names.