By Kira Olsen-Medina and Jeanne Batalova

The United States is the top global destination for Haitian migrants, although significant migration is relatively recent. The first major Haitian arrivals had escaped during the brutal, three-decade-long Duvalier father-son dictatorship, the collapse of which in 1986 led to political and economic chaos in Haiti. Beyond political instability, endemic poverty and a series of natural disasters, including a devastating 2010 earthquake, have prompted generations of Haitians to move to the United States, elsewhere in the Caribbean, and other countries throughout the Americas.

Haitian immigrants account for less than 2 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population, though their numbers increased by 17 percent from 2010 (587,000) to 2018 (687,000). After the 2010 earthquake, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and displaced more than 1.5 million people, the U.S. government extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to certain Haitians already in the United States, providing temporary work authorization and relief from deportation. More than 55,000 Haitian immigrants have been granted TPS.

Most Haitian immigrants living in the United States arrived before the earthquake, establishing robust communities in Florida and New York, where more than two-thirds live. The Haitian immigrant population has more than tripled in size from 1990 to 2018 (see Figure 1). In 2018, Haitians were the fourth-largest foreign-born group from the Caribbean in the United States, after immigrants from Cuba (1,344,000), the Dominican Republic (1,178,000), and Jamaica (733,000).

Source: Migration Information Source