Migration

In the 1991 Canadian census, nearly 44,000 individuals described themselves as being of Haitian origin. Of these, 22,885 said Haitian was their only ethnic origin, and 21,095 said it was one of their ethnic origins. Contrary to a deeply rooted belief, Haitians, like blacks from other parts of the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, did come to Canada before the 1950s and 1960s. Slavery was practised in Canada from roughly 1697 until it was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, and during this period at least five Haitians, “involuntary immigrants” from Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was called in the colonial era), arrived in Canada. There is clear evidence of the presence of three of them – two in Quebec (1728 and 1729) and one in Montreal (1778). At least two other immigrants from Port-au-Prince became residents of Canada in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, one in Montreal in 1816 and the other in Quebec City in 1820. It is not yet known whether these early Haitian immigrants left any descendants in Canada.

In the last eighty years, three fairly distinct waves of emigration from Haiti can be identified. The first period, roughly 1910 to 1950, was characterized by large-scale migration for work purposes. This movement accelerated during the American occupation, especially after large amounts of good land were expropriated in the Port-au-Prince area and the east and south of the country, primarily to facilitate the penetration of American capital in agriculture. These emigrants from the countryside went largely to Cuba (about 75,000 in 1920 and 350,000 in 1931) and the Dominican Republic (almost 30,000 in 1920 alone). Some of these temporary migrants later settled permanently in these two neighbouring countries.

Between 1950 and 1970 there were two major migratory flows. One consisted of artisans and skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers, including domestics, who emigrated to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Curaçao, Aruba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Around 1970, the number of Haitians in the Bahamas was between 20,000 and 25,000, while in Martinique and Guadeloupe there were at least 5,000. At the same time, almost 200,000 Haitians emigrated to the United States, where they concentrated in New York. Some also went to Rio de Janeiro and Bahia in Brazil, to Paris and Marseille in France, and even to Rome.

It was in the third period, after 1970, that Haitian migration to Canada expanded in scope. There were large influxes in 1976, 1980–81, and 1991, with lesser flows in between. Between 1960 and 1975 the number of Haitians in Canada increased thirty-sevenfold, from 395 to 14,490, with a further 150 percent increase bringing the total to 35,938 in 1992. There are minor differences in these figures depending on whether nationality, country of birth, or country of last permanent residence is measured. A look at comparable figures for Quebec and Canada shows that between 1976 and 1992 a consistent proportion of Haitian immigrants, roughly 94 percent, have settled in Quebec.

Haitians who came to Canada between 1975 and 1990 are different in some respects from those who came between 1963 and 1975. In the earlier period, Haitians arrived primarily as independent immigrants (71.5 percent), while more recent immigrants have had a greater tendency to be in the “sponsored” and “designated” categories. In the years 1986 to 1991, an average of 85 percent of Haitian immigrants were admitted under the rubric of family reunification. Between 1968 and 1975, 79 percent were between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. While the average age has tended to increase because of the sponsorship system, the Haitian immigrant population remains young. There has also been a greater proportion of women among more recent immigrants. Among immigrants over the age of fifty arriving between 1986 and 1990, roughly 70 percent were women, although there was a greater proportion of men in the twenty-five-to-forty age range. A large majority of both women (95 percent) and men arriving between 1986 and 1992 settled in Montreal. Among the women, 85 percent were accompanied by other members of their families, 12 percent were independent immigrants, 2 percent were assisted by relatives already in Canada, and 1 percent (a total of fifty-nine) were political refugees. In terms of marital status, 48 percent of the women were married, 45 percent were single, 5 percent were widows, and 2 percent were divorced or separated.

People migrate from one country to another for many reasons, which often combine and interrelate with one another and can vary by social class and by sex. People have left Haiti primarily for economic reasons, followed by political, family, occupational, and other motives. Socio-economic factors begin with starvation-level incomes that on average are the lowest in Latin America. The average annual income in 1978 was $240, and in rural areas it was only $55. In addition, housing, health, and nutritional conditions are scandalous; infant malnutrition has grown dramatically, from 21 percent in 1958 to 69 percent in 1977 and 87 percent in 1980; and there is a very high rate of illiteracy.

Political motives, often inseparable from economic ones, have operated most strongly in the exodus of professionals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: journalists, teachers, intellectuals, activists, small shopkeepers. Some of the political circumstances that led people to emigrate were deliberately caused by the government, while others were the unintended consequences of a combination of government measures. In the first category, the Duvalier regime responded favourably in the early 1960s to requests from newly independent African countries, such as Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda, for the services of large numbers of Haitian teachers. While the regime phrased its response in terms of “pan-African solidarity” and “Negritude,” it “invited” those teachers whose political aims it feared to go “serve the land of our ancestors.” Such an invitation was sometimes accompanied by a cheque and a passport with no return visa.

In the second category, there was a general climate of insecurity in Haiti from about 1960 on as a result of the actions of Duvalier’s personal security force, the Tontons-Macoutes, which included increasingly open forms of extortion. The climate worsened after a law was promulgated in 1969 under which any person considered a “Communist” would be put to death or exiled, even if that person was a practising Catholic. The judgment that a person was a Communist would be made by the police, with no appeal and often with no preceding inquiry.

In Haitian history, exile has rarely been a purely individual initiative. Urban and rural workers, especially women, have cited family reasons as their motive for emigration. Still others have left to pursue education or upgrading; while these departures are often temporary, they generally lead to permanent settlement abroad. Finally, a few Haitians have left to visit friends.

Many Haitians in Canada have entertained the notion that they would some day return to live in Haiti. Events in Haiti have sometimes given this notion a strong impetus. Thus, when the government of Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown in 1986, doctors, activists, civil servants, storekeepers, and labourers living in Canada went back to Haiti. However, their return resulted in disappointment: political repression continued, and they faced hostility from many Haitian professionals and politicians who were worried about the “threat” that these “foreign Haitians” represented for them. Large numbers of the returnees trickled back to Canada. When Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in 1991, support for returning to live in Haiti – 60 percent – was strongest among low-income workers and retired people, perhaps reflecting the frustration of their efforts to succeed economically in Canada. Among professionals, 20 percent expressed a desire to return, while others, more cautious, would remain in Canada, prepared to return to Haiti if circumstances warranted.