42 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020
MADRID, SPAIN, BY ANA GALVAÑa number of Haitian patients at Jack-
son Memorial Hospital, in Miami. In
October, 2010, nine months after a mag-
nitude-7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-
Prince and the surrounding areas, Nep-
alese U.N. peacekeepers stationed in
the north of Haiti released raw sew-
age from their base into one of Haiti’s
most used rivers, causing a cholera ep-
idemic that killed ten thousand people
and infected close to a million. As of
this writing, Haiti has had only fifteen
confirmed cases of COVID-19, but, fear-
ing that the disease could ravage the
country and its fragile health infra-
structure, Haiti’s President, Jovenel
Moïse, declared a state of emergency,
imposed curfews, and closed schools
and airports.
During the weeks before Haiti
had any COVID-19 cases, friends and
family members there would text and
WhatsApp-message me and others to
tell us to watch out for the disease. It
was a reversal of sorts, in which our
fragility now seemed greater than
theirs. They’d had more experience
with day-to-day disruptions, includ-
ing months-long lockdowns due to
political protests. This, too, will pass,
one poetic cousin, a fellow sunset lover,
kept writing, increasingly concerned
about me as the death numbers rose
in Florida. “I hope you and your hus-
band and your children will live a long
life. I hope when you finally die at a
very old age, they’ll say you had eaten
a lot of salt.”
“Or had seen a lot of sunsets,” I
replied.
When I first moved to Miami’s
Little Haiti neighborhood, in 2002, I
would often hear my neighbors say,
“Whenever Haiti sneezes, Miami
catches a cold.” That is, whatever was
happening in Haiti could have ripple
effects in Miami homes, workplaces,
schools, barbershops, and churches.
The reverse is also true. Already, hun-
dreds of Miami Haitians, like many
other Caribbean and Latin-American
immigrants who work in the tourism,
hospitality, and service industries here,
have lost their jobs owing to COVID-19.
Not only will they have trouble pro-
viding for themselves; they will also
be unable to send money back home
to those who count on them to sur-vive. And Miami is home to a large
number of Haitian-American medi-
cal personnel, who could become ill as
the pandemic spreads.
The ripple effect of lost wages, and,
even worse, lost lives, in immigrant
communities will gravely affect the
economies of our neighboring coun-
tries, according to Marleine Bastien,
the executive director of Family Ac-
tion Network Movement, a commu-
nity organization that works with low-
income families. Bastien and her staff
were forced to temporarily close their
offices, but their mostly elderly clients
kept showing up to ask for help. She
has been trying to work out a system
for her center’s case managers, mental-
health professionals, and paralegals
to provide services by phone or on
WhatsApp. “Poor immigrant commu-
nities already have a great deal of need,”
she says. “This crisis will only multiply
the need.”
Complicating matters is the Trump
Administration’s recent Public Charge
rule, which can lead to green cards being
denied to people seeking and receiving
public benefits. Cheryl Little, the ex-GUANGZHOU, CHINA, BY JUN CEN