The Significance of US Haitian Expatriates for Haiti's Development

And Their Requirements for Participation

By

Tatiana Wah

Rutgers University

Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy

August 2000

The continuing growth of Haitian expatriates in the United States and their transnational activities in their homeland have propelled calls to utilize them in the development of Haiti. The Haitian government itself, in 1991, recognizing that the Haitian expatriate communities help keep Haiti afloat, declared Haitian expatriates its tenth department (state) and in 1994 established a Ministry of the Diaspora. While the Haitian government has addressed Haiti's needs and interests in utilizing expatriates, it has largely ignored those of the expatriates. My talk today will focus on the significance of US Haitian expatriates for Haiti and its future development and their requirements (needs and interests) for their involvement in the development process.

Haitian expatriates conduct a myriad of micro-level and charitable activities in the towns and villages of their origin. These activities span from small public works projects, school canteens and school programs, health clinics, to library construction. Although these activities contribute greatly to social development, they can hardly be said to contribute significantly to the economic growth of the localities they serve. This is primarily because of the lack of appropriate local authority to align expatriates' efforts with the development needs of the localities.

US Haitian expatriates' primary socio-economic relation with and contribution to Haiti is through remittances. Over 90% of Haitian expatriates, at one time or another, remit money back to Haiti, totaling close to $350 million per year. This amount is equivalent to about 15% of Haiti's gross national product. Remittances supplement the Haitian per capita income by $32 and help in its balance of payment and foreign currency problems. It is close to double the total exports of the country. US Haitian expatriates also contribute tremendously to particular sectors, such as tourism, construction, and telecommunications. As expatriates help keep Haiti afloat, they simultaneously do a disservice to themselves. Savings are usually drained in money remittances back to Haiti, which curtails their investment into their own future in the US.

A more elaborate understanding of the significance of Haitian expatriates for Haiti's future development must begin with an analysis of the global and regional context in which the nation historically and currently finds itself and challenges that Haiti faces. Haiti, throughout its history, has been a country in perpetual isolation from its neighbors and the world, and remains so today. In terms of current global and regional positioning, Haiti is rapidly and widely lagging behind the world, Latin America and the Caribbean region, being made worst by Haiti's simultaneous national regression. Prominent writers on globalization report that foreign investors and especially multinational corporations do

not regard Haiti part of the world economy. Haiti's current situation, as viewed by the world and region, gives credence to the headline in the recent New York Times article "Only Haitians can save Haiti." No one seems to want to deal with Haiti's rapid population growth, sharp economic decline, widespread infectious diseases and unsanitary living conditions. Expatriates therefore will have to play a significant role in saving Haiti.

The challenges facing Haiti today are multiple and multi-dimensional, requiring a critical mass of educated people. Hence, the primary significance of Haitian expatriates for Haiti's future development is in their human capital, as their enterprises and source of capital are essentially negligible. About half the Haitian households makes less than $25,547 and the average US Haitian expatriate household income is $32,371. Less than 7% make over $75,000. Moreover, as mentioned before, savings are drained by remittances to help sustain family and friends in Haiti.

A quick comparison between Haiti's human capital situation and what the US Haitian Diaspora possesses in skills highlights this significance. While 93% of US Haitian expatriates over twenty-five years of age have had schooling, only about 40% of Haiti's population of comparable age group have had schooling. Close to 37% of US Haitian expatriates have at least attended college, with 20% of them holding a college or occupational degree, only about 3.5% of Haitian nationals have attended college, with less than I% holding a university degree. In the US alone, Haitian expatriates count close to 30,000 holders of university degrees, which is double the number the entire nation possesses. The number of people holding graduate degrees (masters, professional and doctorates) is 16,702 for US Haitian expatriates and 2,131 for Haiti. Many more Haitian expatriates are graduating from college and graduate schools each year in the US and Canada, while Haiti's university system is continually disintegrating.

This means that Haiti has no choice in the short and medium term but to utilize its skilled expatriates in its development efforts, unless the country wants to largely import foreign skilled workers. For, it will take Haiti 74 years to produce an equal number of university graduates to what already exist in the US Haitian expatriate community. When looking at the industry categories in which Haitian nationals and US Haitian expatriates are employed, the experience/expertise of the latter (for the purpose of development) is incomparable to the former. Over 48% of employed US Haitian, expatriates are in the professional and related service industries, compared to the 10.7% of employed Haitian nationals in the same service industries. Almost 60% of Haitian nationals are employed in agriculture compared to less than 3% of US expatriates involved in US ' agricultural industry. Over 13% of US Haitian, expatriates are employed in manufacturing, using skills that require appropriate level of certification, education or training and experience. US Haitian expatriate communities are a good source for Haiti from which to derive several top managers, many specialty-professionals (especially in health occupations), precision production workers, repairmen, operators and fabricators and administrative support fiinctions. Yet, Haiti continues to lose these types of workers to the US and Canada.

In the complex world of development, pragmatism, resourcefulness, and skills gained by US expatriates are sure to produce the desired economic growth results, but only if they can be transferred effectively to Haiti. US Haitian expatriates can act to strengthen Haiti's capabilities for negotiating and participating in the world economy. In addition, skilled/educated US Haitian expatriates, having obtained productive values through their professional/occupational experiences, can add to the needed quantity and quality of human capital in Haiti. Moreover, they can certainly help fuel growth and development.

However, the significance of Haitian expatriates matters very little for Haiti's development unless an effective expatriate reconnection is actualized. That is, a prime mechanism to regaining and engaging Haitian expatriates would be a reconnection strategy that involves a planned and systematic process through which expatriates become integrated into the socio-economic and political life of their homeland. For an effective expatriate reconnection to be actualized, however, two factors need to be in place. One is a set of mutual benefit conditions and the second is a planning and policy framework for reconnection, which I prefer to call a mutual benefit plan.

The mutual benefit conditions presuppose three requirements: economic and political democratization, an outward-oriented industrialization strategy, and a sense of security within the physicallbuilt environment space. For the pool of economic participants to be enlarged and to include expatriates, private activities in productive enterprises must be promoted, and thus require a hospitable professional and business climate. A developmentalist, nationalist state and private sector must exist to encourage an environment imbued with fair equality of opportunity based on meritocracy. At the very least, the government of Haiti must appeal to skilled expatriates as representing the best interest of its people in general and that of expatriates in particular for the purpose of reconnection. More importantly, the existence of a government and private sector willing to develop the country economically is of utmost importance to engaging skilled and educated expatriates. This means that ground rules of the game for economic participation must be made clear and appropriate sector specific and civil laws must be passed, including that on double nationality.

Concerning the second factor, a set of expatriate plans and policies, deriving from the existence of a national economic and spatial development plan of Haiti, is of utmost importance. The expatriate plan should reveal specifics on how expatriate resources will be allocated to help overcome economic development difficulties. This in turn requires the creation of capable institutions (not symbolic ones) to manage expatriate economic integration, unlike what currently exist in Haiti today. Only by having these structures, can Haiti as well as its skilled/educated expatriates position themselves to market their resources intelligently and gain competitive advantages to create new firms/or grow their existing economic, professional and social bases. "