The Haitian migrant crisis is just another example of how ill prepared the US is when it comes to climate change and migration, with similar crises likely to occur with greater frequency in the absence of meaningful policy change.
A few weeks ago, the world watched in horror as US Border Patrol agents on horseback attempted to corral and turn back Haitian migrants near Del Rio, Texas. These migrants are some of the thousands who have been pushed to the US southern border from a country that has been through crisis after crisis in recent months: in July, the Haitian president was assassinated, and in August the country was rocked by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 2,200 people.
Indeed, Haiti is considered the most climate-vulnerable nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the far-reaching effects of climate vulnerability, such as diminished crop yields in largely agriculture-dependent societies and resultant poverty, play out in countries around the region, posing an urgent challenge to the US as it emerges from years of blatantly anti-immigrant and anti-science policies.
The Biden administration has made important policy shifts from the Trump era, but experts and activists are calling for bolder and faster change in order to keep pace with rapidly evolving crises and migration dynamics. Even as the government attempts to address the root causes of migration, it largely relies on deterrence, despite overwhelming evidence that such an approach simply does not work. Despite a promising executive order calling for a multi-agency approach to align US policy with the various challenges of climate change, to which Climate Refugees directly responded with this report, the US administration drastically ramped up deportation of Haitian migrants.
While helping migrants choose to stay in place is a valid policy goal - if accompanied by robust solutions and adequate funding, the US cannot ignore the urgent reality that migrants are being forced to flee due to climate change and related issues now. US policy must therefore rapidly and significantly change to ensure that those already on the move are not met with ineffective and inhumane deterrence-based methods, such as the Border Patrol agents on horseback, which prompted outrage and a promise of an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.
Unfortunately, the US record on implementing positive and effective migration policy has so far been quite poor. As Climate Refugees Founder & Executive Director Amali Tower laid out in a recent op-ed, the US has created “and is now perpetuating” a humanitarian crisis by “insisting on implementing short-sighted and ineffectual migration and environmental protection policies.”
If the Biden administration is to make a clean break from this abysmal record, it must prioritize human life over border security, end costly deterrence methods that do not work, and dramatically and quickly expand asylum processing capacity. Border crises will only become more frequent as climate change worsens, and the US has an opportunity to step up to the plate - or continue down a path that fails to protect vulnerable people while also pushing off the problem into the future. (E&E News, CNN, BBC)