The Trump administration is moving to ban Haitian immigrants from applying for seasonal and farm work visas in the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday night, just days after the president reportedly used a vulgar slur to describe the country last week. The department said it will remove Haiti, as well as Belize and Samoa, from its list of countries whose citizens can receive H-2A and H-2B visas, which are typically granted to seasonal workers in agriculture and other industries. The announcement read: “The Secretary of Homeland Security has determined … with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, that the following countries should no longer be designated as eligible countries because they are not meeting the standards set out in the regulation: Belize, Haiti, and Samoa.”

It cited Belize was listed as “Tier 3” in the Department of State’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report and the country did “not fully meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards and is not making significant efforts to do so,” while Haitians displayed “high levels of fraud and abuse,” and “a high rate of overstaying the terms” of their visas. Two hundred and seventy-six H-2B visas, for seasonal workers, were issued to citizens of Belize in the 2016 fiscal year, but the Central American country has been blocked from the program amid concerns that it does not meet U.S. standards to protect victims of trafficking, DHS said. The change also comes just a week after Trump reportedly questioned why the U.S. would want to have immigrants from “shithole” countries like Haiti and African nations in an Oval Office meeting, and two months after the administration decided to end Temporary Protected Status for the close to 60,000 Haitians who are legally living in the U.S. since the country’s 2010 earthquake.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security discontinues the eligibility of citizens of Belize, Haiti, and Samoa to obtain H-2A and H-2B visas for temporary work.