Sweet Home Alabama | Haitian Money Pit (VICE on HBO: Season 3, Episode 7)

this week on Vice Alabama throws out it's illegal immigration white people are in this area don't want to work and I miss pretending like I see them he wanted to manual labor I view they couldn't and then billions of dollars down the drain in Haiti he'll 2/22 vertebrae macaques on ishida moon I said to Satan on insert Alabama passed one of the most harsh pieces of anti-immigrant legislation in the country and most immigrants left this was supposed to be temporary but very soon it became permanent what illegal immigration is one of the most controversial issues in American politics in the fall of 2014 President Obama signed an executive order protecting millions of undocumented immigrants and deportation which in turn has inflamed the debate are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law his opponents want the executive order overturned and to pass even stricter laws that will make it so difficult for the undocumented that they simply have to return back to the countries that they come from the president's executive amnesty is lawless and unconstitutional as it turns out in 2011 Alabama already tried this passing one of the toughest immigration laws in the nation's history so he sent Thomas Morton to Alabama to see what happens when illegal immigrants are actually forced now and I'll start getting nervous okay Amy Donna what a little wha no the good but look there was like 70 pounds this job sucks which is why it's being done by immigrants some here legally some illegally but all to a person from Central and South America same as the Latinos we let do all the harshest most underpaid labor across this country except in one state Thomas I'm in a in a quasi derelict trailer park in Albertville Alabama so a couple years ago this trailer park was populated exclusively by Latino immigrants then Alabama passed one of the most harsh pieces of anti-immigrant legislation in the country and most immigrants left I think a lot of them left because they said that cops were gonna have the power to pull people over just because they were brown and stuff with that they weren't gonna harbor people anymore so a lot of people got scared the law she's talking about is Alabama House bill 56 which was passed in 2011 after a landslide vote in bamas House and Senate the bill didn't just target illegal immigrants they went after any citizen who helped quote-unquote shield or harbor illegal immigrants it effectively criminalized interacting with illegal immigrants at all and since Latinos made up the overwhelming bulk of the state's immigrant population they felt the overwhelming weight with the laws enforcement HB 56 not only gave police the authority to stop anybody they suspected of being in the country illegally it actually required them to do so while some police departments balked at this enormous expansion their responsibilities others like Albertville took up the new law with full gusto you've been in Albertville whole life how long has there been a Hispanic population here they started in 95 one of the big frustration of people started coming in and then in 2011 when the immigration law they all just burst out of here most of the trailers are empty now God said that big balls in heaven as they are on land and you will obey oh we need some kind of immigration law where he says they are illegal we're going to send you back to your country and that's what Alabama's Congress set out to do Mike ball voted for HB 56 Jesus take congressman from Alabama's 10th district in Huntsville if you have laws yah to enforce them a lot of people in Alabama was seeing this influx of illegal immigrants and they wanted something done about it our unemployment rate had begun to increase drastically and the very people that were needing to work the most were the ones that seem to be getting flooded out by that flux of illegal immigrants the bill wasn't just aimed at securing Alabama jobs clamping down on immigration was also pitched as a matter of state security they don't have allows that to keep them from coming over you get your gang bangers most of our dope our math problems are coming out of Mexico do you think that that ties in with the immigrant population no even after after they passed a lower our drug trade was still wide open yeah it really didn't slow down a whole lot crime wasn't the only area where the bills results fell short of expectations on the farm fields of Alabama the verdict is in the state's tough immigration law just isn't working out this potato farmer hired Americans problem is he says most relate work slower and are ready to head home after lunch aquaculture in Alabama could be headed the way of its immigrant workforce when a lot of these people left we couldn't replace them fast enough typically we couldn't replace them at all dr. Samuel addy is an economist at the University of Alabama as the tide of immigrant labor began rolling out of state dr. addy crunched the numbers to predict the financial effect this exodus could ultimately have given how draconian the law was what you get for Alabama is actually a shrinking of our GDP by about two point three to ten point eight billion in one year there wasn't any one big fact that you can point to cause this decline except for this law immigrants are largely compliments to the economic structure the unskilled labor do jobs that we don't do while the outflux of migrant workers was exactly what the law was supposed to do Alabama's farmers quickly discovered that the work force the law kicked out wasn't fully compatible with the workforce that was supposed to replace it this may make people mad but white people in this area don't want to work kitchen chickens is a back-breaking job right people like grass and complain all the time you can take one Hispanic catching chickens and one white guy Hispanic will catch five times more