[yharmon6614]

Frank Moya Pons, the most famous Dominican historian, published a column in Diario Libre concerning the accelerated growth of the Haitian immigrant community in the DR. As such, this really is more of a Dominican issue, but since it deals with Haitians, I decided to post it in this forum.

Anyways, according to his investigations the Haitian immigrant community has evolved in he following manner (year and quantity of Haitians estimated to had been living in the country):

1983: 27,000
1998: 1,000,000

In the following, what's in parenthesis is more my commentary rather than paraphrasing what Pons said.

Based on what Pons wrote, not only has the Haitian immigrant population exploted after 1998, and especially after the 2000 decade started; but since the 1980s it has progressively become dominated by the illegal immigrants.

The reason, according to Pons, is due to pressures from international interests groups that the Dominican government has been receiving and succumbing ever since Leonel Fernández came to power in 1996 (in reality, Balaguer was often pressured by foreign 'interests,' but he refused to cooperate and maintained that stance. In private, that was one of his biggest complaints and eventually was made public with the conspiracy of France, Canada and the US wanting to Haitianize the country - wonder why he chose those countries in particular. Even Hipólito Mejía once said when he was asked by a reporter about the immigration problem, and he spontaneously responded that there's nothing that can be done because those are orders from abroad. Typical of Hipólito, he probably later thought he should had never made that public.)

When Leonel took power in 1996, he continued to massively deport illegal immigrants, but the outcry from local and foreign Human Rights groups and radical priests from the Catholic churches up and down the border, caused the Leonel administration to halt the massive deportations. According to Pons, this halt lead to a rumor spreading in many Haitian communities that they would not be deported if they crossed into Dominican territory illegally, and this caused an upsurge in the flow of illegal immigration from Haiti.

During Hipólito Mejía's administration (2000-2004), the same hands off policy continued regarding massive deportations, all due to the fear of the government being smeared by Human Rights groups and radicals. What made matters worst was a massive investment in infraestructure, schools, hospitals, etc that the Mejía administration made along the Dominican border towns, further increasing the appeal to extremely impoverished Haitians. Mejía also removed the restrictions that used to exist that prohibited undocumented people from getting medical care in public hospitals and their children getting an education in public schools, resulting a further incentive for Haitians with no real hospitals on the Haitian side and hardly any schools, to cross over to the DR, even if it was to take advantaged of these services paid for by Dominican taxpayers.

In the last and current Leonel administrations (2004-2008/2008-2012), the same hands off policy regarding massive deportations were maintained, leading to a further increase of the flow of illegals from Haiti. During all this time, Haiti's economic and political situation has been deteriorating, culminating with the earthquake; as a consequence, the migration pressure has grown.

According to Pons, we're now at a point where in many Dominican public hospitals most births are to illegal Haitian women, public schools have an ever increasing presence of Haitian children, and the same is happening in the universities. Even Haitians that before had not migrated in large numbers (middle/upper class Haitians) are now moving to the DR to take advantage of social services, education and better sanitary conditions.

In many areas of intensive agriculture, there are times when more than half of the rural workforce consist of Haitian immigrants, such as in Constanza, in the coffee plantations of Barahona, in the yuca and tobacco fields in the Cibao valley, in the rice paddies of the lower Yuna, and even in cattle ranches and haciendas in the eastern provinces, economic activities that never before had used Haitian labor.

With this continuous increase of illegal immigrants from Haiti, with such a rapid pace during such a short period of time, many Dominicans have voiced their concerns, in rare instances resulting in violance.

Many businessmen are now saying that the Dominican agricultural economy can't function anymore without the Haitian laborers. Without the very cheap labor the Haitians provide, many of these agribusinesses would fail (in reality, the more efficient businesses would mechanize and the least efficient would be absorbed by the more efficient, resulting in a widespread improvement in productivity in the agricultural sector resulting in less men working the fields with technology, higher wages and better working conditions; rather than maintaining hoards of men working practically by hand from sun up to sun down for peanuts). Other people, in particular economists, claim that the massive Haitian presence is hurting the Dominican labor force that would had benefited from the better working conditions and higher wages in the agricultural sector, since the large numbers of illegal immigrants have been lowering the prevailing wages, making mechanization and improvements in productivity undesirable since its cheaper overall to higher massive numbers of Haitians. The massive numbers of impoverished Haitians moving into the country also poses a problem for continous poverty reduction, and threatens to reverse the advances that have been acheived thus far.

For the time being, according to Pons, the economy has been absorbing Haitians in the lowest and worst paid positions, such as cleaning services, guards, house maids, etc. He also mentions Haitians working in the informal economy (ie. street vendors, etc) as being 'absorbed' into the economy, I would argue that that's a sign of the Dominican economy having problems absorbing the excess number of Haitians. The informal economy grows when the formal economy, which is the part that is held accountable to all labor laws to avoid exploitation - not so the informal economy, has no need for the excess. That, to me, is not a good sign at all.

Pons also claims that more radical Dominican groups accuse the Dominican government for willingly allowing the Haitianization of the country, and often resort to old nacionalist arguments to support such views.

He says that the illegal migration flow are now more intense than ever, and that no one knows what the consequences of this will be in the future.

LA CUESTIÓN HAITIANA - DiarioLibre.com