Setting Orphans' Path to U.S.

Setting Orphans' Path to U.S.

Haiti-Based Officer Hears Hundreds of Cases, Ruling on Which Children Can Go

By Miriam Jordan

The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2010

Dozens of times a day, Pius Bannis helps decide the fate of a Haitian orphan.

An immigration officer at the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Mr. Bannis is charged with determining whether orphans had been matched to U.S. families before Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. If so, he clears them to leave for the United States.

Hundreds of Haitian children have been brought to him since the quake, some only a few months old, others in their teens. With many of the country's orphanages damaged or destroyed, Mr. Bannis often pieces together cases assembled from records extracted from the rubble.

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was home to 380,000 orphans. Americans adopted 330 of them in the fiscal year that ended last September, making Haiti the 8th-most popular country for adoption by U.S. families. After the quake, the U.S. announced a humanitarian parole policy to expedite the processing of orphans already assigned to U.S. families.

Some 500 Haitian orphans have been cleared since then. Several hundred are already in the U.S., after passing through Mr. Bannis.

It is too early to say how the immigration officer's decisions will play out in the lives of hundreds of children who will stay or leave Haiti based upon his determinations.

But the impact could be great. Inundated by cases from newly overcrowded orphanages, Mr. Bannis must stay on guard against fraud.

Concerned that some orphans might be snatched by child-traffickers amid the chaos, the Haitian government earlier this week temporarily halted departures of all orphans.

Departures to the U.S. under the humanitarian parole program are expected to resume within days, according to State Department officials. In anticipation, Mr. Bannis processes files, sleeping a few hours a night, usually in his office.

"He's the last thing standing between these kids and human trafficking," says Diana Boni, Haiti coordinator for Kentucky Adoption Services, a nonprofit adoption agency based in Owensboro, Ky., who added that Mr. Bannis has answered her emails at 1:30 am. "Pius deserves a medal."

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