Emigration: the solution to Haiti’s woes?

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, there was an outpouring of humanitarian aid from the world to Haiti. Seizing the opportunity, many open borders supporters pointed out that the program most likely to help Haitians was emigration. Specifically, many people proposed that the United States could help Haitians by allowing them to immigrate to the country, yielding a huge benefit for Haitians at no (or little) cost to the United States.

UPDATE 1: For more on the general idea of emigration as a disaster relief policy, see emigration as disaster relief.

UPDATE 2: A large part of the recorded conversation below can be accessed in systematic form at the Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery initiative page on the Center for Global Development website. In particular, check out Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery: A Case Study on U.S. Policy Options for Post-Earthquake Haiti, a working paper by Royce Bernstein Murray and Sarah Petrin Williamson for the Center for Global Development.

Below is a record of some of the published conversation (articles in newspapers and magazines, blog posts, etc.):

Immediate aftermath

Continued conversation

Prescient calls

Indirectly related

  • No blacks need apply,a hypothetical by Michael Clemens comparing discrimination on grounds of race with discrimination on grounds on national origin.
  • Haiti ICE, a hypothetical by Bryan Caplan.