A flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami takes 3 hours. A flight to Paris takes 9 hours — three times as far. Haiti's closest economic neighbors, job markets, and diaspora communities are all English-speaking.
Let's be historically honest: French is Haiti's language not because it serves Haiti's interests, but because France was Haiti's colonial master. The Haitian Revolution of 1804 — one of the most extraordinary acts of human liberation in history — broke the political chains of colonialism. But the linguistic inheritance was never fully interrogated.
For most Haitian citizens, French is not even a native language. Haitian Creole is what Haitians actually speak. French serves largely as an elite administrative language, creating a two-tier society where those who received formal French education have access to power — and those who did not are structurally excluded.
Economic research consistently shows that countries sharing a language trade 44% more with each other than those that do not. Haiti's primary export market is the United States. Haiti's primary source of remittances is the US and Canada. In every economic relationship that matters most, English is the operative language — and French is essentially irrelevant.
Over 700,000 Haitian-Americans live in the United States. They work in medicine, law, engineering, business, and education — and most are bilingual in Creole and English.
These professionals are an extraordinary, underutilized resource for Haiti. They can teach. They can mentor. They can invest. They can hire. But a Haiti that does not speak English cannot fully connect with them — and every year that connection grows weaker as the second generation grows more English-dominant.
See the Diaspora Teaching Plan →None of this is anti-French sentiment. France has complex, painful, real historical ties with Haiti — including the infamous indemnity debt Haiti was forced to pay for over a century. That history deserves reckoning. But history should not determine strategy.