Four meters high, 70 watchtowers and 41 access points over 164 kilometers. It is the border fence project that the President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, says will end irregular migration and smuggling from Haiti to his country.
News of flimsy boats full of Haitians trying to reach the Bahamas or the United States by sea keeps arriving in newsrooms, long after years of direct flights between Port-au-Prince and Santiago de Chile transported entire families from the north to the extreme south of the planet, in an unusual migratory movement.
Haiti is the poorest country in America. 60% of its population lives below the poverty line. According to the World Bank, the unemployment rate in the country is 15.5%, although everyone assumes it is much higher.
Criminal gangs have taken over the neighborhoods, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in a very strange incident and the country, mired in protests against rising prices and unable to recover from earthquakes, hurricanes and cholera epidemics , is far from offering prospects to its eleven million inhabitants. . In this context, many have turned to the south of the world in search of an illusion.
They say it is because of the good image left by the Chilean battalion, which between 2004 and 2017 was part of the United Nations peace operation in Haiti. Its soldiers build a school, carry out various solidarity actions, patrol in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien.
Others believe that it is due to the good economic situation of the South American country, which caused a first wave which managed to settle and generated a ripple effect.
In any case, of the 50 Haitians in Chile in 2002, there were 185,865 in 2019. And today, they are the third migrant population in Chile, after Venezuelans and Peruvians, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
A twist and two explanations
However, after the pandemic, the scenario changed. Records show more Haitians departing than arriving in the years 2020 and 2021, and hundreds of them embarked on a journey to the United States, a journey not without dangers. What happened?
“There are different reasons, explains Djimy Delice, sociologist and head of the migrant office in Valparaíso, Chile. “There is the pandemic, which affected those who had informal jobs. Immigrants often do not have an identity card and are therefore invisible, do not receive state aid and have lived very badly during the confinements. The other is the discriminatory treatment shown by the government of former President Sebastián Piñera,” he explains.
The same opinion is held by William Pierre, representative of the Haitians in Chile, who maintains that his compatriots “leave Chile because they have suffered inhuman treatment”. And he puts forward a figure: “Other foreigners receive visas in 30 days. For Haitians, it can take up to three years.”
“In America, there are three countries that have good economies: Canada, the United States and Chile. So if they leave Chile, the Haitians do not go to Brazil or Mexico, they go to the United States, and to do this they cross nine countries, passing through the most dangerous. But we say like that: a thousand times we die walking, but we don’t die on our knees in humiliating jobs, ”adds Pierre.
Delice completes: “You have to look at the fact that there are people who are desperate, in addition to the broken promise of globalization, which facilitates the circulation of capital, but not of people. Selection processes are applied that push people to make these trips” and often resort to hiding.
Avoiding mistreatment in their path is a challenge that the authorities have tried to overcome. Joel Hernández, OAS rapporteur on the rights of migrants, considers it necessary to seek a “regional, comprehensive and coordinated response, based on the capacities of States committed to the protection of human rights and the creation mechanisms that also tackle the structural causes of migratory movements. The situation of people on the move in Haiti should not be assumed only as the search for better opportunities, but as a complex challenge for the entire region”.
Joel Hernández, OAS rapporteur on the rights of migrants.
For Hernández, Haitian migration “is facing one of the most critical moments, and it particularly affects people in transit, exposed to the borders of several countries in the region, where they do not always find answers to the guarantee of their rights. , and where organized crime operates by profiting from human pain”.
no return plans
Hernández points out that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights adopted resolution 2/21, which aims to encourage access to services, programs and protocols, in addition to facilitating remittances and simplifying migration bureaucracy, especially in the Haitian case.
“We cannot forget that Haiti suffered an earthquake in 2010, hurricanes in 2016 and 2020, as well as a second major earthquake in 2021. The impact of these socio-environmental disasters already involves a challenge coordination and requires regional solidarity; on top of that there are structural and human rights factors,” he says.
Likewise, he points out that migrating is a right based on the freedom of individuals and that it does not always have a negative effect on the countries of origin. “In the Haitian case, for example, remittances are an important support mechanism,” he argues.
William Pierre, spokesperson for the Haitian community in Chile.
In 2019, remittances accounted for 38.5% of Haiti’s GDP. This amount decreased in 2020 and 2021, in part because a significant portion of Haitian migration who lived in the Dominican Republic returned to their country as a result of the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic.
But, in general, “the Haitians have no intention of returning,” confirms Pierre. And he relates it to security problems, an economy that does not grow and a political class that he considers corrupt. However, he does not lose, or does not want to lose, hope. “One day we will restore public order and security in Haiti, tourism will return and we will grow again,” he said.
“It is important that our societies consider migrants as subjects of rights, and for this it is necessary to raise awareness on the continent, making it visible that migrants are women, girls, adolescents, mothers, fathers who seek better living conditions, more dignified, are fighting for their rights,” says Hernández.
“There is a collective imagination that determines who is a migrant and who is a foreigner,” asks Delice. “The migrant is a suspect body”, he adds, but asks to reflect on the importance that work has for him: “Haitians who migrate seek to earn a living, because they are the hope of the families poorest who remain in Haiti. “.
(rml)
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