Adoption Business Trumps Aid

Yesterday I participated in a 2-hour government teleconference held by the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) Office of Public Engagement and International Division "to outline Haitian adoptions policy and address questions and concerns." Partners in the teleconference were the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection. (The alphabet soup is actually bigger than that in terms of smaller divisions working in the mess that is Haiti, not to mention Pentagon operations which have largely been ignored by the press.) There was an extensive Q & A session. I never made it through, but someone asked a similar question that covered some of it. At the end of the session there were about 40 callers left hanging.

I will be writing about and referencing what was said in future entries after I type up the 17 pages of notes I made. I do, though, want to give a brief description of what is happening on the ground at the US Embassy regarding adoption and make some comments on priorities.

The Embassy (pre-quake picture) has been in a state of chaos. Some Embassy staff lost family members and homes and are unavailable. Until yesterday (I think) only one person has been handling orphan/adoption exit requests, and he has been working virtually non-stop with only 2 hours of sleep a night. A second person joined him yesterday and four more are scheduled to join today. (My notes are a little unclear on this, and there may be one more recent addition). Consular services has been pitching in, but they have their own duties.

Hundreds of adoptive parents, paps, orphanage directors with dozens of children, and even, apparently, loose children gather outside the US Embassy. Many come unannounced demanding entry. Officials have set up and are refining procedures for entry into the compound, interviews, and decision making. (Procedures were discussed in detail, but I"ll hold that for another entry.) They emphasize that the Embassy needs advance notice of petitioners so someone can go outside, locate them, and escort them through the gates. Only adoption cases are being handled. (Haitians with other Embassy business, including those with pending pre-quake visa and immigration applications are being turned away for now.) Once inside, Embassy staff is furnishing kids with food, water, and other care while their cases are investigated.

Officially, the process is just not whisking kids and their keepers through. Each child removal is fraught with paperwork, paperwork verification, questioning, visa applications and approvals, etc. Accept for "special" cases, like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's BRESMA Orphanage"rescue mission," in which 54 healthy "orphans" under the age of 4, earlier denied visas, were whisked out on the US government fast track. BRESMA is operated by photogenic Ben Avon, Pennsylvania natives Jamie and Ali McMurtie. They requested assistance from high places, and got a lot of TV coverage as a result. Here is the McMutrie Sisters statement after their return to Pittsburgh.

Rep. Jason Altmire, (D-Pennsylvania), who traveled with Rendell's group, contradicts the number of denied visas, saying he understood that all the children were cleared to leave but the paperwork of 14 had been destroyed causing the Embassy to deny them exit visas. This doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm only reporting what was published. Of course, we don't know if there ever was any paperwork. Whatever, those 14 got out when Rendell & Co put the squeeze on.

According to January 20, 2010 CNN, via Rendell, adoption placement for 47 of the children was already underway before the quake. No mention of how far "under way" or what proof they were even in the pipeline was offered. 40 children were bound for the US and 7 to other countries. During the teleconference we learned that transfer to the intended destination countries of those non-US bound children would be a "complicated process." An additional seven children had no "adoption plans" prior to evacuation, which contradicts Altmire's statement. Adoptive parents will be sought for them. According to today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette, about 20 of the kids are housed in (Holy Nebraska Fiasco!) Holy Family Institute, a residential treatment center in Emsworth, Pennsylvania that houses around 50 other children. The facility was given 24 hours notice to get ready for the surprise delivery.Those who have no adoptive families lined up will stay there indefinitely Except one. Three-year old Fredo has been "adopted" by the McMutrie Sister's parents. Boy, that was fast! Wonder what they pulled that home study out of.

Here's the January 20, 2010 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-Philadelphia Inquirer account of Rendell's trip (my emphasis):

But to get a private plane into Haiti on Monday -- and then hop a military-transport flight out -- Mr. Rendell had to muscle his way through an international logjam over access to the Caribbean nation's sole airport.

Inadvertently perhaps, he also inserted himself into talks between the State Department and Haitian officials over how -- and how many -- orphans will be permitted to come to the United States for adoption.

