Young Haitian women dance during the West Indian Parade in New York City.
Credit: Andrew James/iStock.com
By Andres Ayala & Jeanne Batalova, Migration Policy Institute, Sept. 3, 2026
Recent Haitian migration to the United States has been driven by Haiti’s long-term political instability, frequent economic crises, and devastating natural disasters, including a massive earthquake in 2010 that killed an estimated 300,000 and left more than 1 million people homeless.
Amid these reversals, the United States has been a key destination for many Haitians, alongside the Dominican Republic, Chile, Canada, and Brazil. As of 2024, nearly 859,000 Haitian immigrants resided in the United States, up from 587,000 in 2010. Haitians represented 2 percent of the 50.2 million immigrants in the United States as of 2024.
Two-thirds of Haitian immigrants live in either Florida or New York, with just under one-third in the greater Miami area alone. The majority of Haitian immigrants in the United States hold legal status. Compared to immigrants overall, Haitian immigrants in the United States are more likely to:
- be employed in the health-care sector, especially as nursing assistants, home health aides, and personal care aides;
- have obtained a green card through a family-based immigration pathway; and
- have entered the United States since 2010.
The Haitian-origin population has grown significantly in recent years, including amid the power vacuum that followed President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination in 2021. During the Biden administration, more than 213,000 Haitians entered the United States through a humanitarian parole program providing temporary stay and work authorization for Haitians as well as Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.1
Trump administration actions have raised questions about the future for many of these immigrants. The administration ended that parole program shortly after taking office.2 In mid-2026, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, which had provided deportation relief and access to a work permit to approximately 353,000 individuals.3 Since then, former TPS holders who have not secured another legal protection have lost their right to work and been deemed eligible for deportation; the Trump administration expanded deportation flights to Haiti in August. The Haitian community in the United States has also found itself the target of political attacks, and at times has been a stand-in for broader debates about humanitarian and unauthorized immigration.
This Spotlight provides information on the Haitian immigrant population in the United States, detailing its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics. Data in this article come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) unless otherwise indicated.4
Click here to read the entire report
Posted Oct. 18, 2026