By Sir Ronald Sanders
As global attention fractures across multiple crises, the urgent humanitarian and political emergency gripping Haiti demands continued focus from the Americas, according to Antigua News Room, which published this commentary by Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda's Ambassador to the United States and the OAS.
For many years, the United States has served as the principal destination for Haitians seeking refuge, security, and opportunity. It has done so while managing significant migratory pressure from other regions — pressure that strains border systems, public services, and domestic politics. In that context, it is understandable that the current U.S. administration seeks firmer control over immigration policy.
The Caribbean should acknowledge that reality plainly. It is neither fair nor prudent to speak as though the United States bears an unlimited obligation to absorb the consequences of Haiti's prolonged collapse. Every sovereign state has both the right and the duty to manage migration in an orderly way, with proper regard for its own resources and social stability.
Caribbean governments would also do well to approach this issue with humility. The region's own record does not reflect any broad readiness to receive large numbers of Haitians.
The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has responded to Haitian migration with increasingly restrictive measures over many years. Views may differ on aspects of those policies. But one fact is clear: the country closest to Haiti's daily reality has concluded that its own capacity has limits, and that the pressures arising from Haiti's collapse cannot be absorbed without serious domestic consequences.
Similar caution is evident within CARICOM. Haiti is a valued member of the Community, and sympathy for the suffering of the Haitian people is widespread across the region. But that sympathy has not translated into any broad willingness to open borders to Haitian migration. The smaller states of the Caribbean lack the economic resilience, institutional strength, or social infrastructure to absorb significant inflows from a country as large and as distressed as Haiti.
That is not indifference. It is a recognition of hard facts. In several CARICOM countries, even modest migration inflows place pressure on housing, education, health care, employment, and public order. Caribbean governments understand this acutely, and that understanding should foster greater appreciation for the pressures felt in the United States.
Still, sympathy for the American position cannot settle the matter.
The issue currently before the United States Supreme Court is whether Temporary Protected Status should be ended for large numbers of Haitians while Haiti remains in profound crisis. The question is not about the United States' right to regulate immigration, nor whether TPS was ever intended to be permanent. The real issue is whether Haiti is presently in a condition that allows the safe and dignified return of substantial numbers of people. On any serious assessment of current realities, the answer is no.
Haiti remains trapped in a crisis that is simultaneously political, humanitarian, and criminal. Armed gangs continue to control or contest major areas of the country. Public institutions remain fragile. Large numbers of people have been internally displaced. Daily life is defined by insecurity and fear. The country has not recovered even the minimum stability that would justify confidence in large-scale repatriation.
Nor has the international community simply ignored Haiti. The problem is not a lack of awareness, but the absence of an effective response commensurate with the scale of the crisis.
The United Nations Security Council has acted. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States has produced a roadmap. CARICOM's Eminent Persons Group helped facilitate the arrangements that led to the Transitional Presidential Council. Yet the security presence on the ground remains too small and underfunded. The OAS roadmap has not attracted the mobilisation of resources it requires. The mandate of the Haiti Transitional Presidential Council ended without resolving the major issues it was meant to address, including basic security and a credible path to elections.
Haiti has since drifted back into rule by decree under an unelected administration, amid continuing political discontent and the persistent dominance of armed gangs.
What is required now is not vague appeals to international goodwill, but proper financing and execution of measures already identified: stronger security support, firmer action against the supply of arms to gangs, practical backing for political transition, and economic and humanitarian assistance directed inside Haiti itself. The effort must focus on reducing the causes of flight from Haiti, not merely debating which countries must bear the consequences.
That is the broader context in which the current American legal proceedings should be judged. The United States is entitled to say it has carried a disproportionate share of Haiti's burden, and to seek a more orderly immigration system. But if Haiti remains in no condition to receive substantial numbers of returnees safely, then caution is not weakness. It is sound judgement.
Haiti has not lacked plans, meetings, mandates, or declarations. What it has lacked is decisive and coherent effect. The country resembles an outclassed boxer in the ring, taking blow after blow — bloodied but still upright. From time to time, those at ringside keep him from falling. But no one has yet found a way to stop the beating and restore his strength.
That image, stark though it is, captures the present truth. Haiti is still standing, but standing is not recovery. Survival is not stability. Endurance, however admirable, is not a substitute for effective policy.
This is why the present moment calls for realism. The United States deserves understanding for the burden it has borne. The Caribbean should be candid about its own inability to absorb a larger Haitian exodus. But neither reality alters the essential fact that Haiti is still in no condition to sustain substantial repatriation without risking deeper disorder.
The answer does not lie in moral reproach, nor in expecting small Caribbean states to assume burdens they cannot carry. It lies in recognising that Haiti's recovery must be pursued where it can be most effective: in security, in political legitimacy, in humanitarian relief, and in economic support within Haiti itself.
Until Haiti is made safer, better governed, and more capable of sustaining its own people, prudence demands that protection abroad not be withdrawn before conditions at home justify return.
(Sir Ronald Sanders is the Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States and the OAS, and Chancellor of the University of Guyana. Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com)
