A friend volunteering in Senegal passes along this interesting tidbit from another Peace Corps Volunteer:
Senegal’s President Wade decided, in the face of the tragic events unfolding in Haiti, to offer the gift of mobility to earthquake victims. That’s right, he’s offering to “repatriate” (in his words) the people of Haiti to Senegal. Seeing as how Haiti was founded by freed slaves, he figured they might want an opportunity to resettle in their homeland. And he says he’s willing to give them an entire region (though, his aide emphasized, to be clear, it would be a fertile region and not the northern deserts. We volunteers are thinking he’s trying to take a chance to boot out the rebels in the southern forests and resettle them with imported Haitians. Honestly, I will never understand the man.)
Whatever his true motives are, I rather like the idea. As several bloggers have pointed out, the United States certainly could afford to let some more Haitian earthquake survivors into the country (And take a look at immigration policies in general, while they’re at it).
Leave a Reply