Hello, do you want to know why we have these Haitian immigrants in the first place?

We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to stem the tide of ridiculous misinformation about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. So much time, in fact, that we haven’t even spent much time discussing why there are so many Haitian immigrants in Springfield in the first place. Which isn’t entirely surprising. When we talk about immigration, we rarely discuss in any realistic, accurate way why immigrants come here — and we certainly don’t discuss the role that We could have played a role in that storyline.

We already know they’re legal here. We know they’re in Springfield specifically because businesses in Springfield didn’t have enough employees and wanted them to move there. We know that’s led to an economic revitalization of the city, as well as some problems that have nothing to do with someone eating other people’s pets. Even Republican Governor Mike DeWine has taken to the pages of the New York Times to shout it from the rooftops.

When we talk about Haitian immigrants, we should especially talk about the fact that many of the current problems in Haiti stem directly from centuries of US imperialism and interventionism.

Haiti was the first established black republic, kicking out the French after a successful slave revolt in 1805. Good for them! Right? Well, yeah, but that also meant that no country (including us) would trade or do business with them in any way, both because of racism and because they (and we) didn’t want their (and our) own slaves getting ideas about things. Of course, this led to some pretty serious poverty issues!

Once Haiti was free and independent, the French thought, ‘Okay, we’re fine with not owning you anymore, but that means you owe us something.’ us reparations, because now we can no longer make money off of you and your country’s natural resources!” and forced the small nation to pay them the equivalent of about 560 million US dollars today. Because they were a small, poor country whose natural resources were simultaneously being plundered by the United States, they didn’t pay it in full until 1947.

Oh! And they couldn’t be free and independent all that time! Fearing the possibility of German influence in Haiti, Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Marines to invade the island in 1915. The United States then occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, during which time they did all the usual things: enslave people, rule by martial law, set up puppet governments, kill anyone who resisted, transfer their national bank to Citibank, bring U.S. sugar companies into the Dominican Republic (which we occupied from 1916 to 1924), work Haitians there for very low wages, and create and train the Gendarmerie (security service). At least 15,000 Haitians were killed in combat during the U.S. occupation, while 5,500 died in labor camps.

After the occupation, a series of heads of state followed, and in 1957 they elected Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Duvalier, as you probably know, was a deeply corrupt, brutal dictator best known for using his secret police—the Tonton Macoute, rumored to have been trained by the U.S. Marines—against his political enemies. The U.S. went back and forth with him; Kennedy was not fond of the whole “totalitarian dictator” thing and offered some support to the opposition, but he was ultimately embraced by the American leadership as a necessary “bulwark against communism.” The same was true of the regime of his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, until he was finally overthrown in 1986.

Then in 2003, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president since Duvalier, made the mistake of suggesting that France might have to foot the bill. them $21,685,135,571.48 in restitution (an amount that the New York Times was actually estimated at the lower range of what the real cost of the damage to the Haitian economy was as a result of the payments), which France was absolutely unwilling to do. Aristide also wanted to raise the minimum wage for workers who made American clothing and increase spending on education and health care, which the United States Real I didn’t like it.

So when a right-wing paramilitary group decided they should be in charge, Aristide was mysteriously whisked away on a plane by U.S. troops under President George W. Bush; the U.S. troops conveniently helped him sign a document announcing his resignation. Aristide describes this as being kidnapped and then given the choice of signing or being shot, all of which the U.S. has denied.

The situation wasn’t great before the coup, but it has gotten significantly worse since then. It got worse after the earthquakes that devastated the country, killing between 85,000 and 316,000 people (depending on who you ask) in 2010, and the cholera outbreak caused by UN workers who responded to the earthquake, killing around 100,000 people. 10,000 people …and then even worse.

Via Responsible statesmanship:

Haiti’s last election was in 2016, and parliament has not held a vote since 2019. There has been no president since July 2021, when then-President Jovenel Moise, who had remained in office for five months past the end of his term, was assassinated. Haiti is led by a de facto prime minister, Ariel Henry, who chosen not by Haitians but by the Core Group, a group of predominantly white countries led by the United States. Henry’s government is unconstitutional and represents widespread Haitian oppositionBut with the United States keep him uprightHenry has been able to serve a longer term than any Prime Minister in the last 40 years. (…)

Meanwhile, Haitians are facing unbearable conditions. Gangs control much of the country, including an estimated 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The economy has seen three years of zero growth and inflation of over 15%. Children are facing unprecedented levels of waste hungerTo save themselves and their families from this nightmare, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have made the desperate journey out of Haiti, often ending up at the US border.

I also want to emphasize here that the gangs in Haiti are not so much what we think of when we think of gangs, but they are largely made up of former military and police officers, Often associated with the country’s leadership.

We are not the only ones to blame for the situation in Haiti, but we are responsible for a large part of it. We have pursued our own interests in the country without regard to what happened to those who actually lived there, and that is not something that goes without consequences.

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There’s a pattern here! A very, terribly clear pattern. A powerful, wealthy nation or group of people brutally occupies/exploits a poorer nation/group of people and then, when things go wrong somehow, declares that all of that nation’s/group’s problems are due to the fact that they are intrinsically evil.

This is perhaps best illustrated by a historical situation that I have in mind. In the 19th century, after the unification of Italy, the south of Italy (which had always been agricultural and poor) had been devastated by war and was now even poorer than before. There was a lot of crime, both out of necessity and revolt. And the father of criminology (and an incredible racist) Cesare Lombroso, looked down and thought to himself, “Gosh! What could be causing all this criminality? Is it poverty? Are they just crushed in a war? Is it lack of opportunity? NO. It’s the shape of their heads. They all have criminal head shapes in the south. It’s so obvious!”

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s a refrain that never ends. It’s the pipeline from occupy/exploit/brutalize to “there’s just something intrinsically wrong with them” to “and therefore everything we’ve done or are doing is justified.” This time it’s not criminal headlines, but “They’re going to eat your cats! Because they’re the kind of people who eat cats! They’re evil and we’re justified in our hatred!”

We have flirted with virtually every country in Latin America. We have deposed their leaders when we didn’t like them and replaced them with dictators who would be friendly to us. We have trained death squads to keep them in line. We have used them as cheap (or free) labor. We have depleted their natural resources. It should come as no surprise that they are now coming here to escape. The real lesson here is that treating people decently and kindly is its own reward, and oppression, discrimination, and cruelty will never, ever produce a positive, consequence-free outcome for either party.

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