A thrilled, exhausted Mr. Rendell, who hadn't slept for a day and a half, said at a Harrisburg news conference yesterday that he didn't much care what anyone thought of his Haiti venture. He said one look into the eyes of the children on the Air Force C-17 that was heading to Orlando, Fla., gave him all the justification he needed.

While still on the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, Mr. Rendell said, he learned that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had "ripped" him on TV for his unilateral move amid efforts to coordinate the global response to the crisis. "I just didn't care," the governor said. "To see those faces. ..."

Mr. Rendell said he had learned Friday of pleas by two Pittsburgh-area women, working at the Port-au-Prince orphanage, to get the children out. An "anonymous benefactor" provided the plane, he said. A team of University of Pittsburgh medical professionals volunteered to go.

Mr. Rendell said he chose to go along to use his political clout if bureaucratic problems arose -- as, indeed, they did. "We were denied our slot [to land] until the pilot said, 'The governor of Pennsylvania is on the plane,' " he recalled.

France and Brazil have both complained in recent days that the U.S. military, which now controls the Port-au-Prince airport, has hindered their sending in some planeloads of food and medical supplies. The Red Cross and another aid group, Doctors Without Borders, have also cited trouble getting clearance to land. Some flights have been diverted to the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Rendell himself said planes were "circling forever to get runway space." As the Democratic governor of a big state, he was able to use his State Department and White House connections not only to arrange a flight into Haiti, but also to gain visas for the orphans. "The initial response [to the visas] was 'no,' " he said.

The governor spoke with federal officials he knew, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff, whom he had gotten to know during Mrs. Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. In the end, it took the National Security Council -- the agency charged with protecting the nation from the gravest dangers -- to break a deadlock over whether to grant all 53 orphans visas...

CNN's Anderson Cooper was critical of Rendell's "rescue mission" taking the governor to task during a live broadcast from Port au Prince. This is taken from PennLive.com and includes Rendell's reply.

“Again, I just don’t understand that decision, and allowing [a] Democratic governor of a state to fly out a group of orphans who weren’t severely injured, but, you know, who God knows deserved to go to the United States and be united with parents,” Cooper said on air Monday.

Cooper was one of the first anchors to hit the ground after the quake that caused hellish devastation to Haiti’s capital city and had witnessed agonizing scenes of suffering. He and CNN’s chief medical reporter, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, were visibly agitated about the lack of medical supplies and “stupid deaths” taking place.

But upon his return Tuesday, Rendell said there was no equation to be drawn between American officials pulling strings to rescue healthy children and the thousands still in need of aid and care.

Rendell said he was drawn to action after two Pittsburgh-area sisters, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie, who run the Haitian orphanage, used Twitter and Facebook to plead for help in evacuating the children.

“Anderson Cooper was mistaken and wasn’t equipped with the facts. CNN was mistaken. He said we had 28 kids. We had 53. He did not know that we were carrying 2½ tons of medical supplies, more than Doctors Without Borders,” Rendell said.

“This is one success. There needs to be a hundred successes. The good news we were told by the State Department is that what we did will probably be the breakthrough that will open it up for a lot more orphans to come to the U.S.,” Rendell said.

We're not sure how Rendell's "rescue mission" will open the door for "orphans" except to encourage other bigwigs to call in markers from their Beltway cronies. Outside of harvesting a lot of opportunistic publicity, Rendell's trip-- and other relief-delaying actions during the military takeover of Haiti --has pissed off aid groups that were denied landing and diverted to The Dominican Republic while Rendell sat on the tarmac. Brazil and France have filed formal complaints with Washington over routine military diversion of aid flights. The January 17, 2010 Guardian reports:

Brasilia warned it would not ­relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe",

The Red Cross has also complained, and Doctors Without Borders issued a press release, not only about the Rendell hold-up, but other problems with the US military control of the congested Toussaint l'Oeuverture Airport, which has forced them to land in DR and truck in (so far) 85 tons of medical supplies across the border.

Here is a portion of the press release:

“We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying,” said Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for the MSF’s ChoscalSoleil. “I have never seen anything like this. Any time I leave the operating theater I see lots of people desperately asking to be taken for surgery. Today, there are 12 people who need lifesaving amputations at Choscal Hospital. We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations. We are running against time here.”...

