[For Obama] to continue by saying that Haitians’ “faith has been unwavering” lays bare a more dangerous issue. Surely Obama doesn’t mean the Haitians’ faith in corruption, violence and voodoo, which is what Haiti has been mostly committed to since it threw off the French?
He clearly doesn’t mean education, work-ethic and planning ahead. If that were true, the fallout in Port-au-Prince would resemble that of the Bay Area in 1989 when, during the 3rd game of the World Series, a 6.9-magnitude quake killed only 63 people.
Talking heads could argue that the Bay Area and Port-au-Prince are apples and oranges because of Haiti’s poverty. But whose fault is that? The Haitians have not been victims of slavery since they won independence from the French in 1804.
PLUS:
The Wall Street Journal lied to you.
“Haitian immigrants as a group” are NOT “among America’s most successful….”
Even anecdotally, you know this is true. Please name some famous Haitian-American physicists or photographers or entrepreneurs.
The 522,681 Haitian-born immigrants currently living in the U.S. represent 5.6% of the country’s total population. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they include much of Haiti’s educated elite.
Haitian immigrants, although underperforming in the U.S. context, are still the best their country has to offer. A mass post-earthquake emigration, along the lines of 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba, would inevitably see a deterioration in the quality of Haitians living in the U.S.
Nowhere is Haiti’s “brain drain” more acute than in the medical profession. There are reportedly more Haitian doctors in the U.S. than in Haiti. Most come here on the J-1 visa guest worker visa program. The visa stipulates that doctors must return to their native countries after completing their hospital residency, and practice there before applying to return to the U.S.
But most don’t go back…
***
Which is why there’s a doctor shortage in Haiti right now.
Your “compassion” is once again leading directly to the deaths of other people you pretend to care about. Congratulations, liberals!
Speaking of liberals, here’s TIME magazine:
Haitians are a naturally egalitarian society: what one person gets the other wants. Just be fair about it.
If you want to give water to someone, better be prepared to give water to every person in sight.
I found this out the hard way when I began to give out my business card and started a mini-rush. Even though I kept explaining to them the cards couldn’t help them they all wanted what the other person had. (…)
… the longer the tv crew remains the more violent the crowd gets…
There have been some violent clashes with looters, but that again goes to the egalitarian nature of this people: one of the cardinal rules is you do not take what is not yours. That’s not fair. Mobs, like the one I saw two days ago beating a looter to death, are quick and efficient. They disbursed the minute the man was dead and paid absolutely no attention to me or my fixer on the side of the road.
Phew!
Too bad they can’t read anyhow, or we could just airlift a million copies of Atlas Shrugged then get the hell out.
