Hardbeatnews, NEW YORK, N.Y., Tues. Feb. 22, 2005: In exactly five days, some 292 hard-working Montserratians, who have called the U.S. home since fleeing a 1995 volcano, will be forced to leave or face deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security have refused to renege on their July 2004 decision to end Temporary Protected Status for the Monserratians, despite extending the status for 248,282 Salvadorans, 81,000 Hondurans and 4,300 Nicaraguan migrants.
Instead, they claim the 24 dozen or so nationals of the volcano-ravaged island can either return to their ash-laden homeland or seek refugee status in the United Kingdom. Montserrat is a dependent territory of Britain.
TPS allows immigrants the right to work legally in the United States. Section 244 of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to grant TPS to aliens in the United States who are nationals of countries that are subject to ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions.
Those facing the ouster, come Sunday, Feb. 27, are naturally upset. As is Vera Weekes, a Montserrat national who has been single-handedly lobbying for the reversal of the decision.
“They have taken a myopic view of TPS and the Montserrat case. They cannot comprehend that they are going to be refugees in another country. UK is not their country of origin. Some folks just do not have the push to start all over again after 10 years,” Weekes, coordinator for Efforts to Stop Deportation of the Montserratians, told HBN yesterday.
The activist also claims that the Montserrat government has no jobs and no houses for these nationals, and would also face undue hardship in the U.K., since processing time for residency there could take up to three months.
“I took a TPS person to UK on the 6th of Nov., and it is only the good nature of my sister and her husband, my nephew, and a distant cousin, that is keeping her alive,” added Weekes. “She was rendered homeless after three weeks there. Her uncle who promised to keep her for the three months, threw her out after three weeks and since that time it has been total bedlam for her and she is on dialysis.”
But the DHS, under the new leadership of Michael Chertoff, is pushing off the final decision on the U.S. State Department and the President, who have yet to respond to the issue.
Weekes is now urging the British and Montserratian government to inform the U.S. authorities “that they are not in a position right now to take care of these folks and they need another year or two to put things in perspective.”
“America must not be seen as so petty and inhumane and the truth is that they did not have a conversation with the receiving countries,” she added.
How come they know some countries cannot take their folks back because of economic hardship!!! Who did they speak to? Why not give the Montserratians the same courtesy?”
A congressional bill, H.R. 603, introduced by Brooklyn Congressman Major Owens in 2001 and again in 2003, languishes in the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims. The bill calls for green cards for the Montserratians. Owens’ office said recently that there are 44 co-sponsors of the bill but has failed to pass in the Republican dominated House.
Owens has also called on President George W. Bush to intervene and help the Montserratians, but to date, no help has been forthcoming.
And last October, NY Senator, Charles Schumer, introduced the `Montserrat Immigration Fairness Act' or S.2816.IS, to help save the group from deportation in February 2005. But the days are sliding by and the Feb. 27 deadlines is inching closer and all roads now seem pointed out of the U.S. for the 292 Monserratians and their family. – Hardbeatnews.com
A last gasp effort is underway to prevent the deportation of Montserratian refugees from New York City, U.S.A., to the disaster-stricken volcanic island they fled ten years ago.

Representative w:Major Owens (D, NY), of Brooklyn, is hoping the outpouring of support for victims of the Asian tsunami will save the refugees from returning to an island with an active volcano that is at constant risk of a further catastrophe.

Until last year, the Department of Homeland Security had allowed the families to stay in the United States under a special designation called “Temporary Protected Status”. But in July, secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, withdrew the status—not because it was safe to return to Montserrat, but because the volcano would remain active for decades to come and therefore was no longer a “temporary” danger. On February 27, the city’s estimated 100 Montserratians and their families will be forced to leave or risk deportation. A further 200 families, many of them living in Boston, are also under threat.

Earlier efforts to win a reprieve for the Montserratians were blocked by anti-immigrant forces in the House of Representatives, led by congressman Tom Tancredo, of Colorado, Rep. Owens said. But he added that a new bill, which he introduced at the end of last month, might be more popular in the wake of the Asian disaster.

“We hope that the approaching emergency situation plus the drama of the tsunami will help change some of the attitudes about this,” Rep. Owens said. “And some of the people who opposed this legislation on the basis that they opposed immigration, will see that it is not about immigration but about coming to the relief of people who have been victims of a natural disaster.”

Meanwhile, New York’s tiny Montserratian community must wait and hope. For those not fortunate enough to have married a US citizen or to have found an employer willing to sponsor them, the coming weeks are crucial.

Pearl Ryner, 40, a refugee who works as a medical technician at the King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, said she refused to get married just so that she can stay in the United States. But she is a single mother with four children and she does not want to uproot her family and start over again.

“I worry. I cry. I am still hoping,” Ms. Ryner said. “What do I do? Where do I begin? How do I pick four kids up and take them away? If I buy a plane ticket, where do I go? These are questions that I do not have an answer for.”

The Department of Homeland Security has suggested that because Montserrat is a British overseas territory, Montserratians should go to the UK. But the refugees say they have no relatives or friends they can stay with in the UK, and that they have made homes and started careers and lives in the United States.

If the refugees are deported to Montserrat it will be to a 35 square-mile island, two-thirds of which is buried beneath volcanic rubble and ash. The capital, Plymouth, in the south east of the island has been abandoned, and there is a housing and employment shortage.

The Soufriere Hills Volcano erupted in 1995, but the British Foreign Office website warns that the volcano remains active. Heavy rain can cause mudflows, and people suffering from breathing problems risk airborne dust and volcanic ash. The collapse of a lava dome in 2001 spewed clouds of ash that affected Puerto Rico, a self-governing territory of the United States, 200 miles away.

Moreover continued volcanic activity is triggering landslides that have caused two tsunamis in Montserrat during the past ten years. The first, on December 26, 1997, created a wave three meters tall, which rolled northwards along the coast. The second, in July 2003, measured about four meters and traveled to Guadeloupe 30 miles away.

Sherry Coriette, 28, who works for a major retail company in New York, said that she still has not decided what to do. “I have a good job, I pay my bills,” Ms. Coriette said. “Eight years ago I left with nothing and now I am having to face starting all over again.”

Matthew Dunn, chairman of the New York Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that as long as there was a potential for danger, the United Sates should offer the people of Montserrat a safe haven.

“I would argue that is what our country is all about: helping and protecting people,” Mr. Dunn said. “But the biggest shame in all of this is that because there is so few of them, they do not have a big enough voice.”