The Haitian immigration crisis is because of America. Now, Joe Biden is sending immigrants to Guantanamo Bay
While Republicans and some Democrats complain about an 'open border', Joe Biden has deported more people without trial than Donald Trump did
Haiti is a country that should be a model for developing countries. Modern-day Haiti was founded in the early 1800s when slaves, brought to Haiti to work the sugar plantations, revolted against their colonial owners, and, inspired by the French revolution, set up their own country. This was the single most successful slave revolt in history.
However, Western nations, France and the United States in particular, weren’t willing to let them settle and live their lives as they wish, as we will soon go over in detail.
To understand why we are seeing the scenes we are at the border with Haitian refugees, we need to do a full and comprehensive look at the history of the nation of Haiti, and American involvement there.
The United States first attempted to undermine the free and independent Haitian nation right from the beginning, when President Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner hailing from Virginia, refused to recognise the country, in the fear that it could encourage American slaves to also launch an upheaval of their owner class.
That finally ended under President Lincoln in 1862. It took until there was a President who firmly believed in freeing slaves until a seperate, independent nation who was built on slavery was recognized by the American government.
This 58 year wait to recognize Haiti stopped that nation from reaping any rewards of trade with America, which harmed their ability to develop a well-functioning economy. At this point, the United States had already done considerable damage to the nation of Haiti.
But, things got worse in the 1910s, when the American government, led by President Woodrow Wilson, decided to invade.
The main reason that they decided that invasion was the best policy is because Germany was the biggest holder of small island nation’s debt, and they were fast competing with America to be the biggest trading partner.
This threatened American businesses. As a result, in 1914 these businesses decided to destabilize Haiti as quickly as they could in an effort to convince the Wilson administration to invade. Fortunately for them, the administration was ignorant of Haiti, and thus relied on these same businesses for all their information. Off the back of this, they decided to invade, purely out of greed, in what was an early example of corporate money leading to an American invasion.
Then, when Vilbrun Guillaume Sam took power in Haiti, he executed 167 political prisoners, including his predecessor, partly on behalf of American corporations, which then lead to a massive, almost spontaneous nationwide protest, which ended Sam’s short reign when he was assassinated. As a result of these protests, President Wilson decided to invade.
Over the 19 years and 4 days that America controlled everything the Haitian government did, they installed 3 seperate Presidents. They forced the first one to sign a treaty that meant that 40% of Haitian government income needed to go to repaying their debts to American and French banks, which significantly decreased the quality of life for the majority of Haitians. The government of the small island nation had so much of their income taken off them that they found it difficult to find public employees to do necessary work. Then, future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, rewrote the Haitian constitution, explicitly doing away with the rule implemented by the independent government that foreigners couldn’t own land, further helping American interests.
In the 1920s, the American-led government implemented forced labour to finish infrastructure projects, which is a direct human rights abuse. There was also mass torture, part of which would involve hanging Haitian rebels by their genitals.
The government also decided to implement Jim Crow laws, where they wouldn’t allow American marines, most of whom were from the South, mingle with Haitian elites.
They also opted to execute thousands of rebels and civilians alike, with some truly horrifying methods used, including death by burning. They also raped countless civilians.
Eventually, after all this damage had been done to Haiti, the Americans, led by the man who had first written the God-awful Constitution that harms Haitians to this day, withdrew by mutual consent.
Things took another turn for the worse in the 1950s, when François Duvalier, or Papa Doc as he’s commonly known as, became an autocratic dictator. However, he was massively supported and propped up by the American government.
Now, if the United States was as supportive of Democracy and human rights as they claim to be, they would not be supporting Papa Doc in any way, shape or form. He was one of the most repressive leaders in the entire world, and yet he was the recipient of significant economic aid. However, he had one saving grace in the eyes of the American government: he was fiercely anti-Communist, and this was the height of the Cold War. They became allies.
Eventually, Papa Doc died, to be replaced by his son, Baby Doc. Baby Doc wasn’t even remotely dissimilar to his father, and was similarly propped by the American government, before the Reagan administration eventually ended supporting the dictatorship, about 30 years too late.
In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became the first democratically elected leader of Haiti, winning over 67% of the vote. He was a massively popular leader. The people of his nation, for the most part, liked him.
However, the next year there was a coup, and he lost power. His army overpowered him. However, it wasn’t just the Haitian military. It was also the George H. W. Bush administration, who pressured the military into doing the coup and then cancelling the subsequent scheduled election. Many high ranking members of the Haitian National Intelligence Service, an organization set up by the CIA as part of the drug war, were heavily involved in the coup.
After the coup, Emmanuel Constant became the leader of a hit squad aimed at killing allies of Aristide. Constant also happened to be a paid CIA informant.
However, he returned in the mid-90s, before getting re-elected by an even bigger margin, this time getting about 92% of the vote despite being the opposition, with the turnout being between 50 and 60%. He was massively popular.
However, that didn’t stop another coup in 2004, this time being led by George W Bush, America’s own little Baby Doc.
