Haitians prepare for boat journey to Florida

Like the others in the boat, Douna is a refugee from Port-au-Prince and the unspeakable horrors of the earthquake and its aftermath. Her parents and sister were crushed in their home, just seconds after Douna walked out the front door to run an errand for her mother. The government offered free bus tickets out of town and Douna took one.

But this city on Haiti's northern coast is just a way station. When builders finish the boat in a few days, it will set sail with the teenager and at least 40 others for the United States. If they survive the 600-mile crossing, and aren't intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard, they'll soon be walking the streets of opportunity.

"America is a place where everybody can become someone," Douna says before bedding down for the night, an expression of certainty on her pretty young face. "It's where everyone lives like human beings."

And besides, she says, "I have nowhere else to go."

The Jan. 12 earthquake, and reports of a U.S. administration newly sympathetic to undocumented Haitians, has meant opportunity for the shady world of Cap-Haitien boat builders who promise to make the dream of life in the United States come true. The desperate are pouring into town and many of them, like Douna, plan to escape.

'90s exodus

In the early 1990s, when a junta drove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power, thousands of Haitians left by boat for Florida to claim political asylum. But the U.S. reinstalled Aristide to power in 1994 and in recent years the flow of boat people from Haiti has slowed to a trickle.

After the earthquake, the Obama administration quickly announced that it was granting "temporary protected status" to the more than 100,000 undocumented Haitians estimated to be living in the United States, and suspending deportation proceedings. That status can be extended up to 18 months.

The move was generally welcomed by politicians on both sides of the aisle as a fitting humanitarian gesture in the wake of the tragedy. But some expressed concern that it might trigger renewed efforts by Haitians to attempt to enter the United States by sea.

Haiti's ambassador to the United States recorded radio messages discouraging his countrymen from trying to make the risky journey, and the Coast Guard increased its patrols.

"It's clearly something people here have thought of," said Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a spokesman with the State Department's Western Hemisphere bureau. "But we've not seen any increased outflow from Haiti."

To qualify for temporary protected status, Haitians have to prove that they were in the United States on or before the quake. But for people in the country illegally, that could be difficult to verify, and the would-be immigrants in Cap-Haitien are counting on that.