[eropiereetuekm]

It's truly sad if it goes through. The DR and its crony cadre of elitists believes you can make poverty disappear by making the businesses that employ and clothe, feed poor people disappear. Many here want to present to us a picture of the DR which is patently false. They show us malls and high-rises as if that is proof that poverty is not as great as we make it seem. The used clothes business is proof positive of the grinding poverty and misery with which the general Dominican population lives in.

The DR is an extremely poor and destitute nation. Don't be fooled by ridiculous pictures of Ferraris, Lambos, malls and high-rises lull you into a false sense of complacency regarding this. In any poor nation, you'll find a small group displaying wealth with disregard to the needs of the general population. Zimbabwe which is as broke as you can get under a hyper-inflationary environment also has Ferraris, high-rises and the like. Such accoutrements of wealth are not evidence of a prosperous nation nor do they make the DR unique.

You can go to any nation in Latin America like Honduras for example which also suffers from grinding poverty and you find the same articles of wealth. It is evidence of nothing at all. The DR is not unique in this. The DR is an endemically poor nation with crushing levels of poverty unlike anything you see in the USA. That's why Dominicans when given the chance will escape that island prison for parts North hoping to land in NYC which is nirvana for them.

The most insidiously hypocritical stance though is by those who want to pull the wool over us. They want us to believe the opposite is true. They want to present a DR on the par with a Western European capital. This mentality is not restricted to Pick and Nails. You'll find many Dominicans within the USA mirroring the same sentiment. It makes you wonder though what the hell are they doing cleaning toilets, tending gardens and babysitting children in the US of A if the DR is such a great place as they describe it to be.

I call them out on this whenever I get the chance. If they find the DR so superior to the USA, then why don't they leave. Get the heck out of the US. Return to the DR at once and then tell us how wonderful the DR actually is. It isn't. Life in the DR is like running an obstacle course in the Gobi desert. You are constantly behind the 8-ball alone and unaided by a govt that frankly even if it wanted to could not. Social services are lacking. Jobs are lacking. The quality of life is dismal.

So if and when this ban goes through, those least able to will be the ones most affected by it. The DR poor will become that much poorer. A source of jobs and cheap clothing will be stripped away from them. It's typical of a third world third rate nation were presentation is more than substance. What matters is how it looks not if it works and this ban is evidence of that.