Haitian Immigrants in the United States

In recent decades, the United States has experienced a significant increase in the number of immigrants from Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. While just 5,000 Haitians lived in the United States in 1960, migrants from Haiti began arriving in larger numbers following the collapse of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in the late 1980s. Beyond political instability, endemic poverty and natural disasters, including a devastating 2010 earthquake, have propelled migration to the United States, often by boat. In 2015, there were 676,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States, up from 587,000 in 2010; Haitians account for less than 2 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population.

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