...“It is like working in a war situation,” said Rosa Crestani, MSF medical coordinator for Choscal Hospital. “We don’t have any more morphine to manage pain for our patients. We cannot accept that planes carrying lifesaving medical supplies and equipment continue to be turned away while our patients die. Priority must be given to medical supplies entering the country.”

Clearly a lot more is going on here that the MSM (surprise!) isn't covering . US (re)militarization of Haiti, and the militarization of aid goes beyond the scope of this blog, though I will continue to discuss it on some level. Here are four good reference points, to start with for those interested:

Alternet: Is the Haiti Rescue Effort Failing?

The anti-globalist website, Global Research, The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion? by Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky who points out that US rescue is headed up not by civilian agencies or even the odious USAid, but the Pentagon and SouthCom. There are a lot of other articles on Haiti there, too.

Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel: Disaster Capitalism Headed for Haiti

Haitiaction.net: The Transformation of Diplomacy or a New Manifest Destiny?: a 2007 article about the building of the current US Embassy in Haiti--the 4th most expensive US embassy in the world behind Baghdad, Beijing, and Berlin. Now that makes ya wonder what's going on that such a small country needs such a big compound. There are also some pictures of the complex so you can get an idea of how big it is and what kind refugee congestion is possible.

I fail to see how feelgood for the few export-for-adoption and premature evacuation of children to the US, and other western countries, where they stand little chance of family reunion, takes priority over food, shelter, medicine, running water, sanitation, electricity, and infrastructure for the many. We need to follow the axom: follow the money, and I suspect it goes way beyond the adoption industry. We are certainly down the rabbit hole. It is unconscionable that adoption business pushed by Beltway nabobs, trumps rescue and aid for the hundreds of thousands affected by the earthquake. This is about the globalization of children for profit and political gain. And what a jackpot they've hit!

Haiti Child Evacuation:: A New Operation Pedro Pan?

This is long, but I think it's important.

"Anon guy" was kind enough to post the following article from the Miami Herald as a comment on Haiti's children to the Pat Robertson entry below this. I am posting it in its entirety:

Church, immigrant groups plan to airlift Haitian orphans to South Florida"
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND SERGIO BUSTOS

In a move mirroring Operation Pedro Pan in the 1960s, Catholic Charities and other South Florida immigrant rights organizations are planning an ambitious effort to airlift possibly thousands of Haitian children left orphaned in the aftermath of Tuesday's horrific earthquake.

``We will use the model we used 40 years ago with Pedro Pan to bring these orphans to the United States to give them a lifeline, a bright and hopeful future,'' Catholic Charities Legal Services executive director Randolph McGrorty said at a news conference in the offices of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

``Given the enormity of what happened in Haiti, a priority is to bring these orphaned children to the United States,'' he said.

Archdiocese of Miami officials and other local organizations have already identified a temporary shelter in Broward County to house the children, McGrorty said.

He also said they had been in contact with the Obama administration to assist in bringing the children from Haiti with humanitarian visas.

Operation Pedro Pan was launced (sic) on Dec. 26, 1960, as part of a successful clandestine effort to spirit children out of Fidel Castro's new Cuba as communist indoctrination was spreading into Catholic and private schools.

By the time it ended 22 months later, the unique exodus of children -- ages 5 to 17 -- had brought 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban minors to America, with the secret help of the U.S. government, which funded the effort and supplied the visa waivers, and the Catholic church, which promised to care for the children.

The late Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh, a Miami priest, was considered the father of the effort.

As the children filtered into Miami and their numbers swelled, many went to live with relatives and family friends, but others were sent to Miami-Dade group homes and camps called Florida City, Kendall and Matecumbe. They were then relocated across the country to archdioceses in places like Nebraska, Washington and Indiana.

There, they went to live in orphanages, foster homes and schools until their parents could find a way out of Cuba. Sometimes the separation was brief; sometimes it lasted years.

I knew very little on Pedro Pan and looked around this afternoon.

