The massive and sudden arrival of Haitians to the border of Mexico with the United States is the end point of a long journey that began in Haiti, continued in Chile and has ended in the Rio Grande. Thousands of Haitians have been held in a camp under the bridge that links Texas and the State of Coahuila. The Joe Biden Administration has already begun the deportation of the nearly 15,000 people who managed to cross and who will be returned to other countries or will end up in Ciudad Acuña, the Mexican city that serves as a retaining wall. The humanitarian crisis is combined with a diplomatic pulse that keeps the future of thousands of Haitians in limbo who began many months, or years, their exodus to the north.
The most recent trigger was the departure from Chile where the Haitian community represents 12.5% and is in third place after the Venezuelan (30.7%) and Peruvians (16.3%). According to information from the Jesuit Migrant Service (SJM), the number of Haitians leaving Chile exceeds the number entering both in 2019, 2020 and in the first four months of 2021. It is a trend that had not been registered since 2010, when a decade marked by the arrival of Haitians to the South American country began, despite the distance, language and climate barriers.
Many of them arrived in Chile with their wife and children in the middle of the migration wave of 2016, when Haitians could enter as tourists without a visa and then regularize their situation if they found work. At that time, political stability and growth above the regional average made Chile a paradise in a convulsed Latin America and a Haiti still destroyed by the 2010 earthquake. The phenomenon is also partly explained by the installation of Chilean troops in Haiti. in previous years. Between 2004 and 2017, some 12,000 Chilean military personnel were part of the United Nations' so-called Haiti Stabilization Mission. The link between the uniformed officers and the local population paved the long road from Haiti to Chile.
If in 2010 988 Haitians arrived through authorized steps, in 2017 110,166 entered. In the midst of this migratory process, the second government of Sebastián Piñera in his first months in power issued a decree in April 2018 imposing on Haitian immigrants the obligation to apply for a tourist visa to enter Chile. It would allow them to stay 30 days, but without working, and without the option to change it later for a work visa. The purpose of the measure was to stop the arrival of false tourists, which slowed down the official arrival of Haitians to Chilean lands.
But these administrative measures that pushed was a "more precarious and vulnerable" type of migration, according to the SJM yearbook. “Only between January 2018 and January 2021 there are more than 35,400 entries per unauthorized passage, concentrating 79% of these records since 2010. It is also Venezuelans and Haitians who increased irregular income the most, the first by 134,622% in 3 years (January 2018-January 2021) and the latter by 8.975% in the same period. Also Venezuelans and Haitians were the ones who, according to data provided by the Investigative Police, had more victims of illicit trafficking in 2020, constituting 42% and 29% of the total registered victims respectively, ”the investigation says.
As Haitians are leaving Chile through the unauthorized steps they use to enter, there are no complete figures on the exodus, although the reasons why they prefer to leave the country are known. "Due to the social outbreak of 2019 and the pandemic, the difficulties of insertion of Haitian citizens in the labor market and of generating remittances made them decide to leave Chile and seek new opportunities in North America," Álvaro Bellolio explained to television, director of the National Service of Migrants, of the Chilean Government. The reasons for the exodus are multidimensional. “The people who decided to migrate to Chile in the last 10 years and who came from Haiti have not all managed to have a process of reception and inclusion in Chilean society,” Carlos Figueroa explained to EL PAÍS in August,SJM researcher. He pointed to discrimination, the difficulties in getting a decent job - they get jobs that are generally precarious compared to other nationalities - and the complexities of regularizing their papers. The Chilean government, for example, asks for a criminal record document that is especially difficult for Haitians to obtain. For Figueroa, Trump's departure from the White House has boosted Haitian migration to the United States, with the expectation that the barriers will be lifted.he asks for a criminal record document that is especially difficult for Haitians to obtain. For Figueroa, Trump's departure from the White House has boosted Haitian migration to the United States, with the expectation that the barriers will be lifted.he asks for a criminal record document that is especially difficult for Haitians to obtain. For Figueroa, Trump's departure from the White House has boosted Haitian migration to the United States, with the expectation that the barriers will be lifted.
Racial discrimination appears as a central issue when seeking explanations for the exodus of Haitians. “What can a black Haitian with wool hair expect in Chile, if there is racism among you Chileans?” Asked William Pierre, spokesman for the Haitian community in Chile, in an interview with a local television channel. The spokesperson referred to the discrimination observed in Chile towards indigenous Mapuche surnames, in a strongly racist and classist society. According to the 2020 Migration Perception Barometer, which analyzed nearly 1.5 million messages on Twitter, it identified that 14% reflect discrimination against migrants in general. "The Haitian community stands out as a victim of a mixture of classism and racism on the part above all of radicalized groups on the right",ensures the report.
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