Haiti's Miracle Baby Has a New Home
Haiti survivors young and old could be sent back to the ravaged country
"Baby Jean" was pulled from the rubble after the earthquake in Haiti and take to UM's makeshift hospital for car. Her parents' whereabouts are unknown.
Baby Jenni's struggle for survival has been a tale of hope and determination for the recovering island nation of Haiti.
The two-month old found buried under rubble and clinging to life a day after the Jan. 12 earthquake has recovered remarkably well and was released from a Miami hospital Friday evening. But her release only brings questions of what will happen to recovering Haitians once they are healed at the hospital.
"If i go back to my country I'm going to lose the chance to survive," said 26-year-old Sandrise Vital, who is paralyzed from the waist down after being trapped under a crumbled building in Haiti. "In the U.S., I'm not going to die."
Jenni has been granted a federal pass to stay in South Florida while officials determine whether she is a real orphan or was merely separated from her parents after the earthquake hit. She has been placed with a federally funded foster home in Miami called His House Children's Home.
But two people in Port-au-Prince say the little girl is their child, and officials are investigating the claim.
Still, many of the 500 patients in South Florida will likely be sent back to Haiti and not given the opportunity to gain temporary protective status while the clean up continues in Haiti. Government officials have made it clear that TPS would apply to only those Haitians in the U.S. before the quake.
Despite her severe injuries, Vital can only stay in her hospital bed for 90 days before being sent back to Haiti. Without some type of federal policy change, she will be forced to leave and seek scarce medical care on the island.
"Are we saying we are going to dump these people back where we found them?" Mayra Joli, an immigration attorney trying to attain humanitarian parole for Haitian patients, which would allow them to stay in the states indefinitely.
For now survivors will still have to worry about the possibility of going back to a nation struggling to support the surviving millions left on the island.
Posted Friday, Feb 5, 2010 - 7:20 PM EST
