19954: Lemieux: The (Newark) Star-Ledger: Turmoil puts Haiti kids' U.S. adoptions in limbo (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

March 5, 2004, 8:18PM

Turmoil puts Haiti kids' U.S. adoptions in limbo
By BRIAN DONOHUE
Copyright 2004 The (Newark) Star-Ledger

EDISON, N.J. -- The nursery on the second floor of Wayne
Abbott and Pascale Lafontant-Abbott's home has been ready
for a year now, a sunny room with a white wooden crib and
furniture with teddy bears.

But their adopted children, Bergenoute, 3, and her
1-year-old brother, Wisnor, are stranded in an orphanage
outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti, their departure for the
United States now uncertain because of the political chaos
accompanying the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.

Scores of families across the United States fear that the
situation in Haiti is placing their adoptions of orphaned
children -- and the children themselves -- in jeopardy.

Aristide fled Haiti on Monday. By then, the U.S. Embassy,
where adoptions are processed, had been evacuated. It is
unknown when workers will return.

If the siblings don't get a visa by July 1, the date Abbott
and his wife's adoption application expires, the couple
will have to reapply.

"We're missing first steps and all the things you would
hope to experience as a parent," said Wayne Abbott, an
engineer.

Trish Maskew, president of Ethica Inc., a Tennessee group
that assists couples adopting overseas, said that since the
departure of Aristide, her organization has been contacted
by 50 families desperate for information or a way to bring
their children home.

Many children are in orphanages run by charities or
religious groups that struggle to provide basic services
even during less tumultuous times.

Through groups such as Ethica and over the Internet,
families have begun organizing to press the federal
government to expedite visas or waive passport
requirements. If violence erupts again in Haiti, they said,
they'll seek an airlift to get the children out.

Consular workers in Haiti, including those who process
adoptions, will return only after the political situation
stabilizes.

Adoption applications that expire before then would have to
be renewed before children can leave the country, said a
spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Such thorough reviews are required to ensure adoptive
parents are fit, and that birth parents have not been
coerced or their children smuggled or kidnapped.

Adoptive parents could seek permission to bring their
children to the United States without a visa, a rarely
successful process known as parole.


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