Pedro Pan plan for Haiti unlikely to happen

Publication date: 19 January 2010

THE YOUNG SURVIVORS

State child welfare administrators had started planning for a possible influx of Haitian children orphaned by the catastrophic quake, but now are being told there will be no such exodus.

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Pedro Pan from Haiti unlikely to happen

Florida is unlikely to see a wave of Haitian children orphaned by last week's killer earthquake, as Haitian and U.S. leaders do not favor a recreation of the famed 1960s Pedro Pan effort that rescued thousands of children from communist Cuba, the state's top social service administrator said Tuesday.

``The Haitian civil government is starting to reemerge,'' said Florida Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon, who has been meeting with state, county and federal leaders for several days to coordinate refugee resettlement efforts.

``The desire of the Haitian people, to the extent that this can be done, is for the children to be cared for in Haiti,'' Sheldon added. ``That is their preference.''

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Advocates plan to airlift Haitian orphans to South Florida

Fifty years ago, 14,048 Cuban children whose lives were rocked by a political earthquake in their homeland found passage to refuge in Miami thanks to the Catholic Church, the United States government and the famed Operation Pedro Pan.

Now, a similar rescue mission will be launched for the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Haitian children believed left orphaned by the massive earthquake that hit their country Tuesday.

``We will use the model we used 50 years ago with Pedro Pan to bring these orphans to the United States to give them a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future,'' Catholic Legal Services executive director Randolph McGrorty said at a news conference in the offices of U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, where he disclosed the novel plan.

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Plan to bring children to U.S. gathers steam

The push to give shelter to homeless Haitian children in South Florida expanded and picked up steam on Friday, with the Catholic Church inundated with calls of support from local, state and federal groups -- and people simply wanting to take in a needy child.

``The reaction has been almost overwhelming,'' said Deacon Richard Turcotte, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities, speaking a day after his plan to bring Haitian children to the United States was made public. The plan mirrors the church's famed Operation Pedro Pan for Cuban children in the early 1960s.

``Our legislative delegations . . . our lobbyists . . . advocacy groups at the local and national level have all picked this up and are advocating on our behalf,'' he said.

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Napolitano: Humanitarian parole granted to certain Haitian orphans

In a late development on Monday, the U.S. governmentannounced it was granting humanitarian paroles to hundreds of Haitian orphans who were waiting to be adopted by Americans before the earthquake.

``While we remain focused on family reunification in Haiti, authorizing the use of humanitarian parole for orphans who are eligible for adoption in the United States will allow them to receive the care they need here,'' said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The humanitarian parole policy will be applied on a case-by-case basis to the following children: Children who have been legally confirmed as orphans eligible for inter-country adoption by the government of Haiti and are being adopted by U.S. citizens.

Children who have been previously identified by an adoption service provider or facilitator as eligible for intercountry adoption and have been matched to U.S. citizen prospective adoptive parents.

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We understand their loss

A s I learned about Catholic Charities' efforts to airlift possibly thousands of Haitian children left orphaned or homeless after Tuesday's horrific earthquake, a painful chapter of my life came rushing back.

The ``Pedro Pan'' style plan, church officials said, is to bring these orphans to the United States to give them ``a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future.'' I cannot help but to reflect on the plight of these orphans from the perspective of a former Pedro Pan child.

I was once a child in peril, too, and the Catholic church and the U.S. government stepped in to help my sister and me, to give us ``a lifeline'' -- a gateway to a better future.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

``The desire of the Haitian people, to the extent that this can be done, is for the children to be cared for in Haiti,'' Sheldon added. ``That is their preference.''

TOO FRAGILE

Florida and U.S. government leaders, Sheldon added, are also reluctant to airlift hundreds or thousands of orphans because of concerns that children who lived through the earthquake may be too fragile to withstand being uprooted from their homeland.

``These children who have gone through the earthquake have suffered a tremendous trauma,'' Sheldon said. ``To move them now to a foreign country where they don't speak the language and do not have families would be to re-traumatize them.

Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami, reiterated the Catholic church's offer to help spearhead a Pedro Pan-like rescue effort.

``This is an offer from the Archdiocese of Miami to the federal government, to our president, that we stand ready to assist in anything that the children of Haiti would need as far as a temporary housing facility that the Archdiocese would have,'' Ross Agosta said.

The Archdiocese's offer last week drew enormous interest almost immediately.

Executives with Catholic Charities said they had been contacted by some of the thousands of Pedro Pan children who are now adults in the United States, with offers of at least temporary housing for Haitian children.

Cheryl Little, who heads the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said, ``We've been getting calls from all over the world asking about the Pedro Pan program. Callers wanted to better understand what it means. Are all the children being brought here? How soon can they be brought here? People wanted the details.''

Currently, only children with valid adoption papers or in the process of being adopted by a U.S. family are entering the United States, Homeland Security officials said.

One flight carrying 54 children bound for adoptive families in Pennsylvania landed at Orlando Sanford International Airport early Tuesday before departing for Pittsburgh at about 7 a.m., Sheldon said. The children had been living in an orphanage run by two Pittsburgh-area sisters.

Another flight with 16 children landed in Port St. Lucie, Sheldon said. The children will remain in the Treasure Coast overnight as they await their prospective parents.

LOST DOCUMENTS

One challenge is processing the paperwork of children who, though already in Haitian orphanages, lost their documents in the earthquake's destruction.

Children traveling with a U.S. citizen parent, who are not citizens themselves, will qualify for residency upon arriving in the United States, Sheldon said. Such children already are arriving at airports in Miami, Homestead and Sanford, where state and federal workers are greeting arriving flights with offers of help.

U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten said the U.S. Embassy in Haiti is spending a lot of time processing adoption papers for orphans.

``We are trying to move legitimate orphans out of here as fast as we possibly can,'' he said. ``We need to get Haitian government authority for that, but . . . people need to understand we are trying to protect adoptive parents in the United States to make sure the child that ends up on their doorsteps . . . is the child they have developed a relationship with down here.''

He said the embassy also is trying to ensure children aren't mistakenly separated from their parents and labeled as orphans.

Miami Herald staff writers Jacqueline Charles in Haiti, and Alfonso Chardy and Luisa Yanez in Miami, contributed to this report.

Countries: United States of America, Haiti