chickens than he will we have to have the migrants in the farming industry that's not a big no-brainer to figure out this racial ability gap wasn't exclusive to chicken grabbing to replace his own exiled migrants produce farmer Jerry Spencer used Facebook to recruit new field hands from birmingham's jobless poor they came from the soup kitchens they came from the streets they came from the halfway houses they came from all over the place and I turned it into a 30-day experiment what did you see as it as a progressed they couldn't hack it just the sheer physicality of it the Hispanics they'll do a whole truck of tomatoes to 300 boxes of tomatoes in a day themselves I don't know of American non-hispanic that do that Jesse Durer took part in Spencer's tomato experiment he was the only one that lasted the full 30 days in the field though as you may have guessed he did not stick with farming in the end from hey my type of work you don't pay me I got baby brain something I can't tell my wife when I get through the acre that's when we have something to eat let me spend it work like hell when they go at something they go at it as a group whole family ain't bad out there wife's sisters brothers brother-in-law you coming to get some bad out of bar Mahan I know if I really willing to go down and do that type of work they took a hell of a blow when they ran in Spanish I don't know what did I ever do what they did do is take a page from state history and reestablished the vaunted Southern tradition of the prison chain game although this time without the chance so prison crews out every seems pretty psyched but being off doing some work in the Sun trust they psyched about being able to smoke yeah so you guys first time out a farmer first time pair of math well we're gonna go to the sale we're gonna plant the stuff at the day and somebody's boys will be walking behind the tractor to make sure the seeds in the ground Diana I'm in jail over here push the fun last baseball we're doing following the tractor looking for seeds that the planter on the back of the tractor hasn't put far enough from them they're pretending like I see him and I thought that he wanted to manual labor I'd give it to him while George was too busy driving the tractor to keep watch over the prison details work his wife Sylvia was unimpressed with their efforts obvious is a little bit dismay that they're not paying as much attention you definitely see some leftover seed here that probably should have some dirt on it how are the prisoners working out honestly there are nothing in my expectations you just want to play around they just want a smoke we need somebody to help us so the watermelons we planted a few months ago are now actual melons the prison labor that George and Sylvia are farmers here were using didn't really work out for them they had to go back and basically redo everything they had done there aren't too many people they can Collins they've called up family members few hours away for a slim pickins in terms of farmhands due to an overwhelming failure Alabama's lawmakers have been quietly dismantling HB 56 the lasting damage however may be to Alabama's reputation among Latino migrants whose return to the state's labor pool has undershot their departure we're gonna go join the line despite all the hubbub farmers like George and Sylvia are basically back where they started with a field crew of immigrants just a lot less of them cycling it in let's get a baguette sauce come on I don't know it's an sustenance yeah obviously it doesn't get too much worse than melon farming and the problem with all the jobs that illegal immigrants have filled here in Alabama and the rest of the country isn't so much of their jobs that no one will do their jobs that no one will do for the amount of money that immigrants will accept it's a lose-lose situation for both the people trying to compete for those jobs and get a decent wage we get shut out by the immigrants take lower wages and for the Democrats whose wages are terrible and have to put up with horrible working conditions and don't have anybody thing turn to when they're harassed or oppressed or whatever as a result of that you know we can buy $7 melons at Walmart but but what I like $7 melons look no one gives a when they're tired and they hit the Holiday Inn and they see Maria whether she has papers or not luis gutierrez the US representative who's built his career on Latino rights and bridging the seemingly intractable divide between the public's reliance on illegal immigrant labor and their attitudes towards illegal immigrants themselves undocumented workers they are here to service our nation and to do work which is valuable and essential but when politicians do not have an answer to your social economic needs then they blame someone and say let's all get together against them reelect me and what makes illegal immigrants the perfect political scapegoat is they can't vote retaliation politicians understand who does the work I understand what they provide to the economy it had to be blind not to see it last year vice visited Haiti to report on the massive deforestation of the country to fuel the black market charcoal business our reporters while they were there were shocked and how devastated Haiti still look five years after the earthquake almost 10 billion dollars in relief aid had been pledged from around the world yet many parts of port-au-prince still look like the earthquake struck just yesterday so we sent Vikram Gandhi back to Haiti to see how one of the world's largest ever relief efforts could fall so far short when a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010 an estimated three hundred and sixteen thousand people were killed and another two million were forced from their homes when disasters like this strike the natural human impulse is to want to help but even after billions of dollars in foreign aid five years