Inmigration

Current Estimates (2005)

Organizations that study immigration estimate that more than 500,000 Haitian immigrants live in the Dominican Republic, while approximately another 500,000 born in Dominican territory have Haitian parents. It is an extremely poor immigration, as the large majority has little or no schooling and is composed of a large number of people that cannot provide a document of identity from their country of origin. Due to this difficulty, their status from the first moment in the country is irregular, not to speak of the generally illegal nature of this migration flow. Data from the International Migration Organization (IMO) inform that in 2002, Haitians paid around DR$1,500 pesos each in order to cross the border.

It is important to highlight the conditions of extreme poverty in the bateyes, or workers’ settlements, shared by Dominicans and Haitian alike. It is a misery that affects all sugar cane workers regardless of nationality and that historically follows a tradition established by foreign investors (specifically U.S. businessmen) that, at the turn of the century, began to use Dominican territory to found plantation-like productive units, sustained by a cheaper and untrained work force brought from the other Antilles. The poverty of the Dominican economy initially and in the later decadence of the sugar industry that did not know how, could not and did not want to modernize its means of production later aggravated the situation.

Due to the decline of sugar, many Haitian workers have moved on to other productive areas and today are found on various agricultural plantations (coffee, rice, among others), in the informal sector (fruit and juice sales, gardening) or in the tourist industry; and above all in construction, one of the strongest economic sectors since the early 90s, in which Haitians constitute approximately 80% of the work force.

The Dominican Republic is a country in the process of development that suffers high levels of poverty and must effect change on crucial and basic factors for the well-being of the population such as nutrition, health, social security and education. Due to precisely this situation, many Dominicans have had to go abroad, even risking their lives. In fact, today remittances that Dominicans abroad contribute to the country have become one of the principal mainstays of the national economy. The country cannot give to the working immigrant what it cannot supply for its own citizens. But neither does it posses the sufficient infrastructure nor the economic resources to face and control the abundant illegal traffic of illegal Haitian immigrants.

While it searches for a solution for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Haitians (more than 90%), the Dominican state has guaranteed access to primary and secondary education for minors and has arrived at an agreement with the Republic of Haiti so that its embassy in the Dominican Republic can equip its citizens with identification documents.