Miami District Receives Influx Of Well-Off Haitian Immigrants

The New York Times (1/16, Winerip) reports, "Last year after the earthquake in Haiti, Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of the Miami-Dade schools - the fourth-biggest district in the nation, with 345,000 students - expected to enroll thousands and thousands of survivors arriving from the devastated country. He was wrong. A year later, his district has 1,403 survivors - the highest number in the nation, but far below what he predicted." Carvalho "expected most to be poor" yet many were of "'a higher social status,'" Carvalho said. "Definitely middle and upper-middle class." According to the Times, "Carline Faustin, who works in Haitian affairs for the Miami-Dade schools, said it made sense that the survivors here were middle or upper class. 'They're the ones who can afford the visas, the paperwork, the flights back and forth to establish US residency,' Ms. Faustin said."