later hundreds of thousands of survivors are still displaced at delma 33 their camp coordinator gave us a look at their living conditions this is a tent city that's been in effect for the last four and a half years we're gonna check out what it's like to be a refugee of the earthquake so what are these homes made of guys I hope with a plastic cup does anyone you have electricity plumbing or running water here no whoa you just do what you have to not to up noise reduction I love I do nothing that's awful when you moved here how long did you think you were gonna stay Boompa sudafed been Anala may go somewhere new kid newton 0 delta worse than 10 billion dollars of aid not providing these survivors with long-term housing electricity or drinkable water it didn't even provide them with a functioning toilet this is the reality of Haitian sanitation so inevitably human waste gets into the water supply this is not just disgusting it's potentially deadly in fact a year after the earthquake Haiti suffered the world's largest modern outbreak of cholera it was actually brought there by UN foreign relief workers whose waists contaminated local water supplies with 700,000 people infected and nearly 9,000 deaths we learned from dr. jean pepe that new cases of this easily preventable infection are still popping up what's the relationship of color are spreading and the lack of sanitation parts it's huge essentially in a place where you do not have adequate latrines where people don't have water to wash their hands it's going to spread like wildfire like it did here with the long-term relief aid in port-au-prince appearing to be completely squandered we spoke to Jake Johnston whose five-year investigation into Haiti relief funds has made him the premier economic researcher on following the money trail after the earthquake millions of Americans started donating to help Haiti where did all that money go you know in terms of private donations most of it goes to emergency response clearing rubble clean water some basic health food aid the long term or development aid that comes mostly from the donor governments the US government the leaders of the Development Bank's all had the slogan build back better this was supposed to be different this was the opportunity with ten billion dollars on the table the big question that's been on everyone's mind is where did the money go and I think that's when we enter this sort of black box Congress appropriates money to USAID and then USAID contracts other organizations both for-profit and not-for-profit that actually implement the programs on the ground for every dollar that you SAT spends less than a penny actually goes directly to any Haitian organization Haitian company Haitian government rather than giving money to local companies things were imported so we imported cement we imported the foreign experts we imported the construction companies to actually build them the earthquake they had an ambitious housing program so they have planned to build about 15,000 houses cost about 53 million dollars the cost balloon to 93 million dollars and instead of 15,000 houses there would be two thousand six hundred houses at the same time the u.s. embassy gave a contract for over 70 million dollars to build townhouses with pools for their own staff that's that fundamental divide between what we think of as aid and helping those in need and how our system actually works and while we built plenty of homes for our own people we didn't seem to build many for the survivors who needed them that's because of plans like the Zoran Jay housing Expo which is one of the first approved reconstruction projects headed by Bill Clinton and the interim Haiti recovery Commission the basic idea of za Rocher is the 2.4 million dollar showroom international firms competed to sell their prototypes with the hopes of winning a contract for mass production so behind me our model homes none of them have any plumbing electricity or running water but what happened after the expo is people moved in they occupied this property and now it's become a fully functioning town Camille Chalmers an affordable housing activism gave us some insight on how viable the houses actually work this seems like a log cabin you might find like by Yellowstone National Park did you think there was ever a chance that these were gonna be built in Haiti no no de Beauvoir pressure services a prison called Chris Devoy kolodziejczak you faker no back up it's gonna be down down the block what do you make of this one no so say Velma Odie blue this is one of my personal favorites it looks like something from like Martha's Vineyard CFAA so make good pop on this one guy get-together is so good are you telling me that they didn't talk to people from Haiti before they came here to try to sell these houses no no is it a rapid bump okehazama deli for Cobb that house that's some hippy right there that's a spectacular how many homes were actually built for Haitians based on any of these model homes they will buy ganja to buy get so not only were no real homes built but the survivors are left in the same primitive conditions as the refugee camps squatting in a permanent reminder of what our aid intended to give them but this squat is nothing compared to what we saw in the mountains of Connaught with limited options in the city survivors began building their own homes in this formerly barren land now what began as a refugee camp is so big that if recognized it would qualify as one of Haiti's largest cities so this place has all been built up in the last four years this was supposed to be temporary but very soon it became permanent and as we learn from community organizer Rennell sonam these people were left to fend for themselves boise Kibaki okay edy Kanaga Seco Timoney Avex Geoffroy yo yo fair knee ong nigga van mop with the moon yo ho sweet what's odd is that the Haitians who receive little to no foreign