Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
areas of the United States, most live in only four states. According
to the 1990 census, nearly three-fourths of immigrant Haitians
and Haitian-Americans lived in New York and Florida and
most of the rest in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The vast
majority immigrated to the United States after 1970, and the
largest number entered between 1980 and 1986. In the 1980s,
the primary United States destination shifted away from New
York to Florida; during this period immigrants were more commonly
single, female, and less well-educated compared to earlier
immigrants.
Since the early 1970s, thousands of Haitians have sought to
emigrate to the United States in small boats and without documentation.
Between 1972 and 1981, the United States Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) reported more than
55,000 Haitian "boat people" arriving in Florida. The INS estimated
that up to 50 percent of the arrivals escaped detection.
About 85 percent of "boat people" from this period settled in
Miami.
Small-craft departures from Haiti continued throughout the
1980s and early 1990s but declined after 1992. In September
1981, the United States entered into an agreement with Haiti
to interdict Haitian boats and return prospective immigrants to
Haiti. Between 1981 and 1992, some 54,000 Haitians were
picked up at sea under the interdiction program. During the
first eight months of the Raoul Cedras military regime (1991-
94), some 34,000 Haitians were interdicted at sea. Thousands
made application for refugee status and were held at the
United States military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, pending
resolution of their status. This period also saw an immense rate
of internal displacement within Haiti as a result of army repression
and the extended political crisis.
Haiti has a longstanding history of temporary and seasonal
migration of workers to neighboring countries. Between 1915
and 1929, an estimated 220,000 Haitians migrated to Cuba and
thousands more to the Dominican Republic for seasonal
employment in sugarcane fields. In the late 1950s and 1960s,
the government of Francois Duvalier recruited 30,000 Haitian
canecutters annually for the Dominican sugar harvest. The
Dominican Republic continues to be an important destination
for temporary and permanent Haitian migrants. Much of this
migration is undocumented. In the late 1990s, an estimated
800,000 Haitians and Dominico-Haitians resided in the Dominican
Republic. Americas Watch and other observers report that
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