U.S. won't admit 12 BRESMA orphans

Publication date: 20 February 2010

Saturday, February 20, 2010

By Dennis B. Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A dozen Haitian children who fell into a bureaucratic crack have been turned

down for admission to the United States, according to the two Ben Avon

sisters who returned to a Port-au-Prince orphanage to care for them.

Jamie and Ali McMutrie, whose refusal to leave the earthquake-damaged BRESMA

orphanage sparked a dramatic rescue effort led by Gov. Ed Rendell, said

tonight that they had received word from federal officials that the

remaining orphans would not be allowed to enter the United States.

They said the government cited the fact that the children had no adoptions

pending prior to the Jan. 12 earthquake, a stipulation originally set by the

Haitian government. Last week, the orphans were granted an exemption to that

requirement by the Haitian government, according to Leslie McCombs, a senior

consultant with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who had flown to

Haiti last week in an effort to win admission for the children.

"What makes these kids less important than the kids who were already in the

process of adoption?" the sisters said in an e-mailed statement last night.

"We need to somehow force the U.S. government to see these children as

individual human beings who can easily be helped -- not as some part of a

problem that is so huge and hard to tackle that you don't even try."

The McMutrie sisters said they intended to stay in Haiti to press the

government to admit the children for adoption.

Dennis B. Roddy: droddy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1965.

Organizations: Bresma, Haiti