aid actually seem to be doing better than those in the designated relief areas did you build this house oui madame with carving crazy and you got hidden did you get any help from the government or any NGOs Mourad no that's in Bagon Bagon even more some of them do to him by a person these people to lack simple amenities like toilets and clean drinking water and to make matters worse for the squatters the Haitian government has cracked down on land rights leading to constant disputes and forced evictions blossom in one cap vivre from camino de que pasa I'm going to show Buffett moon avail but there was one permanent structure that was built here for the earthquake survivors for some reason the International Olympic Committee thought that these people could use an 18 million dollar state-of-the-art soccer field and Recreation Center adding insult to injury in a community lacking even the most basic amenities Padova diamond video but fair by macaques annasidou moon by same to do with an uneasy but this wasn't the only strange reconstruction project we saw foreign aid invested in seven hours north of the earthquake over three hundred million dollars of foreign aid was spent in the district of Caracol so we've learned that a lot of the earthquake aid money came to Karakol where was this town affected by the earthquake god what about the again one victim I think it's him when was I gonna feel a bad thing I kid but even though the town wasn't affected it didn't stop our government aid from being invested in another soccer field this is Big Bob even for the things that made sense the price tag didn't seem to match the product how much did this cost the milliohm Nebula 2.9 million and when we checked the State Department actually spent two point three million dollars but it was still hard to understand how it could cost so much and when we looked at the costs of many other projects we noticed the same contractor kept coming up come on X is the largest USAID recipient cross the world the clinic's actually got their big break in Afghanistan come on expose one of the largest recipients of that pool of money as well since that point there's been a number of audits that have showed lack of progress the lack of oversight here this is a contract of commonness with USAID to all the costs information throughout the contract that's all redacted and we just have pink sheet after pink sheet in fact 25 pink sheets and once again no one bothered to ask the locals what they needed when humanics comes here to build things how do they consult with you and the other people who live here uh Nick Vinny yep and this Unitel wagon so what's this place kakuzu it comes with a CD Bobby K V a communiques does everybody have running water flush toilets and plumbing no just stop with de Lancie adapter Brazil I mean Fagin glued up as a bye-bye kalila no bougie-ass did blue blue blue as the mayor would you rather had plumbing and running water as opposed to the cultural center and the football park save wiki you really do pocket bag on Azure nah man you see ballet abyss way so we built them an overpriced police station another soccer field in a cultural center we couldn't even get into but we soon found out the real reason a town so far from the actual disaster would get so much aid USA IDs real investment here is the more than 260 million dollars spent for the caracal industrial park the largest u.s. development project in the aftermath of the earthquake if you look around this whole place doesn't even look like Haiti it looks like America I mean there's paved streets or sidewalks there's electricity and there's drinkable running water which is actually unheard of in Haiti unfortunately it only provides roughly ten percent of the jobs that promise and its main tenant is a South Korean garment manufacturing company which enjoys cheap labor tax exemptions and duty-free access to the US market worst of all none of the employees we met were earthquake survivors and the planner for the park was drawn up before the disaster even happened USAID declined a request for an interview we were however able to talk to USAID s former deputy director Diana all Bob about the issues that plagued our aid system in a case like Haiti I think there are a few things that prevent USA from doing the things that would like to do in a perfect world the first is the web of confusing conflicting and archaic laws that hem in our ability to carry out activities they require that we spend money in certain ways even if those aren't the things that the people of Haiti actually wanted five years after the earthquake what USA should be doing is helping Haitians achieve their own goals in terms of education health infrastructure we shouldn't be doing for them we should be doing with them but Haiti has another very serious problems with corruption political inefficiency political turmoil you need a government that represents the will of the people and that has the capacity to act and sometimes will and capacity are both missing while many attempts to reform this system have been made to date nothing has changed and the result is the failed disaster capitalism we see in Haiti where Aid has become an industry of for-profit companies in fact only a month after the earthquake our own US ambassador was quoted in a leaked document claiming the gold rush' zone and now these same companies are using lobbying groups to ensure reforms never come it's often said that waste inefficiency corruption these are problems that are unique to developing world that are unique to Haiti and the reality is that these are actually fundamental aspects of the US foreign aid complex instead of relying on potentially corrupt money we simply give it to US companies and allow them to take 25% off the top it's a different form of corruption and without realizing that then you know we'll continue to make the same mistakes again going clause you you