After rebel forces attempted to take control of the nation, the United States, Canada and France collaborated to fly Aristide out of the country. However, he tells a very different tale. He tells us that he was kidnapped and taken to South Africa. He believes that he never resigned or was taken out by rebel forces, and that it was the Western nations who took him against his will out of the country. His wife said that the kidnappers wore US military uniforms, but changed into civilian clothing when boarding the aircraft that took Aristide out of his country.
In 2004, the Haiti Commission of Inquiry, which was led by former American attorney-general Ramsey Clark, published their findings. The elected leader of Haiti was in Jamaica, much to his chagrin. They also found that 200 American military personnel had gone to the Dominican Republic for “military exercises” not even a year before. The commission accused the Bush administration of arming and training the rebels that overthrew Aristide there. With permission from the Dominican leader, US forces trained near the border, attacking Haitian state property.
In Aristide’s time in charge, life became significantly better for Haitians, although in the years in between his two reigns and after he was taken out the second time, they nosedived.
Under the GWB administration, there were also destructive sanctions placed on Haiti, because that’s what the United States does when a Left-wing government in their near sphere borders on potential success.
President Obama also got in on the act, of course. His state department, led by one Hillary Clinton, worked with several American corporations to stop a Haitian minimum wage hike from $3 a day to $5 a day, just so that they could save a little bit of money, taking it away from the poorest in society. These are sweatshops that the Obama administration could’ve improved, but he refused to.
There was also the crazy, successful assassination plot of the US-backed Haitian President earlier this year, where a Haitian-born Florida-based Doctor (he calls himself a Doctor but it is unclear as to whether he has a medical license), hired a bunch of Columbian ex-military personnel to assassinate the President and get himself installed. Now, it is unclear how this would work in any way, but that was the gist of the plan. We went into it in more detail in some parts of this article in July (on the old newsletter).
Of course, they have had their own share of disastrous leaders whose irresponsible actions have harmed their nation, but we have to fully detail the American involvement here if we are to truly understand why we need to care about Haitians attempting to move to America.
It isn’t just politics that is forcing people to move. Over the last decade or so, there have been a series of natural disasters that have killed thousands and misplaced hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more, from earthquakes to hurricanes/cyclones. Many of the current refugees are moving because of the recent 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August, that killed 2207 and injured over 12000, with 344 people still missing. It also collapsed several houses and buildings, destroying livelihoods.
Covid-19 has also taken a hold in Haiti over the last few months, as the delta variant surges and there are almost no vaccines in the nation. Not even a half of 1% of the nation have had a single shot.
To be honest, Haiti as a nation is in a disaster situation, and it’s no wonder that people are moving by the thousands to a country that is close and safer, even if that country destroyed the one they call home.
Because of this, it is absolutely no wonder that so many tens of thousands of people are desperately trying to leave their homeland. Leaving behind everything that you’ve ever known and loved is not something that people ordinarily out of do wilfully, especially when they have no promise of moving successfully, but it is something that these Haitians have been forced to do because of the state of their home nation.
The United States also have a moral obligation, in my opinion, to help out the people who are moving from Haiti, because of the history of the United States intervening in the island nation to their own benefit, to the cost of the people of that nation.
However, it appears that the Biden administration disagrees with this summation of the events, as, despite the obvious problems that have come about as a result of American policy, they are still refusing to let the vast majority of the thousands of immigrants get into the United States permanently.
In a single week, they deported over 2000 people from a single Texan camp, showing that they have no care for the needs of immigrants.
It’s worse than it first appears. These people are being moved on without even a trial, so we don’t know if they are a genuine refugee, which the vast majority of them, of course, are.
Biden is allowed to do this under Title 42, which, in an emergency, allowed President Trump to expel immigrants without trial over covid fears. Biden is doing it for the same reason.
This is massively unconstitutional. Article 6 of the Constitution grants every individual the right to a fair trial. That right is not being granted to Haitian refugees. That is Joe Biden effectively destroying the court system, just like his predecessor did.
In the 8 and a half months of the Biden Presidency, 690,000+ immigrants have been expelled using title 42. 690,000. Meanwhile, at the Southern border, we are still seeing kids in cages. Humane immigration policies was one of the reasons that Democrats used in their attempts to say that getting Trump out of office was imperative and we need to vote for their candidate to stop the 45th President’s awful immigration policies. But Joe Biden has not only continued those same policies, but he has ramped them up, making them more prevalent than ever. Biden is more Trumpist than Trump was.
Then, they nearly went even further. They have been attempting to get some contractors to guard immigrants at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. They are attempting to send immigrants to the place we put who we consider the worst terrorists in the world (a great deal of these people are actually innocent, but that’s another story). This is not anywhere near acceptable.
They have denied this, but documents from ICE attempting to hire contractors fluent in Haitian Creole. There would be no other reason for this if they weren’t planning to send innocent Haitian refugees who are only looking for a place to live safely.
Outside of that hideous plan to send immigrants to a prison where they (illegally) torture prisoners of the war on terror, the treatment of these desperate people has been awful at the border itself.
