Haitians in the U.S.A Are Sources of Stability for Country as They Send Remittances

Washington Post, March 30, 2009

Editorials

Hope for Haitians?

Immigrants from the storm-ravaged island should be allowed to stay in the United States.

Monday, March 30, 2009; Page A16

HAITI WAS already an island of unimaginable suffering, a country ravaged by war and roving gangs where four out of five residents lived in extreme poverty. Then, in less than a month last year, four vicious storms lashed it, killing up to 800 people, leaving as many as 1 million homeless and inflicting at least $1 billion in damage -- 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The State Department cautions visitors that there are no "safe areas" in Haiti, and that "kidnapping, death threats, murders, drug-related shootouts, armed robberies, break-ins and carjackings are common." Yet, it is U.S. policy to deport the estimated 30,000 Haitians in this country back to this hotbed of violence and squalor. The United States grants temporary protected status (TPS) to immigrants from countries with extreme economic or political conditions; Haitian immigrants more than qualify.

Haitians in the United States are one of the few sources of stability for their home country, sending back remittances that total an estimated one-fourth of the Haiti's GDP. Deporting Haitians, and thereby diminishing millions of dollars in what is essentially foreign aid, would devastate a country that can ill afford to take more economic hits. A surge of deportees, who would arrive without either homes or jobs, would also place an impossible burden on Haiti's skeletal social services.

Critics say that granting TPS would bring a rush of Haitians to the United States in search of citizenship. But TPS would apply only to Haitians in the United States at the time the order is issued. As the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners in Florida wrote recently in a letter to President Obama, there was no "mass exodus" of Haitians to the United States after the Clinton administration granted a stay of deportation in 1998.

The Bush administration was consistently inflexible on the issue, turning down Haitian applications for TPS with minimal explanation. After last year's storms, the Bush administration temporarily suspended the deportations, only to resume them months later, while the country was still reeling from the disasters. The Obama administration has so far maintained the Bush administration's policy, but advocates have met with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and were encouraged by her response.

Mr. Obama recently issued an order that allowed Liberian immigrants to stay temporarily in the United States. Immigrants from Somalia, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras have also been granted TPS in recent years. Why are immigrants from a disaster-wracked country that is the poorest in the hemisphere less deserving?

(Taken from www.ijdh.org)

How to Sponsor a Child (Haiti): Organizations That Can Help You Sponsor a Child

Here is a list of organizations that can help you find a child to sponsor.

www.worldvision.org

www.farmofthechild.org

www.planusa.org

www.latinamericachildchare.org

www.savethechildren.org

www.christianchildrensfund.org

www.children-inc.org

www.sos-usa.org

www.stjude.org

www.feedthechildren.org

www.wish.org (Make a wish foundation)

www.makeachildsmile.org

www.children.org (Children International)

www.globalvolunteers.org

www.corazondevida.org

www.youtube.com (World Vision YouTube's Sponsor a Child)


www.partnersintl.org







I like New Missions's partnership with sponsors. They show the benefits of sponsoring a child. Visit their website if you want to get more info. www.newmissions.org

Sponsored Child Program Benefits


1. Christian education
We are educating students from preschool through college. Our teachers begin each school day with Bible classes. We also have the New Missions High School and The Royal Caribbean Institute training Haitians in the areas of Business, Bible, and Education.
2. Nutritious meal each day
Each school day our elementary students receive a hot meal. This is often the only meal these children will have each day.
3. Medical care and regular health check-ups
Our medical clinic is staffed with Christian health workers, including a pharmacists, lab, technician, dentist, nurses, doctor, and visiting medical teams that do specialized work, such as minor surgeries and restorative dental work, eye exams and eyeglass fittings. We administer care from basic first aid to disease prevention for our students and their families.
4. School books
Our elementary students receive their own textbooks. In a country where 80 percent of the population is illiterate, these books are treasured by our students.
5. School uniform
Our elementary students are provided with a school uniform each year. Clothes for their children are not easily afforded by Haitian families; these uniforms assure that our students will be able to come to school well dressed. At the same time, the colors of the uniforms help to distinguish that they are in a New Missions school.
6. Photo Indentification Card
Each student has a photo identification card that is used when receiving gifts and correspondence from his or her sponsor. This card assures that each child maintains an active role with New Missions. For the most students, this is the only photo identification they have.
7. Letter correspondence
You may write to your child. Corresponding with your child by sending letters, cards, and photos of you and your family enables a special bond between of friendship to develope between you and your child.
8. Birthday and Christmas gift fund
Special money gifts for your child's birthday are received in a fund based program. These gifts can be sent along with your monthly support to celebrate their special occasion. the fund provides all students with Christmas gifts and special holiday celebrations, helping each child feel special and loved.
9. Sunday school programs and local churches
Eighteen churches with Sunday school programs have been established in the various communities surrounding New Missions, enabling Bordmer, Brache, Concrab, LaSalle, two in Leogane, two in Flanc, Masson, Signeau, and TiRiviere.
10. Missionaries working together with your child
Ever since New Missions began in 1983, missionaries have been in the field woring with our school programs and churches.
11. Recent photographs of your child
You can request a recent photograph of your child at any time. The photograph will come assembled in a frame complete with biographical information of your child.
12. Personal visit with your child in Haiti
You are encouraged to come to Haiti to visit New Missions and have the opportunity to meet your sponsored child. Meeting and talking with your child is an exciting time and creates a lasting memory for both you and your child.

