San Anto­nio Express Editorial

Pledges from indi­vid­u­als and gov­ern­ments to help the peo­ple of Haiti are a dis­tant mem­ory. Aid to rebuild the impov­er­ished nation is trick­ling in.

Six months after a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake took as many as 300,000 lives, the world has moved on. Donor nations com­mit­ted to send $5.3 bil­lion at a March aid con­fer­ence. CNN reports less than 2 per­cent of that aid has actu­ally been deliv­ered. Of the $1.15 bil­lion Amer­i­can pledge, noth­ing has yet been paid.

The human­i­tar­ian cat­a­stro­phe in Haiti, how­ever, continues.

The U.S. funds are tied up in the con­gres­sional appro­pri­a­tions process. Even if they were released today, it would take weeks, per­haps months, before the funds would make it through the inter­na­tional bureau­cracy to the peo­ple who actu­ally need it.

That needs to be done. But there’s an imme­di­ate way the United States can pro­vide direct human­i­tar­ian relief — by expe­dit­ing the entry of 55,000 Hait­ian visa can­di­dates who already have rel­a­tives in the United States.

Nor­mally, it would take years to clear the visa back­log. But given the mag­ni­tude of the suf­fer­ing in Haiti, there’s ample moral rea­son to expe­dite that process and reunify families.

Just as impor­tant, Haitians liv­ing and work­ing in the United States pro­vide their own aid through the remit­tances they send back to rel­a­tives. These are legal immi­grants who even­tu­ally will come to the United States. Allow­ing them to come now would enhance the cre­ation of that pri­vate sup­port network.

Con­gress and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion have the author­ity to expe­dite the visas and give these Haitians legal res­i­dent sta­tus. As recently as 2007, the U.S. gov­ern­ment took sim­i­lar steps to reunite thou­sands of Cubans with their fam­i­lies in the United States. The gov­ern­ment should do so now for the Haitians.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/Haitian_immigrants_need_expedited_entry_99065229.html