Sugar is not the only industry that exploits Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic, but it offers a unique lens through which to understand racism and xenophobia.

People who hope to escape Haiti’s cholera outbreak and life-threatening insecurity cannot wait for a more welcome climate to emerge in the United States.

“Haitian people are living in what may be easily compared to hell,” Jean Denis Saint Félix, S.J., says. “No electricity, no running water, no transportation because there is no fuel. Unhealthy conditions everywhere.”

A coalition of 20 religious orders has sent an open letter to the U.N. requesting direct intervention against violent gangs in Haiti.

Catholicism was the established religion of colonial Haiti, the site of one of the largest populations of enslaved peoples in the Americas.

“Haitians have been making their way north, trying to find a safer, more prosperous place” to work and live.