They are subject to the same laws. The law includes a political asylum provision for those from Communist countries, and states that you cannot get asylum as a merely economic refugee. I did some work on this issue 15 or 20 years ago, and the legal standard then was that you had to demonstrate a "well founded fear of persecution" in your homeland in order to get asylum here. To be eligible as a practical matter, you have to be from Cuba (or formerly, from a Soviet bloc state). Haiti is not communist, merely poor, so its citizens don't have the right under the immigration law to just show up and stay here.
They can still come here under the normal procedures, but those have strict quotas, with most of the slots going to those who fit into defined categories for job skills, family reunification, or large investments in new businesses here. |
