Brazil: more than 120,000 Haitians live there legally, and arrivals are rising again

Brazil is now home to more than 120,000 Haitians with legal status, and arrivals are rising sharply again. According to the International Migration Observatory (OBMigra), 123,364 Haitians held an active residence permit in the country in February 2026, Estadão Verifica reports. Since 2010, nearly 194,000 residence permits, temporary or permanent, have been granted to Haitians, according to an OBMigra document published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The figure of "more than 200,000 Haitians welcomed" circulating on social media is therefore closer to the total number of permits issued over fifteen years than to the number of people living there today.

Arrivals have almost doubled

Haitian entries into Brazil rose from 9,835 in 2024 to 17,589 in 2025, an increase of about 79%, according to Federal Police data compiled by OBMigra and cited by Migalhas. In the first three months of 2026 alone, 7,888 entries were recorded. Caio Serra, of the IOM, attributes the rise to the ongoing crisis in Haiti, tougher routes to North America and above all family reunification.

Among residents, 77,815 hold work-based permits, 22,572 are in Brazil through family reunification and 12,466 under humanitarian reception. At the end of 2024, Haitians were the second foreign nationality by number of registered formal jobs. Only 11,751 Haitian families received the Bolsa Família allowance in September 2025, or 0.06% of beneficiaries, contrary to claims shared online.

A humanitarian visa that is harder to get

Brazil created a humanitarian visa for Haitians in 2012, after the 2010 earthquake. Since January 2025, the visa has depended on sponsorship by a civil society organization, MigraMundo reports; 777 humanitarian visas were granted to Haitians in 2024. Since January 1, 2026, a single framework has replaced the nationality-specific programs, and consulates have suspended new humanitarian visas until the list of eligible groups is published, according to the law firm Fragomen.