Channel: VICE

Views: 844,263

Rating: 4.658617 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, interview, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, funny, funny videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, anti-imigrant laws, self-deportation law, illegal immigrants, ALABAMA, VICE on HBO, HAITI, Earthquake, Relief

Id: F0ZzwGSF6Zg

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/YTTMirrorBot]

Blocked in UK,Australia Mirror: VICE - Haitian Money Pit (2016) A short doc that investigated what was done with the billions in aid Haiti received after the devastating earthquake in 2010 ^{30min - 279422 views}

---

^{Latest Change: Safari 11.X.X fix.}

[u/computer_d]

I donated hundreds of dollars to the Red Cross. I will never trust that company again. And it's hard to trust any aid company since.

But it almost brings me to tears to see how this turned into what seems to be a money-laundering scheme and no one has been held accountable, the money never recovered. The Olympic structures built in Canaan turns my stomach just thinking about all the people involved probably held mixers and celebrated and patted themselves on the back. Perhaps not those part of the scheme but those who actually thought it was a good idea and that they were helping. Likewise the foreign aid workers who had houses with pools built with them. How the hell do they sleep at night.

And while we fight and campaign for our politicians nothing actually changes when you look at how situations like this are approached. It's hard not to look at how we treat poverty in foreign countries as a grand conspiracy because nothing ever changes.

[u/Herxheim]

get it before vice edits out anything untoward

[u/richardhead6666]

Clinton foundation books are quite interesting.

[u/[deleted]]

Was this the "pallets of money" thing, or was that another past fuckup?

[u/xboxhelpdude1]

Haiti is not a shithole tho! /s

[u/biquark]

USAID costs 50 billion dollars per year.

For perspective, estimates of the cost of a manned mission to Mars are typically between 50 and 500 billion dollars (though some missions have been proposed below 20 billion). And a rover mission like Curiosity costs around 2 billion dollars.

So we could be going to Mars in person at least once a decade, or sending dozens of robots, or countless other amazing things, but instead we get this worthless shit that does nothing.

[u/Wfdeacon88]

Ask Hillary... Thank God that Investigation is back on.

[u/Frontfart]

Does it mention the billions donated that never made it to Haiti at all?