The Cost of Sending Help: How Remittance Taxes Could Destabilize Haiti

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, House Republicans are pushing a 25 percent tax on the money that immigrants send overseas. And Haiti would be hit especially hard. That country is grappling with crises from natural disasters, gang warfare and a full-blown humanitarian emergency. And it relies on remittances from the U.S. especially following the gutting of USAID. Ethar El-Katatney has been covering this issue closely. And she joins Hari Sreenivasan to explain its devastating impact.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Ethar El-Katatney, thanks so much for joining us. You are the Editor-in-chief of a site called Documented that focuses on all kinds of immigration issues in New York City. I guess tell me how the remittance issue – the restrictions – got on your radar and why they’re so important.

ETHAR EL-KATATNEY: Yeah, Thank you so much for having me.

So at Documented, we cover, as you said, immigrants in New York City in several languages. So we write in English, but we also do in Spanish, Chinese and Haitian Creole. Our audience are immigrants, and we look at issues that are important to immigrants. What makes our journalism a little bit different is we actually source our stories and issues that our communities care about from the community, right? So they send us questions on WeChat for the Chinese and WhatsApp for Spanish. And we’re on several platforms for our Caribbean community. So we started getting questions, right, about what this actually might mean for them.

So remittances is a huge inflow of income to so many countries around the world. There’s $900 billion of remittances globally sent. And the United States is actually the biggest sender of remittances worldwide. Nearly, a hundred billion dollars, of those remittances come from the United States. And New York City is actually 10% of that. So these remittances are a huge lifeline for immigrant communities. It’s actually a big source of why people come to the United States, right? They come here in order to make money to send to their families back home. So it came on our radar when the administration announced a new 1% tax on remittances.

SREENIVASAN: Okay. So break that down for us. What, what actually changed and when.

EL-KATATNEY: So remittances are typically not taxed because again, they support global economies. They’re a big source of GDP and they actually are higher than foreign direct investment in many kind of countries. So the U.S. typically does not tax remittances. But immigrants actually pay taxes, right. To send money through, you know, whether it’s Western Union or any kind of similar services.

One important note here is that nearly three quarters of any remittances sent are cash based, which kind of leads you to understand that they’re typically immigrants who don’t usually — sometimes they’re unbanked or most of the times they’re unbanked. So out of the money that’s been sent to take New York City as an example, that $10 billion that’s sent $500 billion was paid just in fees. Right? So an extra 1% tax, even though that seems little, it’s actually nearly a hundred million dollars. Right? So if an immigrant, let’s say, is sending, you know, a hundred dollars to their family or $200, it’s only 10 or $20, but for their countries back home, that’s literally groceries for a week. So a tax that you put on this remittances is severely gonna impact immigrant families.

SREENIVASAN: So, you know, there’s been an a separate developing push to restrict transfer specifically to Haiti. There was a post on March 2nd by the Department of Homeland Security. It said on X American dollars should not be used to subsidize foreign economies, claiming that Haitians were, “taking $6.1 billion from America” and pledging to keep fighting to end this. What was the reaction from the Haitian communities that read your publications and ask you questions?

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah, so like I said, we publish in Haitian Creole, we have kind of a TikTok channel. We get questions a lot. And the kind of sad thing about this is Haiti isn’t even one of the top 10 countries that get remittances. So to give you some context, Mexico got more than $50 billion last year. Haiti only gets between, in the last few years, around three to 5 billion a year. But remittances have increased. So in 2025, there was actually a 20% increase in remittances sent from the United States to Haiti. But that’s primarily because the situation, the humanitarian situation, in Haiti is so difficult.

So to kind of backtrack a little bit, Haiti has been under a series in the last kind of 15 years, crisis after crisis, right? It was hit in 2010 with a huge earthquake that killed 300,000 people, displaced one and a half million people. And that was followed by a cholera outbreak, which actually was traced to UN peacekeepers. They had two huge hurricanes or their president was assassinated a few years ago. So all of that kind of contributes to, out of the 12 million people living in Haiti, nearly half of them are under severe risk of, you know, starvation. They need humanitarian assistance. And of those 6 million, 3.3 million are children. So the situation in Haiti is dire. So remittances are a lifeline. They actually constitute nearly a fifth of the entire country’s GDP, right? And the majority of that, that 70% of those actually come from the United States.

So Haitians in the United States support their families back home from starvation. And we’ve actually heard that from our Haitian members, that it’s not about I’m sending money because, you know, it’s extra. I’m sending money so my family doesn’t starve.

And coupled with the fact that the U.S. administration has cut off USAID right? In January, 2025, there’s no more USAID going to Haiti. They’ve banned Haiti. It’s on the list of countries actually to allowed immigrant visas to United States. This kind of adds to the kind of the layers of the troubles that Haiti is going through. This extra ban to ban remittance is completely not just a 1% tax, but to ban remittances would literally lead to the starvation — and death, I would say — of many, many Haitians.