In the image above, an ICE agent is seen on horseback, holding onto a refugee, with a horse rein that could be used as a whip. This is abuse, and it is one of many photos taken exemplifying this kind of awful behaviour.
Now, the Biden administration then took the completely wrong message from this, and banned the use of horses at the border.
This take is bad because the horse wasn’t the problem. The problem was the treatment full stop. I don’t care if a horse was involved. The problem is that a single immigrant was harmed by American agents.
There is one very big potential solution to this problem. Abolish ICE. They are an agency with no purpose but to abuse immigrants. We already have another agency, called Customs and Border Protection, that protects the border. ICE is unnecessary, and there are allegations of them doing literal slavery at prisons. Slavery.
ICE is also the single federal agency that receives negative net polling, with only 42% approving of it while 54% disapprove. They are not anywhere near popular.
If we abolish them, it is highly unlikely that undocumented immigrants will be abused to the same extent. That is the bare minimum.
Of course, there are many Right-wing Democrats and Republicans alike who are criticizing the Biden administration for this from the exact opposite direction.
They complain about an ‘open border policy,’ because 12000 refugees, and I specify that they are refugees, haven’t yet been deported, and are awaiting court dates. In the meantime, they are being provided with housing, food and healthcare.
Now, there is no problem with this. This is people being granted the right to a fair trial, which is a human right, not a privilege. Far from an open border, especially given that, as we have already gone over, over 690,000 immigrants have been illegally deported without trial. So the fact that 12000 people are being granted a trial, and basic needs in the time, is not crazy, it is not bad, it is actually just how the system should work for every person.
That doesn’t stop countless Republicans and a series of Democrats from pushing this bullshit.
One of these people is Tulsi Gabbard, who I by and large supported when she ran for President as a Democrat in 2020, mainly because she was unapologetically anti-war. However, since then she has regressed. In the future, I may do a deep dive of sorts into her magnificent fall from grace. But, for now, just a couple of her tweets about the border situation.
As we have already discussed, this open border policy doesn’t exist. Not only is the border far from open, but it is also massively illegal in its deportations.
Now, to her comment about the main winners from open borders being “gangs, cartels and human traffickers,” there is one other thing that has caused massive victories for these awful groups: the drug war. They have benefited out of the United States destroying countries across Central and South America to the point where they have obtained massive power over those countries. To Tulsi’s credit, she was one of two candidates on the 2020 debate stage who supported decriminalizing drugs, in effect ending the drug war, but she has gone off that message in the last year or so, as she attempts to become well-liked by Right-Wingers.
The other main point made by several conservatives is about covid, where they try to make the point that these immigrants may be bringing the disease into the United States.
Now, there are only 1184 confirmed active cases in Haiti, although admittedly there isn’t enough testing so this number won’t be overly accurate. However, it isn’t rife there. It’s not like the mass spread that there is in America, and it is therefore unlikely that many of these desperate refugees have covid.
Secondly, Lance Gooden has not cared about covid at all over the last 18 months. He opposes wearing masks.
He opposes the soft mandate from Joe Biden vehemently, trying to lay some kind of hypocrisy at his feet because he doesn’t mandate the vaccine for refugees who hadn’t yet been granted access to the United States, mainly because he can’t.
Other people attempting to make the point about vaccinations and covid have similar records of not caring about covid when it suits their narrative.
The truth is that, while I am a very mild supporter of this soft mandate, to call it a mandate at all simply is not accurate. People can get tested at home regularly if they want. That is not a mandate, that is a choice.
The truth is that none of the right wing criticisms are honest or accurate. They are simply points made in a gross attempt to ‘own the libs’, while ignoring the facts. The facts are that Joe Biden is more of a Trumpist on immigration than Trump was. He has deported more people without trial in 8 months than his predecessor did in 4 years, has continued building the wall and is keeping kids in cages at the border, again to a greater extent than Trump did.
Now, I am totally in favour of having a border, as I consider that national sovereignty has some level of importance. I don’t oppose President Trump’s wall, although it does need to be done carefully.
For me, other than abolishing ICE, the main domestic thing needs to be the employment of way more immigration judges, so that we can adjudicate the individual cases of refugees moving to America.
Even if we don’t do that, we need to at least end the use of title 42, which would result in every potential newcomer to the country at least getting their day in court.
The single most important thing, however, is that the United States needs to stop intervening in other countries, as all that those actions create, eventually, is a refugee crisis like what we are seeing in Haiti and like what we recently saw in Afghanistan. Both of those things came as a direct result of American interventionism.
We also need to heavily regulate the fossil fuel industry, almost to the point where they are out of business, so that the worst effects of climate change are not felt. A great deal of the suffering of the Haitian people has come about as a result of hurricanes, which have increased in volume and severity since the effects of climate change began to be more widespreadly felt. And, of course, the fossil fuel industry are the biggest polluters in America, so regulating and taxing them makes sense.
Haiti is a sad example of what has happened as a result of centuries of hateful neglect, and now the powerful are villianising the victims of this as greedy immigrants who just want to move to America to steal jobs. We need to have empathy and compassion, and, unfortunately, that’s something the ruling class don’t have.