By G. Dunkel
February 28, 2025
Half of the population of Haiti — 5.4 million workers — don’t get enough to eat every day. According to the United Nations World Food Program, 2 million Haitians — the Internally Displaced People (IDP) driven from their homes by political violence — are facing extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition and high levels of disease.
Haitians in Florida defend TPS rights, 2021.
An estimated 6,000 IDP are so destitute that they are dying from starvation and acute malnutrition.
The response from the United States and other capitalist countries with interests in the Caribbean has been to spend billions of dollars on repression and military “peacekeepers.” Over the past 15 years they have put their puppets in power to keep the lid on the Haitian people’s stubborn demand for democracy. The U.N. “peacekeepers” managed to bring cholera to Haiti — twice. After the U.N. admitted the deed, it declined to pay for Haitians’ medical care.
Over the past 15 years, about 3.5 million Haitians emigrated to escape political violence, crime, disease, poverty and rampaging inflation. In 2019 alone, 1,585,681 Haitians — 14.08% of the country’s total population — emigrated from Haiti.
The United States is the most popular destination for emigrating Haitians, with the U.S. Census Bureau estimating that about 825,000 live in the U.S. From January 2021 to December 2022, over 120,000 Haitian migrants arrived at the U.S. border.
Reduced Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a temporary immigration status granted by the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to citizens of a foreign country due to conditions there. On Feb. 20, 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reversed a Biden administration decision, ending all TPS status for Haitians on Aug. 3. This reduces the period of extension and redesignation of TPS for Haitians from 18 months to 12 months, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
After the major 2010 earthquake, which left over 300,000 Haitians dead and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, there was a flood of refugees and asylum seekers into the U.S. They were granted TPS status as a humane gesture, the first Haitians to get it.
After a few more hurricanes and another earthquake there were 520,000 Haitians with TPS status living and working in the U.S. according to Ira Kurzban, an immigration lawyer. Speaking on CBS Miami on Feb. 21, Kurzban claimed, “Trump wants to take legal status from Haitians living here legally, so he can meet his deportation goals.”
Deporting 520,000 Haitians back to a country on the edge of collapse, a country where every last ounce of effort of workers and every last resource are seized and exploited by some of the cruelest capitalists known, will be a psychological, economic and political disaster for those who are deported.
It will also have a huge, devastating effect on the Haitian economy.
According to the World Bank, 23% of Haiti’s gross domestic product comes from remittances, that is, money sent to people living in Haiti from people living abroad. The Haitian Central Bank has figures showing that 75% to 80% of the remittances Haiti gets come from the U.S.
These remittances will stop when the people who send them are deported from their jobs.
Haiti’s economy can’t survive such a devastating loss.