SREENIVASAN: What is wrong with the argument that says, look, this $6 billion is leaving the U.S. economy, it’s going somewhere else. What are people missing about that?

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah. So the United States typically has never taxed remittances because it allows part of kind of the United States policy to want countries to flourish, right? You want these GDPs of countries to grow, you want economies to grow. And if the administration wants to decrease immigration, right? One of the ways you do that is making sure the people in those countries have less reason to leave, right? So if they are getting remittances, you are then supporting them, allowing those people to stay in their countries because they are getting remittances from their family members back home. That’s one.

Two, they are a significant source, even higher than foreign direct investment. So globally across the world, that $900 billion, it literally lifts up economies, allows people to invest in their, kind of, in their homes, in their families, and to build their countries. So what’s also missing from this argument is that this is immigrants hard-earned money, right? There is often a rhetoric of immigrants, you know, somehow not working for this money, that they aren’t actually deserving of it. But this money that is earned by Haitians, it’s money they make here by working most often legally in services and in industries that we need. They send some of their money back home to support their families, but they also spend significantly here in the United States.

To give you an example of Springfield, Ohio, right, because this comes up a lot in the media of a city that was less than 60,000 people had suffered for five decades without actual growth. And when the influx of just over 10,000 Haitians, it literally lifted up the entire economy, right? They filled jobs that have been, that had spent years in some cases not being filled. They bought homes, they invested their money, they lifted up the entire economy, right? And this goes back to obviously immigration being good for the U.S. economy. So again, these remittances support families, they support countries, and it actually benefits the United States by making sure the people here are contributing their money to both the U.S. economy and in paying taxes.

SREENIVASAN: What are you hearing in terms of the impact that the existing restrictions on the 1% tax and possibly what’s coming down the line? What would that do to a Haitian family in Port-au-Prince if the money did not come from New York or somewhere else in the United States?

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah, so the majority of remittances going to Haiti do actually come from the United States, right? And primarily from those who are here legally. And really what we hear is that remittances that are sent to Haiti stop families from starving, a 1% tax on its own is already devastating enough to immigrants, but a complete ban to a country that is already so decimated by political instability, humanitarian instability, literally half the country needs humanitarian assistance.

What we’ve seen over the last year and a half is what that kind of fear and that perception of what might happen, how that’s actually having immigrants here change their lives. So even though it hasn’t happened yet, you’ve seen people, you know, being afraid of a digital footprint. So even Haitians who might be in a position to have had a bank account, in order to avoid that 1% tax, they’re now thinking, Well, if I know, if I put my information online, I’m afraid somehow ICE will come find me. Right? So you’ve seen people come further underground, you know, they don’t wanna go to the doctor, they don’t wanna send their kids to school, but also they’re not frequenting businesses, right? Like we interview a lot of people in Flatbush, which is kind of, kind of, little Caribbean here in New York City. People aren’t going out to restaurants. So it’s not just that they’re not going to work or they’re afraid they’re actually then businesses down, right? Restaurants are down. The U.S. economy, New York City economy will actually be hurt again, there are between 330 to 350,000 Haitians legally in the United States. Two thirds of them are working. They contribute taxes, they contribute, you know, buying homes. They live here. So it’s not just those people who are impacted, but it’s millions and millions of people in Haiti.

SREENIVASAN: So is there a reason why Haiti specifically seems to have a bullseye on its back from the administration? I mean, I’m thinking back to, you know, the false rumors about them eating cats and dogs in Springfield, and that became part of the sort of political conversation in America. And you’re looking at, you know, also trying to figure out how to change the temporary protected status because members of the administration say, Hey, this was supposed to word — first word is temporary. This earthquake was 15 years ago. We should be sending people back to Haiti.

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah. Well, the situation I would actually say, if not worse, is definitely not better. Like I said, the two earthquakes, two hurricanes, assassination attempts, gangs taking over. That TPS, is a protected status that kind of, a lot of people fall under that. But this administration, you know, in part of the rhetoric around immigrants and the othering that happens, Haiti is an easy target, right? It is an easy country to target for many different kind of demographics. All the way back, as you mentioned from the kind of presidential debate that in order to kind of make, again, some of the rhetoric around, you know, immigrants eat strange foods, you know, they are violent, they take away your jobs. It is countries that fit within that rhetoric. The penalties that have been leveled at Haitians, even though the majority are here legally work and pay taxes, banning them from immigrant visas, cutting off USAID and now wanting to end temporary protected status really does hit a community that, again, contributes in all the ways.

