Megyn Kelly’s Comments About Haitians Miss the Real Story

Megyn Kelly’s latest comments about Haitians with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are another reminder that education does not necessarily come with wisdom, empathy, or class.

Like too many American politicians and media personalities, she has found that attacking Haitians is an easy way to generate headlines, outrage, and applause from certain audiences. Haitians have become convenient political targets rather than human beings whose stories deserve to be understood.

Before telling Haitians to “go back to Haiti,” perhaps Ms. Kelly should first understand why so many Haitians were forced to leave their homeland in the first place.

We are not going to rehearse Haiti’s extraordinary contributions to humanity here. Its revolution made it the first Black republic in the world, ended slavery in the colony of Saint-Domingue, and helped redefine the global meaning of freedom at a time when slavery still existed in the United States. History has already recorded those achievements.

What deserves attention today is the long history of foreign intervention that has weakened Haiti and helped create the conditions driving migration.

The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. During that period, U.S. Marines controlled Haiti’s customs houses and finances, and American officials helped draft the 1918 constitution, which removed restrictions on foreign land ownership. During the Cold War, successive U.S. administrations often tolerated or backed François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and later Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier because they were seen as anti-communist allies, even as human rights organizations and journalists documented severe repression, including the violence of the Tonton Macoutes. In other words, Washington frequently prioritized strategic interests over Haitian democracy.

Over the years, Haiti also became the subject of economic policies designed far from its shores.

Trade liberalization and structural adjustment programs encouraged by international financial institutions and supported by U.S. policy opened Haiti’s markets to heavily subsidized foreign products. After Haiti cut its rice tariff from 50 percent to 3 percent in 1995, U.S. rice exports to Haiti rose from roughly 7,000 metric tons in 1985 to more than 200,000 metric tons by 2000, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data cited in reporting on Haiti. Many Haitian rice farmers and other small producers could not compete with those imports, and rural livelihoods were badly damaged. The effects were not caused by trade policy alone, but trade policy clearly played a major role.

Former President Bill Clinton later acknowledged that those policies hurt Haitian agriculture. In 2010, he apologized for supporting trade measures that undermined Haitian rice farmers and said he had “failed” them.

Political instability only deepened the crisis.

Haitians repeatedly tried to choose their own leaders through democratic elections, only to see governments overthrown, elections challenged, or political outcomes heavily influenced by foreign governments and international actors. The 1991 coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the 2004 removal of Aristide, and later election disputes all left many Haitians with the sense that decisions about their country’s future were being made outside Haiti as much as inside it.

Today, Haiti suffers from gang violence, institutional collapse, political paralysis, and a humanitarian catastrophe. Illegal weapons continue to reach criminal organizations; investigations by Haitian and international media, as well as U.S. authorities, have found that many of those guns are trafficked from the United States, often through South Florida, while others cross the border with the Dominican Republic. International efforts to stop the flow of weapons have been limited and uneven. Ordinary Haitians are trapped between armed gangs, poverty, and a severely weakened state.

So when Haitians arrive in the United States seeking Temporary Protected Status, they are not coming because they have abandoned their country.

They come because their country has been pushed into crisis by decades of dictatorship, economic exploitation, failed international policies, foreign intervention by the United States and other outside actors (European Union, Canada) and domestic corruption. They come because they want to survive.

Every Haitian I know, myself included, dreams of returning home, not to chaos, but to a Haiti that is safe, prosperous, and governed by leaders freely chosen by its own people. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in Haiti’s first broadly democratic presidential election in 1990, and many Haitians still regard that moment as the last clear expression of popular choice, even though later elections were deeply contested. Michel Martely, Jovenel Moises, Jocelerm Privert, to name a few.

Ms. Kelly, Haitians do not need lectures about going home.

We want to go home.

But going home requires a country that offers security, opportunity, and self-determination.

If Americans truly believe in freedom and democracy, then they should support the Haitian people’s right to determine their own future without constant outside interference. We do not want foreign diplomats to dictate Haiti’s leadership through social media or back-channel pressure. Our President/Prime Minister should not have been imposed by a tweet from the US Ambassador in Haiti.

Until that day comes, Haitians will continue to seek safety wherever they can, not because they want to replace anyone or take anything from anyone, but because every parent wants to protect their children and every human being deserves the chance to live with dignity.

The real conversation should not be about telling Haitians to leave America. It should be about confronting the reasons they were forced to leave Haiti in the first place.

Stop blaming the people who fled the crisis. Start addressing the policies, violence, corruption, and neglect that created it. If you want Haitians to go home, then help make Haiti a place where home is possible again.

That is the only call to action that matters.

Ms. Kelly, we are aware that your home is better than ours, and that is exactly the reason why we come. Until you help us addressing the real issues that made us flee our home, will continue to come to yours, eat at your table, sleep next to you, and compete for your job.

Carlo Aluc, MCJ

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