Press Awards
Iwill soon go to Haiti to see first-hand the devastation caused by the earthquake, but I've already felt the emotional aftershocks here. I spent a couple of days at Notre Dame d'Haiti, the nerve center for Haitians in Miami, talking to applicants for Temporary Protected Status as well as to staff and volunteers from Catholic Legal Services, which is helping with applications. The helpers include people such as Sabine Pierre-Louis, a CLS staffer who, for days, single-handedly tried to create an orderly line of applicants out of the hundreds who showed up. ``Please bear with me,'' she told a group of 250 Haitians waiting in the church sanctuary, ``but I've been working 12 to 14 hours a day for days and I've lost my voice. But we'll get through this.'' Her positive spirit was echoed by CLS director Randy McGrorty and the many volunteer lawyers and law students advising applicants. Once granted TPS, they'll move out of the underground economy, gain some legal protections, get a Social Security card and a work permit. They'll also pay taxes. ``They'll be able to work legally and send more money home to their families,'' said Irvin Daphnis, a Hollywood lawyer who took several days off to work gratis with applicants. Eddie Fabien of Broward, who owns an exterminating company, was another busy volunteer. ``These are my people,'' he told me. ``It's my pleasure to come here and help.'' More than 50,000 Haitians are expected to apply for TPS in South Florida and perhaps 200,000 nationwide, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Most of these people already work, cleaning homes and hotel rooms, parking cars, doing construction work where they can find it, lawn care and other jobs that require a strong back and a willingness to work long hours for low wages. But considerably higher than they'd get in Haiti. Since the quake happened Jan. 12, South Florida volunteers -- doctors, nurses, EMTs, firefighters, search-and-rescue teams -- have flooded into Haiti in remarkable numbers. Dr. Barth Green and his colleagues from Project Medishare at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have led the way. Green's medical team was the first to arrive in Haiti. He says that surgeons who regularly treat badly injured patients at the Ryder Trauma Center were overwhelmed by the kind and number of injuries they encountered. ``These are people who treat badly- njured people everyday at Ryder Trauma,'' he said, ``but they were shocked by what they saw in Haiti. They cried, and then they treated them.'' UM trauma surgeon Dr. Enrique Ginzburg, part of Green's team, told me, ``We did the best we could, but we lacked most of the necessary equipment.'' He teared up when he told of treating ``a beautiful Haitian woman'' he examined who had a crushed pelvis and other serious injuries. ``We stabilized her, got an IV going and about 15 minutes later a doctor came by and told me she'd died.'' He shakes his head No, as if to bring her back. Adonis Garcia, a strapping firefighter from Miami Beach who recruited 11 of his colleagues for a mercy mission, also choked up when he told of finding a 3-day-old preemie abandoned on the street in Port-au-Prince. The child's heart had stopped, he says, but he and his team did two-finger CPR, intubated her, got an IV line started and revived the child, only to almost lose her again. The photo accompanying this column shows Garcia (second from right) and his fellow firefighters rushing the baby to the closest hospital. The photo was taken by Michael Capponi, a Miami Beach businessman and event planner to the glitterati who helped organize the trip and worked alongside the firefighters. But before we get all misty-eyed, let's remember a little history. After President Carter opened his heart and arms to Cuban refugees from Mariel in 1980, South Florida wound up paying the lion's share of the cost for years. Now, as Washington correctly opens its arms to the victims of Haiti's disaster, the president and Congress must not stiff South Florida with the bill. Already almost 200 Haitian kids have been newly enrolled in South Florida schools. Jackson Health Systems, which is supported by taxpayers, has already treated a few dozen severely injured Haitians who have been brought here; several remain hospitalized. All that's merely a harbinger of things to come. South Florida has shown admirable generosity in the first days after the earthquake. We will pay our fair share, maybe a little more given our special and deep ties to Haiti. But our generosity must not be abused.