In the aftermath of devastating natural disasters in developing countries, the United States and the international community focus on delivering humanitarian aid, often at substantial expense—on average, about $5 billion per year. An additional, complementary, and less expensive way to help would be to allow a limited number of people hit by such disasters seek a better life elsewhere. Expanding international migration for disaster-affected populations is potentially a hugely powerful and very low-cost addition to traditional post-disaster assistance.
In the aftermath of the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, CGD began to explore the ways in which migration policy could augment US disaster recovery assistance in Haiti. Royce Murray and Sarah Williamson published a CGD commissioned paper Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery: A Case Study on U.S. Policy Options for Post-Earthquake Haiti, which explored the possibility of including temporary or permanent migration in response to natural disasters, such as the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Murray and Williamson found that while migration could play a critical role in assisting with disaster recovery in developing countries, the United States had no institutional mechanism to leverage this tool. Using post-quake Haiti as a case study, they showed the dearth of legal channels available to Haitians to enter the United States and identified multiple separate administrative and legislative policy changes that the government could make. These included: allowing Haitians to become eligible for temporary low-skill seasonal work visas (H2-A and H-2B visas); granting family reunification parole to Haitians who have already qualified for family reunification visas, but who continue to wait years for a visa outside of the US; allowing Haitians to participate in the Diversity Visa Lottery; and establishing a new visa or refugee category for people affected by natural disasters. In fact, Murray and Williamson revealed that U.S. law recognized those “uprooted by catastrophic natural calamity” as refugees for 28 years before the Refugee Act of 1980 was written.
Michael Clemens and Tejaswi Velayudhan followed up with a policy brief Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery: US Policy Options in the Case of Haiti based on this working paper, which highlighted four key US policy options in Haiti.
- Allow Haitians to be eligible for H-2A/H-2B low-skill temporary work visas.
- Create a Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program.
- Modify the Diversity Visa Lottery Program.
- Modify the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
Through the process of conducting this research and speaking with key policy makers, CGD decided to focus outreach energy on adding Haiti to the list of H-2A/H-2B eligible countreis.
In a CGD Fact Sheet, Clemens explains the potential economic benefits of the H-2A/H-2B program for Haitians.
If only 1,000–1,500 Haitians had the ability to enter the US through an existing temporary low-skill visa program, over a ten-year period, the result would be $200 million of new income directly to Haitian workers and their families. The large majority of this would be spent in Haiti.
1,000 Haitians on H-2 visas would represent about one percent of the total H-2 visas given annually. Despite these potential gains, until January 2012 Haiti was effectively banned from receiving any H-2 visas. (to learn more about the potential economic benefits of migration for Haiti click here).