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Does the U.S. Need and Want Low-Skill Haitian Workers? Yes: Just Look Around
February 21, 2012
Last month, a CGD initiative succeeded in getting Haitians access to America’s largest temporary work visa program. Access to this visa has the potential to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars of new income—at no cost to the United States—for Haitian families still coping with a catastrophic earthquake and the world’s worst cholera epidemic. It is a double win for the U.S., which got access to more energetic young workers to fill very basic jobs, and for struggling Haiti. This small step, says Claire Provost of The Guardian’s Poverty Matters, could open “a fresh development frontier”.
The tired anti-immigrant crowd at the Center for Immigration “Studies” (CIS), of course, spat at the idea of Haitian farmworkers in the U.S.—questioning whether U.S. employers want any Haitians. To understand the atrocious quality of CIS’s evidence-free analysis, it is helpful to know that CIS was founded by white supremacists and its parent organization has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. CIS’s director has stated that Haiti would be better off if it had endured additional years of colonization and enslavement by white Europeans.
Fear salesmen like CIS don’t deserve a minute of your time. There is enormous demand for Haitian workers in U.S. firms and communities. What the U.S. has now, thanks to the visa change, is a lawful way to meet that demand.
In the state of Florida alone, U.S. firms employed about 140,000 Haitian farmworkers last year. That is tremendous demand. For two reasons, that number could easily grow: Last year there was no legal channel to allow Haitians to come to the U.S. to temporarily fill those jobs. Now, as of January 2012, there is. And last year the U.S. economy was limping; it is now starting to regain steam and generate even more jobs. It’s quite realistic to think that U.S. employers will hire a few thousand Haitians. That will directly channel more money to Haitian families than is found in the entire U.S. aid package for post-earthquake reconstruction. Cost to taxpayers: zero. (In fact, temporary foreign workers generate tax revenue.)
How about outside Florida? Do American companies and towns want Haitian workers? The below video report from the BBC takes you to a rural American town far north of Florida, where hundreds of Haitian workers have recently arrived:
Watch this fascinating video clip. Watch the church leaders, community leaders, and passersby in Mount Olive, North Carolina talk with the BBC’s James Fletcher about these Haitians. Few of them had ever seen a Haitian until recently. Now there’s even a Haitian restaurant right on Main Street in little Mount Olive. These good people are busy working out arrangements for mutual prosperity and enrichment, leaving the anti-immigrant folks up in Washington to keep dreaming up hypothetical disasters in their fear-factories.
Thank goodness the law of the land no longer stands in the way of employers in Mount Olive and elsewhere hiring temporary Haitian workers when they can’t find other workers. US firms and farms: Do you want to do good by doing well? When you can’t find other willing workers, hire a Haitian!
Possibly Related Posts
- Two Years after Haiti’s Catastrophe, It’s Time to Complement Aid with the Most Cost-Effective Assistance: Migration
- Why I’m Thrilled the United States Has Stopped Excluding Haitians from Temporary Work Visas
6 Responses to “Does the U.S. Need and Want Low-Skill Haitian Workers? Yes: Just Look Around”
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February 22nd, 2012 at 4:33 pm
As we all know Foreign Policy (which immigration is part of) is very sensitive to domestic politics. With the current fear mongering about current immigration policy’s taking jobs away from hardworking Americans this idea has no chance. Its an interesting prospect but its just not pragmatic.
February 23rd, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Thanks Tom. Fortunately the idea of H-2 workers not only has a chance, it’s already happening en masse. Over 100,000 H-2 workers were demanded and successfully employed by U.S. firms last year, in the depths of economic depression. That number is very likely to rise by tens of thousands as the economy continues to recover. There’s no reason whatsoever why a couple of thousand of those can’t be Haitians. For example, language barriers are not an impediment to basic agricultural employment of Haitians, as the huge number of Haitian agricultural workers currently employed in Florida proves.
February 27th, 2012 at 10:01 am
Such a well-balanced article… not. And what’s worse is that you would make yourself out to be the champion of all Haitians by employing them in US farms, among the lowest paying, most labor-intensive occupations in the US. Such delusion. You might not realize it, but they sure do. The second they set foot on US soil they’ll high-tail it off to some big city to sell fake prada and gucci bags on the street. Real success for Haiti means developing a sustainable industry IN Haiti. Not farming out its “energetic” population to other countries… douche bag.
February 27th, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Hi Chris, it sure is fun to anonymously call people names, isn’t it?
I’m glad you posted, because your offensively stupid comment is a great example of the psychosis that enthralls a lot of folks when they think about migration. The jobs you denigrate as “the lowest paying, most labor-intensive occupations in the US” pay twenty times more than what the same Haitian can hope to earn in Haiti. I understand that you have trouble contemplating that fact, because you’ve never seen and cannot imagine the extreme poverty of living on $1/day, as most Haitians do. Your extreme privilege makes you fit the truly poor into your frame of reference.
You claim to speak for Haitians when you say that the spectacular, life-changing economic opportunities offered by US farm jobs are not good enough for them, but most would find you foolish and wrong. Unlike you, I don’t claim to speak for the Haitian community, I let them speak for themselves: The National Haitian-American Elected Official Network officially endorsed H-2 visa access for Haitians. The Gallup poll has shown that most adults in Haiti would like to emigrate for work abroad; these are almost all low-skill people who would do low-skill work abroad.
When you discover the magic formula that’s going to create “sustainable industry IN HAITI”, do let the rest of us know what that is! I’m sure no one yet attempted your game-changing solution, in the 208 years since Haiti become independent. The world breathlessly awaits your wisdom. Meanwhile, migration is a proven way to dramatically improve the living standards of Haitians while at the same time making Americans better off.
March 14th, 2012 at 3:51 am
Calling the CIS a “hate group” does nothing to refute what they say; that’s only argumentum ad hominem.
It’s not just a matter of economics. When we import another country’s underclass onto our shores, there are externalities involved. Among other things, whether we like to admit it or not, some cultures just aren’t compatible. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to move into a Haitian neighborhood. (I suspect you’ll decline the offer though!) There’s no reason why the US has to be the destination of the world’s hard luck cases.
There are millions of out of work Americans. They will do these jobs, if paid something better than starvation wages. That wouldn’t necessarily make the price of food go up very much, since the great majority of the cost is in middleman activities such as processing and transportation.
March 14th, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Alex: CIS has not been called a hate group by the SPLC. FAIR, from which CIS is a spin-off organization–as I said–has been described as a hate group. The reason I did not address the substance of Mark Krikorian’s opinion that Haiti would be better off if its citizens had been enslaved for a longer period is that this statement is too atrocious to deserve substantive response.
Your statement that Americans will do these jobs is false. Last year, for example, the North Carolina Grower’s Association had 7,000 manual agricultural jobs available. 0.001% of all unemployed North Carolinians were willing to take one of those jobs and complete the growing season. I invite you to consider the facts of that case, described here. The idea that Americans will do these jobs is a fantasy.