Editorial: Bahamians are family, and they should be treated that way

Let's be clear: Virtually everyone -- and we do mean everyone -- in the northernmost Bahamian islands ravaged by Hurricane Dorian has been displaced. Their homes have been leveled, their businesses wiped out, their roads and other basic infrastructure destroyed.

A month after Hurricane Dorian's Category 5 winds pummeled the Abacos and Grand Bahama, some 70,000 people on those islands -- about a sixth of the Bahamas' population -- have lost their homes; others are in desperate straits. Palm Beach County volunteers who return from providing aid and relief can barely describe what they've witnessed without choking back tears.

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The federal government can, and should do more to help. They should move forward with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Bahamians. That's the program that allows foreign victims of wars and natural disasters to remain and work in the United States rather than return to their home countries.

When Haitians were hit by a massive earthquake in 2010, the Obama administration gave almost 60,000 permission to stay in the United States rather than return home to a humanitarian crisis. It was the continuation of a decades-old practice.

Not so the Trump Administration.

On Sept. 9, the acting head of Customs and Border Patrol, Mark Morgan, assured struggling Bahamians that the U.S. was on "a humanitarian mission."

"If your life is in jeopardy and you're in the Bahamas...you're going to be allowed to come to the United States, whether you have travel documents or not," Morgan soothed.

Then President Trump said the opposite: "Everybody needs totally proper documentation."

"We have to be very careful," Trump told reporters. "Because, look, the Bahamas had some tremendous problems with people that weren't supposed to be there ... including some very bad people and very bad gang members."

How vexing, to use a Bahamian colloquialism. That smear does not describe the Bahamas we know. At all.

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As we've said previously: "Our county and the Bahamas are entwined in a familial relationship whose roots go back more than a century to laborers who came here to work in hotels and homes, on flower farms, and on the Florida East Coast railroad that enabled this county to prosper. Thousands of local descendants of those laborers are now doctors, lawyers, teachers, firefighters and business owners threaded throughout our communities."

U.S. tourists regularly flock to the Bahamas. And Bahamians generally can visit the U.S. without visas, providing they have valid passports and clean police records.

Buthttp://www.infomaker.se/idf/1.0" id="strong-d5e879880ac326eecc4e0f105c280334"> contribute to the families that have taken them in or send aid to their struggling families back home.

As senseless as that sounds, it is right in line with Trump's abiding hostility toward people seeking short- or long-term refuge in this country. The president has tried to end TPS for more than 300,000 people from 10 countries living in the United States -- mostly from Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador.

U.S. immigration officials have decided against TPS for Bahamians due to unspecified "statutory obstacles," the time relief would take and the number of people whom the policy would cover, according to CNN, which cited an unnamed member of the administration.

But we're talking roughly 10,000 Bahamian nationals who would be eligible for employment authorization and protection from deportation under a TPS designation.

And the concerns about the length of a country's prospective recovery would not be new. The Trump administration has argued against TPS extensions, saying that home conditions have improved and that Haitians, for example, should not get to stay in the United States nearly a decade after the earthquake that brought protected status.

Even immigrants thought to be favored by Republicans aren't guaranteed refuge. Despite pleas from Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, the administration has thus far refused to consider TPS for Venezuelans living in South Florida. More surprisingly, the Miami Herald reported that the administration deported 120 Cuban immigrants early last month, even though many had passed credible-fear interviews and said they would face violence and persecution if sent back.

Severalhttp://www.infomaker.se/idf/1.0" id="strong-4c62ee8bb756e2cdf9b81309e14a6e44"> Congress; there's a broad constituency of support. But the administration has the authority, and a moral obligation, to move evenhttp://www.infomaker.se/idf/1.0" id="strong-c40c95b134944d20133473910c07b0d8"> without legislation.

Hurricane Dorian was one of the strongest most destructive Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history. It left an unfolding humanitarian crisis in its wake just 60 miles off our coast.

Our federal government should do more to help.

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