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After the 2010 Haitian earthquake flattened Port-au-Prince, the United States responded with an outpouring of money, food, and medicine for Haiti. But a more effective form of assistance -- the powerful tool of migration and labor mobility -- was at first overlooked in relief and recovery efforts.

CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens led a two-year research and policy engagement effort that reached a milestone in January when the U.S. government added Haiti to the list of more than 50 countries eligible for temporary worker visas, the H-2 visa program.  Michael calculated at the time that if just 2,000 Haitians worked as H-2 workers in the United States each year (just 2% of total H-2s) over the course of 10 years they would earn $400 million in additional, new income for Haitian families—an amount equal to the entire U.S. post-earthquake budget for reconstruction in Haiti.

When a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti last year the U.S. government and public moved quickly to aid the survivors. The response was swift and compassionate. But America did not do something simple and low-cost that could have helped the survivors of this horrible event. It did not crack open the door and admit a small number of them to the United States.



On this week’s Wonkcast, I’m joined by senior fellow Michael Clemens to discuss why US immigration policy should be part of the United States’ official humanitarian response to natural disasters. Michael, who leads CGD’s work on migration and development, recently commissioned a working paper to figure out what if anything can be done to open a channel for limited numbers of disaster refugees to enter the United States.