Florida Senator Marco Rubio warned President Biden not to accept mass migration from Haiti, saying, “the job of elected officials is to protect their citizens first, not anyone else’s.”
Rubio is intent on helping the Haitian people. After the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Congress passed the Haitian Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act to help rebuild Haiti’s domestic industry, but it expires in 2025. Last year, Rubio reintroduced the Act, saying, “It is in our national interest to help Haiti as it faces unimaginable hardships as a result of political corruption, natural disasters, and rampant crime. The HELP Act is an important bipartisan measure that will extend trade benefits and boost the country’s largest industry.”
In mid-March, Rubio and fellow Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott wrote President Biden, “Floridians and the rest of the American public will not tolerate your administration again opening the floodgates for countless, unvetted foreign nationals to stream into our country, putting our national security at grave risk and creating untold public safety threats for our communities. We must consider this danger due to the numerous reports of gangs committing jailbreaks in Haiti and releasing thousands of dangerous criminals.”
In his column discussing Haitian mass migration, Rubio noted that the Biden administration is pushing the Dominican Republic to accept three million Haitians fleeing their ravaged country.
“This is unfair to the D.R., which is a developing nation with limited resources, and which is already bearing significant burdens on Haiti’s behalf,” Rubio wrote. “Anyone who doubts this should consider the fact that more than a third of all births in the D.R. are currently to Haitian citizens.”
Then he addressed the possibility of mass migration from Haiti to the U.S.: “But encouraging illegal mass migration is also unfair to our country. The Biden Administration seems unaware that many Haitians view the D.R. as a stepping stone to Puerto Rico—and that a well-established smuggling ring to facilitate that journey already exists. Because our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico have their own fiscal constraints, illegal migrants that reach the U.S. territory would likely move on to the continental United States.”
“Like most Americans, I recognize that what is happening in Haiti is horrible and tragic,” Rubio continued. “The breakdown of law and order, the displacement of more than 300,000 people, and the need of roughly five million for some form of aid—all of these are matters of grave concern. This is why I support the international peacekeeping mission that Kenya proposes to lead once Haiti has established a provisional government. In addition, I have reintroduced legislation to preserve U.S. trade benefits for Haitian manufacturers, which could prove a lifeline to legitimate Haitian businesses in this time of crisis.”
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“But, like most Americans, I also recognize that no country should experience illegal mass migration—not the D.R., and not the United States. Illegal mass migration does no good for the nation people are migrating from,” he stated. “When all able-bodied, law-abiding citizens leave their homeland, there is no one left to defend it from criminals and tyrants—and no one left to provide for the vulnerable who remain there. On a more fundamental level, though, I cannot support illegal mass migration because the job of elected officials is to protect their citizens first, not anyone else’s.”