Haiti Marks 1st Earthquake Anniversary
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CBS4) - Thousands of Haitians gathered Wednesday morning near the heavily damaged Presidential Palace in Port au Prince for a memorial service on the first anniversary of a massive earthquake that killed more than 230-thousand people and left more than a million people homeless.
Survivors who were airlifted to the U.S. for medical care say they'll mark the anniversary feeling blessed to be alive, but also anxious about what the next year will bring. Many of them are only able to survive thanks to the generosity of relatives or charities because in their scramble to get out of Haiti they were not granted papers which would allow them to work in the U.S. Even those who were granted permission to work have had trouble finding jobs as they navigate medical care for injured children and bureaucracy in finding someplace to live.
"I'm not allergic to work -- I'll cut grass, I'll do anything," said Prevener Julian, a 42-year-old farmer and market vendor who accompanied his 8-year-old son Belix, who needed treatment for head trauma. Julian is living in a Miami homeless shelter.
Many Haitians brought to the U.S. in the first weeks after the quake thought they would be going back after a while. Now, they are not so sure. Sitting with his mother in a Miami shelter, 10-year-old Peterson Exais said he didn't know whether he'd want to return to Port-au-Prince where he spent four days buried beneath the rubble of his house.
It's better here," he says in the English he's learned this past year in hospitals and school. "Haiti is broken."
Haitian-American leaders plan to use Wednesday's anniversary to implore the Obama administration to welcome tens of thousands of Haitians who were promised visas but remain in the crippled country on waiting lists. Immigration authorities had approved requests from 55,000 Haitians to join relatives in the United States before the earthquake. But because the U.S. caps the number of visas it grants per country annually, it can take a decade for an approved request to produce a visa. Supporters want the State Department to waive the visa limit and thereby bolster the ranks of expatriate Haitians.
"They'll be able to send money to help their families back in Haiti," said North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre, whose city of 57,000 is roughly a third Haitian and would anticipate absorbing thousands of the visa-holders if they were bumped to the front of the immigration line. "Then (their families) won't have to be constantly asking the United States government and other international communities for help, constantly trying to get aid from them when they can help themselves."
Pierre, himself a Haitian immigrant, put forth a resolution last year that his colleagues in the U.S. Conference of Mayors approved urging the administration to issue the visas it has promised.
Federal officials are reviewing the issue, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.
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