Not a long polemic today, just a question. How can 11,000 Haitians travel more than a thousand miles by sea, enter a country illegally and make it several hundred miles to the Texas border? This is the kind of question that goes unasked in these situations. What are the real forces in play?
An article in the WSJ Sep 18/19 weekend edition reported that
“Haitians have been migrating to the U.S. in increasing numbers in the past few years. Many of them, migration experts say, left the island nation years ago for jobs in South American countries like Chile and Brazil. They have headed to the U.S. border during the Covid-19 pandemic—which caused economies in those countries to contract—and because of a perception that the Biden administration would be likelier to let them stay once they cross.”
So many or perhaps most of the Haitians are traveling up to Mexico from Chile and Brazil and not directly by sea from Haiti. If there’s no work for them in South America and a belief that President Biden will let them stay in the US if they cross the border illegally, then who can blame them for making the long trip.
“the Biden administration plans to begin sending the Haitians [massed under the bridge] in Del Rio on flights back to Haiti under a Trump-era pandemic health measure known as Title 42, which gives the government the authority to turn back to Mexico any migrant caught crossing the border illegally, regardless of their country of origin.”
I guess there’s at least one Trump-era measure that the Biden administration has taken a liking to.
They have been flying in, mainly to Brazil, and then proceeding by land. I understand that a lot of them are also coming from West Africa.