Former Central Bank governor Jose Lois Malkun says 25,765 people were expelled or deported to Haiti from 1 January to 26 February 2022, according to data compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The United States repatriated 79% of the 25,765 people, or 20,309. The Bahamas, Cuba, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Mexico and other countries returned the rest.
In the same period, the United States sent back about 2,300 children of Haitian-born parents.
From March 2022 to date (seven months), this figure has tripled with more than 60,000 Haitians were deported from Mexico, the United States and other South American countries.
The OIM reports that 45,000 persons were deported to Haiti from Caribbean countries, including the Dominican Republic.
In 2021 and 2022, between Mexico and the United States, 1,497,000 people of various nationalities have been deported, but mostly from Central America and the Caribbean, including Venezuela. More than 6 million Venezuelans have left their country in recent years and most of them arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, where the United States has a quota of 24,000 immigrants per year.
The rest are deported or put in jails in different cities until their deportation.
Those migrating from Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba may be going through the same situation as Haitians in terms of political persecution, danger of death and a lot of hunger.
Malkun points out that Mexico is an economically powerful country, the United States is the most powerful in the world. In his opinion piece, he asks: Why so much criticism in the case of the Dominican Republic when it comes to Haitian deportations when there are more than a million of them residing and working legally and illegally in our country, a land that is represent 0.5% of that of the United States and 2.5% of that of Mexico?
Malkun speculates: “Everything points to an international campaign to twist the country’s arm, so that it welcomes thousands of Haitians in refugee camps and thus take pressure off the United States, Canada, France, the UN and the OAS, which decide nothing and do nothing for Haiti.”
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Listin Diario
24 November 2022