Blog 8: Haitian Immigrants seek refuge in Brazil

Haitians have had a long history of immigrating out of Haiti, mostly to their neighbor country the Dominican Republic. This has long since created hostility between the two ethnicities, mostly caused by Dominicans toward the immigrating Haitians. But ever since the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, the patterns of migration have altered drastically with Haitians flooding the DR borders and tensions rising within the Dominican Republic. The DR government has now even gone as far as to withhold citizenship to any child born of Haitian parents. With these new conditions of violence and prejudice, migrating Haitians are seeking out refuge where they can, one country in particular being Brazil. While the opportunities are much better for these migrants heading for Brazil, there is still the problem of getting into Brazil. The country has denied most immigrants immediate entrance to the country and has them camped in border towns for the time being. As for work, the Brazilian government is only allowing 100 work visas to be given out at a time. So these immigrants or refugees as one might go as far to call them, are being kept outside of the country of Brazil and given hardly any aid but that of the local people’s charity. Conditions are improving with the arrival of Doctors Without Borders, but they are still well below any acceptable standard.

And now there are already reports of ethnic tension between the Haitian immigrants and Brazilians. With differences in language and a strong racial awareness in Brazil, it could only be foreseen that hate crimes would spring up sooner or later. The Dominican excuse for the resentment of Haitians was something that developed out of a population crisis, while the Brazilian resentment seems to be originating from an old world class structures and culture clash.