Food for the Poor, Inc Banana Bark Handcrafted Cards Help Haitian Parents Feed Family

Food for the Poor, Inc Banana Bark Handcrafted Cards Help Haitian Parents Feed Family

A good friend of mine brought some haitian-handcrafted cards to show me. His daughter loves them so much that she did not want him to give them away. After I read about the organization, I decided to find out more about it by going online. From their field workers, I found current information on the dire situation in Haiti.

These handcrafted cards are made of natural resources, banana barks that are found all over the island. The men and women who make these cards hope customers enjoy their unique beauty and will share them with others. By buying or ordering a packet from them, you will be providing much-needed income for a family living in the poorest country in our hemisphere.

These cards provide income for parents who just want to earn a living to support their families. Bear in mind that most Haitians are desperately poor and earn less than a dollar or two a day. By working on the Banana Bark Program, they are able to get their dignity back and reach some level of self-sufficiency.

Now is the time to order and send banana bark cards.

As for me, I am going to order a few packets of Christmas and all-occasion banana bark cards now.

Go to www.foodforthepoor.org to order your handcrafted cards now

Restavek: Haitian Children Exposed to Child Labor, Exploitation and Hard Life in the Aftermath of Hurricane Season

With the death of their parents and the losses of everything their family ever owns, Haitian children are the recent victims of the series of hurricanes that battered the Caribbean region in the past few weeks. With nowhere to turn and no means to take care of their children, parents will hand over their malnourished children to well-off family members and friends to take care of them. In many cases, these family members or friends end up mistreating these kids they promised to take care of.

Now, the situation of the Restavek (stay with) is going to be worse. Their guardians lost everything they owned during the hurricanes. They are going to have to take care of themselves. On many occasions, they are left by themselves in the inundated homes they have to clean. Those guardians expect free labor from these kids in exchange of foods, shelter and clothing.

You can help stop this practice by making sure a family is able to care for their own child, let your voice be heard by sponsoring one of these desperate and fragile souls,

Email: sponsorachildemail@gmail.com to get more information about your sponsorship opportunity.

Hurricane Season Highlights Haitian Society And Surfaces Restavek Issues: Understanding Restavek; How To End Children's Exploitation in Haiti

the poverty and the deep divisions in Haitian society, where there are rich, poor and downright destitute.

Nobody illustrates that last group better than the restaveks, the thousands of young Haitian children handed over by their poor parents to better-off families, most of whom are struggling themselves.

The term restaveks literally means “stay with,” and that is what the children do with their hosts, working as domestic servants in exchange for a roof over their head, some leftover food and, supposedly, the ability to go to school.

In practice, though, the restaveks are easy prey for exploitation. Human rights advocates say they are beaten, sexually abused and frequently denied access to education, since many host families believe that schooling will only make them less obedient.

Unicef estimates that 300,000 Haitian children were affected by the recent storms, many of them forced to relocate to shelters or rooftops.

But young Haitians suffered significantly even before the skies darkened during Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike, and more than 300 lives were lost. The country has the highest mortality rate for children younger than 5 in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a high death rate among infants and women giving birth. Just slightly over half of school-age children are actually enrolled in school. Attendance among restaveks, of course, is much less than that.

“Many of them are treated like animals,” said a United Nations official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she did not have authority to speak on the delicate issue. “They are second-class citizens, little slaves. You feed them a little and they clean your house for nothing.”

Gonaïves, a city in Haiti’s northwest, was no boomtown when the storms hit, having been devastated by a hurricane in 2004, from which it was still recovering. But that did not stop many poor families from taking in restaveks, the offspring of the poorest of the poor.

“Almost everybody has one,” said one of the women jockeying in the relief food line.

They are children like Widna and Widnise, twin 12-year-old girls who have been in the same Gonaïves home for the past two years.

They get up at dawn to fetch water, collect wood, cook, mop and clean. They watch as their host family’s two children, who are about the same age, eat breakfast and then go off to school. The twins eat nothing in the morning and stay home working.

The twins have it better than most, they say. They are hit on their palms if they are disobedient but do not receive lashings on their head, as they say many of the restaveks in nearby homes receive.

In the evening, they eat with the two other children and sleep on mats on the floor, just as those children do. They had shoes, unlike many of their contemporaries, although they lost those in the flooding.

But the girls said they did not like their situation. There is the teasing they get from other children, who tell them over and over that they will never grow up, that they will always be servant girls.

And they miss their mother, who works in the countryside as a domestic servant and visits the girls when she can. She tells them that she will bring them home as soon as she can afford to feed them.

“Our mother is too poor to take care of us,” said Widna, the more talkative of the pair, adding emphatically, “We don’t want to be restaveks.”

What they wanted most immediately on Thursday afternoon was food. Their host family had fled its flood-damaged home, leaving the girls alone. They arrived at a school in the Praville neighborhood where United Nations relief food was being handed out but were told that only women were allowed in line.

The pint-size girls sat off to the side until they noticed that some rice and beans were being dropped amid all the confusion. The girls looked at each other and then sprang into action with some of the other restaveks, scooping up the specks of food from the ground one by one.






Original Source: NYTimes.com