The Haitian Times
By Onz Chery
FORT LAUDERDALE — Aude Sicard remembers going to meeting after meeting all around Florida in the early 1990s. She was part of a group of Haitian-Americans who pleaded regularly with officials to add Haitians to the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) bill that provided immigration benefits. But officials refused, saying adding Haitians would kill the bill, Sicard said.
Then, the group got help from Congresswoman Carrie Meek, who initiated a bill specifically for Haitians.
“She fought a lot. Her heart was with helping,” said Sicard, a community advocate who interned at Meeks’s office in 1994. “Her passing moved me.”
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