Increasing Numbers of Haitians Head to the U.S. by Sea
New front in the border crisis
By Andrew R. Arthur on December 6, 2021
In a July 15 post, I postulated that turmoil in Haiti and Cuba could spur a new boatlift of migrants from the Caribbean to the United States. Recent news reports reveal that the number of Haitian migrants fleeing the country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic between Cuba and Puerto Rico, by boat has been on the uptick of late. That news has largely been lost following the end of a fiscal year in which more than 45,000 Haitians were apprehended at the Southwest border.
On November 20, the Washington Post reported that more than 1,500 Haitian nationals were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in FY 2021, three times as many as in FY 2020, and the largest number in five years.
Unlike most of the Haitian migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico land border — who are largely leaving South American countries where they were firmly resettled — those migrants were coming directly from Haiti, seeking to escape poverty, violence, and the unsettled political situation there.
Many are setting sail on overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels. The Post article focused on a group of 50 migrants who had set out from the Haitian coastal town of Jérémie in September in what the paper described as a “battered wooden boat” that began to take on water at sea.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Increasing-Numbers-Haitians-Head-US-Sea
