More than 400,000 Haitians have entered the U.S. in the past two years

Over the past 24 months, with little fanfare, more than 423,000 Haitian nationals are known to have entered the United States. The island nation has a population of around 11 million, so this most recent migration to America represents nearly four percent of their population, or about 1 in every 25 Haitian nationals.

These and other figures are recorded at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) located at Syracuse (NY) University.

More than half of that number entered under a program known as humanitarian parole. For at least 10 years, the program was little used, and then mostly for the admission of citizens from neighboring countries (Canada, Cuba, and Mexico).

In 2022, with the outbreak of the war, large numbers of Ukrainians were admitted under parole. Then, beginning in 2023, Haitians were allowed in under parole, with the island nation representing one-third of those paroled in during this year.

Most of the remaining Haitians entered the U.S. under the “notice to appear” process, where migrants must eventually report to “immigration court” and argue against deportation.

Nationwide, the backlog of immigration court cases stands at over 3,700,000 as of last month. Haitians comprise almost 182,000 cases, and rank 8th among nationalities represented (Mexico is at #1).

Not surprisingly, the Miami office of the immigration court has a large share of the Haitian case backlog, with more than 58,000, second only to Cuban cases in that jurisdiction.

The Illinois office has more than 14,000 Haitian cases pending. The smaller Massachusetts office has even more, with almost 16,000 cases backlogged.

But the much smaller Pennsylvania office has more than 8,000 Haitian cases (3rd most nationality) and the Ohio office has a backlog of over 6,600 Haitian cases (2nd most nationality).

The Minnesota office, located at Ft. Snelling, lists only 323 Haitian cases among its total backlog of more than 42,000 cases.

At the end of June, the Biden Administration extended “temporary protected status” to an even larger group of Haitian migrants. NBC reported at the time,

Friday’s announcement would shield an additional 309,000 Haitians living in the U.S. from deportation, according to DHS. Immigration advocates estimate that this would bring the total of Haitians in the U.S. with protected status to roughly 500,000.