The long history of troubled ties between Haiti and the US
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide accused the US of ousting him in 2004
| By Vanessa Buschschluter BBC News, Washington |
When US President Barack Obama announced that one of the biggest relief efforts in US history would be heading for Haiti, he highlighted the close ties between the two nations.
"With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are our neighbours in the Americas and here at home," he said.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have indeed become neighbours of Americans.
Some 420,000 live in the US legally, according to census figures. Estimates of the number of Haitians in the country illegally vary wildly, from some 30,000 to 125,000.
It is a sizeable diaspora which wants to see quick and decisive action from its adopted homeland.
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