Not since 1795.
“Not since 1795”
Actually they still have rights within the French system.
Which is why you see many Haitians in the French overseas departments like the French Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique) and French Guiana.
I assume that means they may have some collateral rights to emigrate to former French colonies like Senegal and Chad, but have not been to those places. Algeria fits in there too.
France does not have a Commonwealth system like Britain but rather a web of immigration and nationality laws that vary by country of origin. For example, travel to other French Overseas Departments from former French colonies is a right guaranteed by them; thus you will see Montagnards (Hmong) in French Guiana, along with ethnic Chinese Catholics from Vietnam and Laos (i.e., French Indochina).
What they have a harder time doing is emigrating to Metropolitan France, i.e., France itself. French Overseas Departments are still nominally part of France and thus the EU; if you look at the Euro you will see a map of the EU, and it includes the French Antilles and FG. People who are residents of those places have a much easier time of getting to France itself, although it’s not a guarantee. But if you are from an old colony, while it may be easier to get into one of the Overseas Departments, getting into France itself will be almost as hard as simply emigrating from any other country. Almost. Lots of Haitians working in Metropolitan France.
So it’s reasonable for us to ask France to take care of their problems. Unfortunately for Haiti, the French still remember the slaughter of 17,000 French troops back in 1804 by the rebelling slaves, and are reticent about being too generous with their descendants.
They would love it for us to saddle ourselves with the problem. But it’s not ours. We didn’t start the slave trade in the Americas; the Spanish and the Portugese did, and the French jumped in joyfully. So the crap about shuffling their feet and whistling while they try to step away from their problems is just that: crap.
It ain’t our problem. But it did cause a big problem for us two centuries ago: the massacre was very much in the minds of the slaveholders when they refused to negotiate an emancipation; they knew what happened in the islands. And I think Jum Crow was yet another rearguard action to stave off such similar retaliation, and that war is still going on in our streets today.