On good days, though, I know that things are not entirely hopeless and that Haitian expatriates are not entirely helpless. Haitian-American organizations throughout the U.S. have swung into action and raised funds and food for Haiti. They've lobbied their representatives in the U.S. Congress to push for more U.S. emergency aid.

International aid organizations and donor nations have pledged financial aid and several tons of food. The Haitian government plans to strengthen agricultural production. The Bush administration has issued $200 million for emergency food aid worldwide, and the Haitian government will spend its portion subsidizing and stabilizing food prices for the next six months. The World Bank provided a $10 million grant to help increase social safety nets such as school feeding programs. These are important moves that could stave off long-term problems: more death and disease, continued civil unrest and political instability, refugees flowing to American shores.  

Haitian immigrants send millions of dollars home in remittances every year, $1.1 billion in 2006 alone, according to the World Bank. Yet we have not been able to leverage our financial contributions into political influence to bring real change at home. We pay tuition fees to help relatives in Haiti get an education even though we know that when they graduate there will be few jobs waiting for them. We bring relatives to the U.S. to find work and help support family back home, but while that saves lives, it also perpetuates the massive brain-drain that has robbed the country of some of its best and brightest. More than 80 percent of Haitians with college degrees live abroad, mostly in the U.S., Still, we all know that a country that continually exports its most valuable commodity, its human capital, is a country that will not continually thrive. We have been able to save individual lives, but unable collectively to save our country. We make little dents here and there, but only minimally mitigate its crushing poverty.

We have our work cut out for us.

 The numerous domestic charitable organizations and foreign relief groups doing commendable, life-saving work in Haiti can't replace what could be done if the talents, skills and education of Haitians living abroad were harnessed and put to work on the island. But how can we return to and flourish in a nation that can't feed its people, let alone educate or provide them with health care? Eighty of every 1,000 Haitian children born die before their first birthday. Half of the population cannot read. So we stay here in the U.S., where dreams are limitless and opportunities abundant, and we do all we can for family back home. We have no choice.

Marjorie Valbrun is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist.

Also on The Root:

"How the Haiti food riots crashed my sister's wedding" by Gary Dauphin. Marjorie Valbrun asks if Obama is bringing Oprah down with him, and remembers a time long ago When Jesse Jackson Had Game.

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