According to the official Pedro Pan webpage, the operation (1960-1962) was a joint venture of the US State Department and the Archdiocese of Miami (without the cooperation with the Catholic Church in Cuba) to remove Cuban children to the US-with parental consent--to escape "Marxist indoctrination" and rumored seizure and relocation into Soviet-style camps, by the new Castro government. About half were placed immediately with family members or friends in the US. The others were "relocated" in Florida and throughout the US. According to the Pedro Pan page:

No children were placed for adoption, since the whole purpose of the program was to safeguard parental rights.

Naturally, some children fared well. Others did not.

A February 8, 1998 article in the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal (paid archives) tells a less happy story, with unclaimed children ending up in foster care and juvenile detention homes. The article focuses on political science professor Maria de los Angeles Torres, brought to the US through the Pedro Pan funnel when she was 6. The book became The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the US, and the Promise of a Better Future. de los Angeles Torres (below left) is currently the chair of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

About 8,000 unclaimed children were housed in crowded camps in Florida before being shipped to orphanages, boarding schools, foster homes and schools for delinquent children across the country. There, some of the Pedro Pans say, they endured a multitude of horrors, including physical and sexual abuse. Years turned into decades as those children waited to be reunited with their parents, Torres says.

Torres, now a political science professor writing a book on the operation, filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the CIA Jan. 12, seeking policy papers, congressional testimony, internal notes and anything else that will help put to rest the personal and academic questions that have dogged her for nearly four decades. "I've received information from INS, the FBI, the State Department," Torres said from the living room of her apartment on Chicago's north side.

"The only ones who've flat-out refused is the CIA. . . . I've pulled a million political strings. This was the last resort." CIA spokesman Tom Crispell would not comment other than to say, "A search of our records found no relevant documents." The CIA has until Thursday to respond to Torres' lawsuit.

From a Chicago Tribune August 24, 2003 review of The Lost Apple, "Cuban Kids in Exile: Pawns of Cold War Politics, (paid archives) we learn that de los Angeles Torres eventually pried three documents from the agency:

The first was a report of a social worker in Miami telling the CIA of the drastic reduction in the numbers of child refugees in June, 1962.

The second document corroborates the CIA's knowledge of and collaboration with with the organization coordinating the children's exodus after the Bay of Pigs.

The third document details Operation Mongoose, a program created by President Kennedy stipulating that refugees, particularly children, were to be used as key propaganda objectives.

As for why Castro never stopped the Pedro Pan exodus, Torres replies that "it helped to denationalize the disaffected. Children provided the Cuban authorities with information about the opposition.

And this from the December 4, 2000 Miami Herald

Pedro exiles finding their past:
Never mind the storybook identity bestowed upon this exodus. The clandestine mission that defined their childhood years has involved more mystery than it has magic...

...The children were scattered across the United States, about half of them going to live with relatives, others landing in orphanages, foster homes and boarding schools. For decades they lived in relative obscurity, as exile history regarded theirs as an inevitable exodus.

But in the last 10 years, many of the now-adult Pedro Pans began to dig up their roots and challenge the fairy tale. Their questions led to long-lost childhood friends and then to deeper questions about the role of the U.S. government and the Catholic Church.

Gradually, Pedro Pans started uncovering the names and faces of people involved in the covert operation. "It was almost like a biological need to know.

Pedro Pans all over the world got this feeling of needing to be involved, honestly questioning how this happened,'' recalls real estate agent Elly Vilano Chovel, a Pedro Pan child who has made it her mission to locate the scattered children of her migration and to piece together the behind-the-scenes story of their flight. With her Operation Pedro Pan Group, she set out to document their shared history. So far, she has located some 2,000 of the Pedro Pans, scores of success stories among them. More than this, she and other now-adult refugee children have brought to light the complex network of Cuban exiles and Americans who assisted in their escape. Their research has sparked everything from books to lawsuits -- one distinguished child of Pedro Pan sued the CIA for documents pertaining to the exodus -- to the collection of oral histories.

Choval took heat for advocating the return of Elian Gonazlez to his father in Cuba. She wrote of her personal experience with Elian:

It also brought a shocking awareness that nothing has changed,'' she concluded.

Families continue to be split 40 years later.''That experience brought to surface all the old feelings of separation, the pain she and other Pedro Pans have lived with for years and the sad realization that they still cannot fly.

