In the first few days after the quake, France joined other nations in searching for ways to help Haitian survivors. Not only was aid sent to Haiti, but some Haitians were/are being welcomed in France. As the United States granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians already in the US, thus allowing them to work and send remittances home to Haiti, France began bringing over Haitian children who were in the process of being legally adopted in France. Welcomed by First Lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy (at right with Michelle Obama, credit), the headlines were in stark contrast to those that followed soon after and announced the arrival on Corsican beaches of 124 Kurdish refugees from Syria, including 38 children, who were immediately placed in detention. There was a lot of bad press along the lines of: legally adopted children make good refugees; children washed up on the beach fleeing poverty, war, what-have-you, do not. In pretty short order, 94 of the 124 were released due to rights violations. Meanwhile, the issue of creating a status of "environmental refugee" resurfaced, but two Haitians who had just arrived, apparently without proper documentation, were ordered sent back to what is left of their country.Would creating a new status for individuals fleeing environmental disaster do the trick? It seems such status would concern primarily refugees from global warming, and even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees doesn't think Haitian quake victims need any special asylum treatment because the Dominican Republic is taking them in. And France has something called subsidiairy protection: originally granted to Algerians fleeing fundamentalist terrorism in the 1990s, it was transformed into more general protection under the impetus of a proposed (now adopted) European Union provision to provide temporary protection to individuals needing protection but not qualifying for refugee status. Individuals receiving such protection are not granted full refugee rights (which makes it harder for them to become financially stable, contributing members of the society in which they live) and are under constant threat of being sent back to their country of origin once the authorities deem it safe. It is thus highly regrettable that subsidiary protection has become the status of choice granted by France and other EU Member States to women and girls fleeing gender persecution, for instance. Subsidiairy protection would also be inappropriate for individuals whose place of origin is rendered inhabitable by climate change--once risen, the sea is not likely to recede; once melted, the polar ice caps will not reform any time soon. Such protection might, however, be very appropriate for Haitians fleeing quake devastation, as they should be able to return in the foreseeable future.
