The Trump administration has slapped Haiti again.
As of Thursday, Haitian farmers and other laborers seeking to come to the United States as temporary, seasonal workers under the federal H-2A and H-2B guest worker program, will no longer be eligible.
The temporary workers’ visa has for decades allowed hundreds of U.S. farmers, hoteliers and other business owners to hire thousands of foreign seasonal workers.
But citing Haitians’ “extremely high rates of refusal... high levels of fraud and abuse and a high rate of overstaying the terms of their H-2 admission,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Haiti’s inclusion on the lists of eligible countries for 2018 “is no longer in the U.S. interest.” It also announced that the English-speaking Central American country of Belize will be banned, as well as Samoa in the central South Pacific Ocean.
Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.