Alvaro F. Fernandez writing in the May 21-27, 2009 edition of the leftist Progresso is explicit and damning of Pedro Pan. Fernandez claims that the operation was an attempt by the US government, particularly the CIA, and the Catholic Church to break up families and use children as pawns in a clandestine war against Communism:

Operation Pedro Pan: A horrible black mark on (US) history:
My father, Angel Fernandez Varela, used to love to watch James Bondmovies. “Oh, if it was only so…” he’d say to me as beautiful movie stars seemed a dime a dozen in Bond’s arms. You see, Angel Fernandez Varela was probably the most important CIA agent of Cuban origin of that failed 1960s era that led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco.Years before his death, in Miami Beach in the presence of my mother, my sister Maria, her husband and me, he told us that he was one of the persons responsible for redacting the fake lawt hat caused the “removal of parental rights” hysteria. It is why know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Operation Pedro Pan was a sinister immorality play designed and dreamt up by the CIA before the1961 Bay of Pigs invasion...

. My ‘old man’ was the type who spent his whole life trying to help others in need -- never seeking the limelight when performing good deeds. When he died in 2001, I know his heart felt heavy with guilt over Operation Pedro Pan...

...And surely, the Cuban government and its leaders have made some horrible mistakes in their 50-year, revolutionary history. But, Operation Pedro Pan -- the first time family division was used as a strategy during never ending war between the U.S. and Cuba -- was not the brainchild of Fidel Castro or any of his people.

This mortal sin belongs to the U.S. government and the Catholic Church. It’s time they came clean and repented. The grief they’ve wrought was bad enough; it might even be worse to have so many believe it was somebody else’s fault.

While I hesitate to use wiki as a definitive source, I've gone there since I want to get this post up quickly. Here is what the wiki author says about Pedro Pan's political ramifications and goals. I have paragraphed it to make reading easier.)

The origins and purpose of Operation Peter Pan have been hotly contested by both the Cuban revolutionary government and the Cuban exile community in the United States. According to some reports, Cuban radio fostered--or even invented--fears that the revolutionary government would abduct children from their parents to indoctrinate them; one such broadcast in 1960 is remembered as proclaiming, "Cuban mothers, don't let them take your children away! The Revolutionary Government will take them away from you when they turn five and will keep them until they are 18."

One "Peter Pan child", Maria de los Angeles Torres, now a professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, believes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) initiated the visa waiver program and deliberately spread the rumors that Cuban children would be taken from their parents by the Cuban government. She has repeatedly requested that 1,500 relevant documents be declassified, but even some 50 years later the U.S. government refuses to do so.

Her assertion is confirmed by Fidel Castro, who has recently explained that Cuban people's "Revolution had not placed any obstacles whatsoever to prevent those who wanted to leave the country from doing so. The work of the Revolution had to be voluntarily made by a free people. The imperialist response, among many other serious aggressions, was Operation Peter Pan." He further argues that the CIA, in its early counterrevolutionary efforts before progressing to the more aggressive Bay of Pigs invasion and later the Cuban Missile Crisis, was attempting to use Operation Peter Pan to spread fear and doubt among the Cuban people, especially lower middle-class families (the source of most of the Peter Pan children). Without declassifying any documents as evidence, the CIA has nonetheless denied these assertions.

In 1962, the US government commissioned a documentary film created for the children who came to Miami, called The Lost Apple. The film named Cuban premier Fidel Castro as being responsible for the parents' non-appearance. According to Torres, then-Attorney Robert F. Kennedy approved making the documentary as part of the US government’s campaign against Communism.

Nelson P. Valdes, a University of New Mexico sociology professor who left Cuba at 15, said he later became convinced that the airlift was a Washington-concocted plot to drive wealth and knowledge from Cuba.

The idea that any child rescue work be modeled on Operation Pedro Pan is dangerous.

