Tuesday, July 13, 2010

New Hampshire Gives Haiti a Hand

Or a leg as the case may be....

"At a crossroad in Haiti; Where the need to help meets the need for hope, a N.H. firm found a cause and a child took one big step" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | June 27, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Like hundreds of other Haitians, she bore the indelible brand of Jan. 12, the day the earth convulsed. Doctors had amputated her left leg below the knee to save her from a ravenous infection.

Now, on a cloudy March morning, a man crouched before her, his left knee dug into the dirt like a suitor. He had traveled from a place she’d never heard of — New Hampshire — to the teeming soccer field where she’d lived since the quake, some nights squeezed onto a single cot with her mother and surviving sister....

In the United States, amputees routinely get new limbs. In Haiti, where the disabled expect to find rejection instead of help, that was never the case before the quake. And now, the battered and broken live in tents, easy prey for infection and despair, tottering on crutches across rubble and fetid streets. Here, a new leg doesn’t make a person whole....

The Haitian amputees would get traditional mechanical limbs seen rarely today in the United States, where legs with microprocessors are increasingly popular because they deliver a more natural gait. But the microprocessors are expensive and finicky, susceptible to water damage and reliant on batteries — in short, ill suited to life in a tent camp....

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Maybe they could stay here a bit, huh?


"Haitians granted more time to apply to stay in the US" by Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post | July 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — Barriers include the difficulty of obtaining necessary documents from Haiti, the $470 application fee, and a fear that signing up could lead to deportation, according to immigration lawyers and Haitian community advocates.

So much for it being a free country.


Those applying for temporary status tend to be in the United States illegally or on visas that are set to expire.

The program is not a path to citizenship or permanent residency, but it offers a way to work and live in the country without fear of deportation....

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