January 23, 2018
From the article:
The Trump administration is moving to prohibit people from Haiti — which the president allegedly insulted in a meeting last week — from applying for visas for seasonal and farm workers.
The Department of Homeland Security has given notice it plans to prohibit people from Haiti, as well as Belize and Samoa, ineligible to apply for H-2A and H-2B visas, which are temporary.
...Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Center for Global Development, said the move eliminates the only U.S. work visa that is almost everyone in Haiti can apply to get. The number of Haitians who get the visa is in the hundreds.
Other visas require higher skill levels and education. Most Haitians don't qualify for family sponsored visas and because of the number of Haitians already in the U.S. the diversity visa lottery is not open to them.
Clemens said barring Haitians from the visa will encourage illegal migration to the U.S. and hurt the U.S. economy.
"Haitian farmworkers on the H-2A visa that I have studied in Alabama added $4,000 to the U.S. economy per worker, per month," said Clemens, who is a labor economist.