Although we understand the tremendous devastation and the human and humanitarian impetus to do "something," we can't help but question the intention of this mass evacuation sponsored by Catholic Charities, not generally known for it's child welfare ethics. We suspect, though, with the current Catholic Charities either unwilling to face up to the history of Pedro Pan or ignorant of it, and the Church's penchant for adoption secrecy, that some "good intentions" are adopta bad intentions. As anon guy writes under the Robertson comments:

They can't even tell if American aid workers are alive or dead, never mind Haitians, so like you said, how will they even know who is an orphan? Sounds like a child-snatching operation. Very disturbing.

Just who are these orphans and how have they been designated as orphans so quickly? Thousands of people are still under buildings, including most of the government and child welfare agencies. Some are probably alive. Where are parents and kin? We just don't know and neither do the do-gooders at Catholic Charities. Thousands of Haitian children are already traumatized by the earthquake, massive death and ruin, the destruction of their homes, separation from parents, family and friends, and fear. They should not be doubly traumatized by instant removal by jet plane to forighn shelters, and stranger group homes and foster care in Miami, and who knows what to follow. They need stability and Haitian care. Best practice demands they remain in Haiti. These children are not neo-imperialist lab rats.

During the 2004 Tsunami disaster, the US State Department issued a statement mandating best practice policy of family reunification and in-country care. I can't find the statement, but it was covered by national news Here is a summary, including:

According to the State Department, the international standard in a crisis is to keep children as close to their family members as possible. It can be extremely difficult to determine whether children whose parents are missing are truly orphans. In the current situation, many children have become separated from one or both of their parents. Even when children are indeed orphaned, they are often taken in by other relatives. Staying with relatives in extended family units is generally a better solution than uprooting the child completely.

Of course the Children of the Tsunami were not living in a newly designated US adoption mill like Haiti, either, no matter how much the desperate and childless of the West "needed" to adopt them.

This afternoon the State Department issued a lukewarm email statement (not online) about Haitian adoption that seems to have more to do with pipeline adoptions that mass evacuations. It reads, in part:

It can be extremely difficult in such circumstances to determine whether children who appear to be orphans truly are eligible for adoption. Children may be temporarily separated from their parents or other family members during a natural disaster or conflict, and their parents may be looking for them. It is not uncommon in an emergency or unsettled situation for parents to send their children out of the area, or for families to become separated during an evacuation. Even when it can be demonstrated that children have indeed lost their parents or have been abandoned, they are often taken in by other relatives in the extended family.

During times of crisis, it can also be exceptionally difficult to fulfill the legal requirements for adoption of both the U.S. and the child's country of origin. This is especially true when civil authority breaks down or temporarily ceases to function. It can also be difficult to gather documents necessary to fulfill the legal requirements of U.S. immigration law. There are many ways in which U.S. citizens can help the children in areas of natural disaster or conflict. For example, individuals who wish to assist can make a financial contribution to a reputable relief or humanitarian organization working in that country.

JCICS has issued the following statement, again about pipeline adoptions:

Haiti is currently currently LIMITED to adoptions by US citizens.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the recent earthquake in Haiti, Joint Council is working with the U.S. government to determine the impact of the devastation on the adoption process. Given that the coming days will be rightly focused on rescue efforts, it will take days if not weeks to fully assess the impact on adoptions and develop a plan to move forward with specific cases. Information on the adoption process will be published within the next few weeks.

For a list of Joint Council agencies working in Haiti, please consult our Country Programs page. (Note: there's a lot/)

This is not the 1960s and we are not in an ideological political war with Haiti. Haiti, no matter how poor it is however, has a natural resource that Americans desire: children. We know that international adoption is a key component of US foreign policy and much richer countries than Haiti have been arm-twisted into submission. A modern day Operation Pedro Pan (or would it be Opération Pierre Pan?) is unthinkable not only due to the original operation's Cold War history but as an act of neo-coloinalist exploitation of tragedy and vulnerable children. We know how the global adoption industry works: never let a tragedy go unexploited.

It is imperative to speak up against the the mass evacuation of Haitian children to the US into anonymous shelters and camps, perhaps separated from family forever. The main job now is rescue, survival, and reunification. If people really want to help there are numerous legitimate organizations through which to donate. My own personal choices would be

Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti
Doctors Without Boarders

Whatever you do, don't donate to Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing!

Thanks to anon guy and Jess Pegis for helping with this.