Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

30,000 Haitians were reportedly deported, causing problems
for the subsequent coffee harvest, which usually employs some
35,000 Haitian coffeepickers.
Recognizing that Haiti not only constitutes a significant
source of the Dominican unskilled work force but also represents
a market for Dominican goods, some Dominican leaders
have begun to urge that the Dominican Republic join other
countries in providing aid to Haiti. In an address to a graduating
class of Dominican diplomats in 1999, President Leonel
Fernandez Reyna stated that the international community
needed to promote Haiti's social and economic development.
Earlier, in August 1999, the Dominican deputy minister of state
for foreign affairs predicted that Haitians would continue their
illegal migration to the Dominican Republic until political stability,
economic progress, and a more equitable distribution of
wealth were achieved in Haiti. However, in January 2000 the
Dominican secretary of state for labor announced that no new
work permits would be given to Haitians to enter the Dominican
Republic to cut sugarcane. Instead, he advised Dominican
employers to improve working conditions in the cane fields in
order either to induce Haitians already in the Dominican
Republic—500,000 Haitians are reportedly in the Dominican
Republic—to work there or to attract indigenous Dominican
workers. That a sizeable pool of potential Haitian workers
exists in the Dominican Republic is suggested by the fact that
in late 1999, the Haitian embassy in Santo Domingo issued
44,000 birth certificates to Haitians living in the Dominican
Republic. Although the possession of a birth certificate does
not give a Haitian legal status in the Dominican Republic, it
enables the person to acquire a Haitian passport, which is a
prerequisite for obtaining temporary work. Concern over the
living conditions of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic
caused a number of Dominicans in the spring of 2000 to
organize a peace march through Haiti to promote better conditions
for such workers.
Drug trafficking continues to plague both the Dominican
Republic and Haiti. Concern over increased smuggling of
cocaine and heroin from Colombia through the Dominican
Republic and Haiti, to the greater New York area via Puerto
Rico and South Florida for East Coast distribution, has resulted
in a series of efforts to disrupt the traffic. One is a coordinated
plan by the United States and the Dominican Republic to
deploy soldiers in cities and military outposts along the 223-
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