Multimedia

The vast majority of people who care for children, the elderly and disabled in wealthy places like the United States come from developing countries. It's work that some say falls into the "3-D" category (dirty, difficult and demeaning). Immigrants who do these jobs are typically paid poorly and offered few basic workplace protections. It's a trend that's also creating care gaps in the families and societies these workers leave behind. We look at both ends of what’s known as the “global care chain.”

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.