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Spotlight on Haitians in the United States
By Kathleen Newland and Elizabeth Grieco
Migration Policy Institute
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April 2004
This month's Spotlight examines Haitians in the United States, and the US government's policies towards them.
The political upheaval in Haiti today has created a humanitarian crisis that in some ways resembles conditions that preceded earlier waves of Haitian refugees to the United States. About 300 people died in the armed revolt that started in northern Haiti on February 5 and ended on February 29 with President Jean-Bertrande Aristide's departure from the country. The death toll could rise as a result of the disruption of food supplies and basic services that continues into its second month despite the end of the uprising. An estimated 268,000 people are urgently in need of food aid in the north, where food warehouses and hospitals were looted, according to the World Food Program.
The following facts are connected to the changes taking place in Haiti and the situation of Haitian communities in the United States.
Click on the bullet points below for more information:
There are nearly 420,000 foreign born from Haiti living in the United States.
Results from Census 2000 show that there were 419,317 foreign born from Haiti in the United States. The Haitian foreign born represented 1.3 percent of the United States' total foreign-born population of 31.1 million and 0.1 percent of the total population of 281.4 million.
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Table 1. Ten states with the largest foreign-born populations from Haiti, 2000
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| Area |
Number |
Percent |
| United States |
419,317 |
100.0 |
| Florida |
182,224 |
43.5 |
| New York |
125,475 |
29.9 |
| Massachusetts |
33,862 |
8.1 |
| New Jersey |
31,963 |
7.6 |
| Connecticut |
7,902 |
1.9 |
| Maryland |
5,367 |
1.3 |
| Pennsylvania |
4,977 |
1.2 |
| Georgia |
4,909 |
1.2 |
| Illinois |
4,358 |
1.0 |
| California |
3,006 |
0.7 |
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Source: US Census Bureau, Census 2000
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The states with the largest number of foreign born from Haiti include Florida and New York.
The five states with the largest populations of foreign born from Haiti in 2000 were Florida (182,224) and New York (125,475), followed by Massachusetts (33,862), New Jersey (31,963) and Connecticut (7,902). Combined, these five states made up 91 percent of the total foreign-born population from Haiti in the United States.
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The foreign born from Haiti account for less than seven percent of all foreign born in Florida.
In 2000, the foreign-born from Haiti in Florida (182,224) represented 6.8 percent of Florida's total foreign-born population of 2.7 million. The foreign born from Haiti accounted for 1.1 percent of the total population of 16 million of Florida. The foreign born from Haiti in Florida constituted 43.5 percent of the 419,317 foreign born from Haiti in the United States.
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The number of Haitians acquiring legal permanent residence (LPR) in the United States closely tracks political events in Haiti.
The recent history of Haitian immigration to the United States has been keyed to crisis. Spikes in new legal permanent residents (LPRs) have coincided with periods of political turmoil when elite rule was replaced with democratic governments. The spikes in LPRs occured after 1987 when the democratic constitution was adopted and the first democratically elected president took office; plummeted when he was removed in a coup (1988); spiked again with the late 1990 election of the populist President Aristide; dropped when he was removed in a coup (1991); started a steady climb with Aristide's restoration in late 1994; and spiked again when he was elected for the second time in late 2000. They have remained fairly high during the continuous political turmoil of Aristide's second term.
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Flows of Haitian refugees and asylum seekers follow a different pattern than LPRs.
Flows of asylum seekers and refugees, in contrast with LPRs, track the suppression of the popularly elected government
in 1991-1994, peaking in 1993. From the mid-1990s until the present, however, arrivals of Haitian refugees and asylum seekers
in the United States have been kept at a very low level by US government policies to intercept and return Haitians attempting
to enter by boat.
Legal permanent residents are foreign-born persons who have been granted the right to live permanently in the United
States. Such immigrants may obtain legal permanent residence in the US by qualifying for a family-sponsored or employment-based
immigrant visa or by adjusting from temporary refugee and asylee visas. Permanent residence may also be acquired through the
diversity visa lottery program, which allots additional immigration visas to countries that are strongly underrepresented in US immigration streams.
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Graph 1. Immigration from Haiti to the United States, by Immigrant Type, 1986 to 2002
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The US Coast Guard is responsible for interdicting undocumented migrants, including Haitians, at sea.
Following the most recent political crisis that erupted in Haiti with an armed uprising against the Aristide government in February 2004, the number of interdictions of Haitians peaked sharply 1,076. It then dropped to zero in the weeks after President Aristide left the country. Interdictions in FY2004, as of the end of March, were running at more than twice the level reached at the same point in FY2003. However, recent interdictions of Haitian boat passengers still has not even approached the levels seen in 1993-1994, when on a single day (July 4, 1994), 3,247 Haitian migrants were intercepted by the Coast Guard.
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Graph 2. Haitian Migrant Interdictions at Sea, October 2003 to March 2004
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Haitians face unique hurdles in claiming asylum in the United States.
Haitian refugees interdicted by the US Coast Guard are not screened to see if they may have valid claims to refugee status. Only those who take the initiative to clearly proclaim their fear of return to Haiti will be allowed to make an asylum claim. Only three of more than 1,000 Haitians intercepted since February 1 have been screened as a result of their protestations, and these three were returned to Haiti without a full asylum hearing. Haitians who reach the United States without being interdicted are put into fast-track removal procedures, during which they are subject to mandatory detention and are not eligible for release on bond. This package of measures is applied only to Haitians.
Successive US administrations since the 1980s have been determined to deter and prevent "mass migration" from Haiti to the United States. They have argued publicly that it represents a threat to national security, public order, and orderly migration. The political liabilities of being seen to tolerate a large irregular movement of poor, black immigrants into a politically important state (Florida) is not lost on decision-makers.
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Haitian refugees have sought refuge in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.
In February 2004, some 130 Haitians arrived by boat in Jamaica, while about 300 sought asylum in the Dominican Republic (which shares a 225-mile land border with Haiti), and approximately 30 arrived in Cuba. The Cuban government prepared to set up camps in the eastern part of the country to accommodate as many as 1,000 refugees. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is helping all three countries to meet their obligations to the refugees.
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2009 Migration Policy Institute.
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