But yeah, it fits within specific immigrant groups are more welcome than others. The Trump administration, for example, just announced that they wanna increase white South Africans refugees You know, the president recently just said he wants to allow 10,000, right, from South Africa to attend here, and specifically white for racial persecution. So that kind of, you know, raises the question of why some groups and not other groups. And Haiti’s contribution to the United States economy has been undeniable. Again, nearly $6 billion contributed to the U.S. economy. They are more likely to be paying taxes — one and a half billion dollars, just in the United States.

SREENIVASAN: So I don’t know if you’ve reached out to the State Department, how do they explain on the one hand, wanting people to self deport, and then on the other hand, having a do not travel warning for Haiti, for anybody else that from America saying, Hey, you know, there’s still gangs that control a lot of Port-au-Prince. It’s not a safe place to go.

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah, it’s very difficult to get comment. And when we do, again, they kind of point to statistics and point to things where kind of in context, yes, it does seem like on some level or some framework that there are numbers that have gone down. But again, to your point, the fact that Haiti is still “Do Not Visit.” It is still, there are reports the U.N. itself kind of talking about, you know, 5,000 killed, how many have been displaced in the last year and a half. The numbers clearly point to a humanitarian situation. Those World Bank numbers that I just quoted on kind of starvation in children that needing help, that the situation in Haiti is still as horrible as it is. And again, sometimes this is just, you know, dogwhistling for a specific audience, but beyond that kind of March announcement – even though nothing has actually happened yet, right, like we could wake up tomorrow and this actually have gone to play – but again, the impact on Haitians that actually leads them to self deport, right? We’ve talked to so many in our community over this last year and a half immigrants from Haiti, other Caribbean countries, and the wider immigrant population where just this kind of looming limbo, right — TPS — that any, at any moment, the back and forth, the seesaw that’s happened in a year and a half has caused so many of them to be like ‘we can’t live like this anymore. We’re just going to leave ourselves.’ there are other impacts of proposed policies that actually do happen, even if that policy doesn’t actually happen.

SREENIVASAN: When we think of remitting money, there’s a lot of sort of nibbles at this, whether it’s the remittance tax that the U.S. has started, or even if you walk up to a Western Union with a hundred dollars bill. A hundred dollar bill is not what’s gonna get to the other side. I mean, Western Union is gonna take a cut as well.

EL-KATATNEY: Yeah. So these are, you know, fees that are paid. And again, one of the reasons why I can, I’m confident in saying that that 1% tax specifically focuses on kind of lower wage, specifically immigrants, is because it’s only on cash remittances, right? It’s only on people who are sending, because they don’t have ability. They don’t have a U.S. bank account, U.S. credit card. So there’s already a significant portion being taken. So that 1%, is actually a hundred million dollars. And the U.S. administration, you know, makes again the argument that this will increase revenue coming into the United States. But the truth is, there have been accountability reports for over a decade from 2016 that very clearly say any tax is — on a remittance tax is so difficult to enforce. People will find different ways of sending money and that the benefits of it far outweigh the costs it would take to enforce.

SREENIVASAN: So what does the Haitian community plan to do? Are there options to try to organize to raise this in Congress? Are there things that are happening on the ground that your audience is telling you?

EL-KATATNEY: So we talked to a lot of organizations, advocacy groups that work with them, and they’d work a lot on education. I think that’s a really crucial thing for a lot of immigrants in New York, they don’t speak the language, right? That’s also why we publish in the languages that immigrants are on, so we can directly connect with them. We’ve seen a huge uptick in the last, you know, just last two months of questions being sent to us. Like, what does this mean? Everything, obviously, again, the administration in the last year and a half has kind of thrown so many of people’s lives into chaos.

We also publish guides, right? That actually help people navigate to understand what this actually means for them, right? But again, the Haitian community, that fear that I mentioned that really has been driving so many people underground, really a lot of what we do is education, informing. But like I said, you have seen people take extreme actions of leaving themselves, of finding someone else to now send them this money, right? Like they’re still wanna send that money. So they often fall prey to scams. Scams have gone up significantly in New York City, not just immigration scams like 25%, but all kinds of, you know, actors, bad actors who are trying to take advantage of this fear and kind of, you know take advantage of them.

And it is unfortunate, you know, that the administration specifically has chosen some of the most hard hit countries, you know, to make them kind of an example of why, you know, the immigration agenda of the administration and deportations. Because these are, again, millions of people’s real lives being impacted that we talk to day by day, who are terrified for their families, terrified for their families, more than they are terrified for themselves, right? So it’s not that they’re fearing, oh, I might have to leave the country or I will have less money. It’s about how will I make sure my elderly parents back home don’t die.

SREENIVASAN: Editor-in-chief of the site Documented, Ethar El-Katatney. Thanks so much for your time.

EL-KATATNEY: Thank you so much for having me.