Last week’s announcement that Kenya has agreed, with U.N. and U.S. support, to deploy a military force to Haiti has once again stirred debate about the wisdom and effectiveness of such interventions. Haiti’s current situation is devastating, with violence paralyzing life in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other parts of the country. But many worry, with reason, that another outside intervention may do little to help, and may even worsen the situation. Friends and colleagues inside and outside Haiti have expressed to me a clear sense of anguish that there simply seems to be no clear way forward.
An external military intervention seems to many the only way to confront the armed groups that currently control much of the country, carrying out kidnappings and killings with impunity. But in the long term, the most effective approach might be not to intervene in Haiti, but to change one of the key ways the U.S. can influence the situation there: through our immigration policies.
The most effective approach might be not to intervene in Haiti, but to change one of the key ways the U.S. can influence the situation.
Haiti has seen multiple military interventions in the past, the latest of them the large-scale United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, that lasted from 2004 to 2017 and included a much larger deployment than the current one. There are strong differences of opinion about whether this intervention improved or worsened the situation, with some saying that MINUSTAH stabilized security in ways that can be replicated, and others who see it as an oppressive military occupation, noting that troops brought a deadly cholera epidemic. What is clear is that it did not ultimately enable long-term institutional and structural change — and may have actually undermined the possibility for such change. It is difficult to see how the new mission, while it may succeed in the short term, could follow a different course.
There is, perhaps, simply a fundamental contradiction in expecting an external intervention by foreign forces to shore up a country’s democratic institutions. This is even more clear in a Haitian context, because of the historical relationship between the state and broader society. Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot argued that the Haitian state has always been in conflict with the population. Jean Casimir, a one-time Haitian ambassador to the U.S., sees this as a fundamental conflict between two different political and economic visions. Haiti was founded by overthrowing French colonial rule in 1804. But, he argues, the Haitian state actually maintained a largely colonial relationship to the population, fixated on rebuilding a plantation system to produce goods for export. The mass of Haitians who had freed themselves from slavery through revolution were not at all interested in this project. In the face of a relatively weak Haitian state, they were able to successfully build what Casimir calls the “counter-plantation” system that sought autonomy and freedom through the ownership of land and an economy responsive to the population’s own needs.
This fracture between the Haitian state and its population has defined the country’s political life. In the 19th century, different regions functioned with relative autonomy and could often stay out of the constant struggles for control of the central government. It was a time of relative prosperity, with a successful coffee industry and population growth. But in the 20th century, the Haitian state became more centralized and more powerful, notably during the U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934. The U.S. developed a stronger Haitian military to fight armed resistance to the occupation and helped to create a new political class that included François Duvalier, who would become dictator in the 1950s with U.S. support as a regional counterpoint to Cuba. The core conflict between state and nation only deepened. Important attempts to transform the Haitian state through a new constitution written after the overthrow of Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude, in 1986 and through the election of the popular priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 were unable to truly transform this tension.
It’s in this context that subsequent external interventions have taken place, first through a U.S. invasion in 1994 to return Aristide to power after a military coup, and then through MINUSTAH and post-earthquake aid. Though these interventions intended to stabilize the country and create the conditions for democracy and economic development, they had the paradoxical effect of both shoring up an ineffective Haitian state and weakening that state’s ability to represent Haitian sovereignty or the Haitian people.
What other options remain? We need to first accept that the current situation in Haiti has been co-produced by many different actors both inside and outside the country. There is much that needs to change within Haiti, of course, but also much that needs to change outside of it. Given how powerful an influence the U.S. continues to be, an honest and lucid re-examination of its role is vital. This means rethinking our approach to the Haitian state, our humanitarian aid and support for interventions past and present, and importantly a careful examination of our immigration policy. In fact, it is the last of these that might be the best lever to improve the situation long-term in a way that is not haunted by our past interventions.
Haitians have been treated particularly harshly by U.S. immigration policy for decades. The Migrant Interdiction Program, created in 1981, was the first major program globally to stop migrants at sea, who were interned in what was then just a U.S. military base: Guantanamo Bay. Notorious detention camps in Florida held many other Haitians. Haitians were rarely given refugee status, despite fleeing a brutal dictatorship. A slightly more open policy followed the earthquake in 2010, and the Biden administration has attempted to open some pathways for Haitians and refugees from a few other countries. What is needed, however, is a broader and more holistic rethinking of how immigration can serve as a form of economic support and political change. What is needed, however, is a broader and more holistic rethinking of how immigration can serve as a form of economic support and political change. A more open immigration policy would give Haitians access to work, safety and educational opportunities that are largely closed off to them at home. The best and most efficient form of foreign aid already comes through money sent home by migrants, which goes directly to Haitian families and communities. And while many might assume that most Haitian migrants are hoping to leave for good, in fact many would choose to make money here but return home to invest and spend that money if they had freedom of movement between their country and the U.S. It is the lack of opportunities that feeds the recruitment of young people into armed groups and keeps people literally hostage to the situation in the country. The ability to move and seek out opportunities would bring resources back to the country in various ways. And the resources spent on policing the waters between Haiti and the U.S. could be turned instead to the urgent task of stopping the flow of weapons and ammunition into the country. Instead of preventing Haitian people from leaving, the U.S. could commit to preventing the arrival of the weapons that are used to terrorize them. Given the urgency of the problems in Haiti, it may feel counterintuitive to focus on domestic, long-term choices and policies that feel internal to the U.S. And this approach, which has its own potential problems, faces major obstacles in our current political environment. But the intensely difficult situation in which the Haitian people live today demands the political courage and imagination not to repeat the mistakes of the past. It calls for us to craft solutions that have some chance of truly transforming the relationship between our two countries, and consequently the situation in Haiti itself.
Laurent Dubois
Laurent Dubois is the academic director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia and the author of Avengers of the New World and Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. 
