Quote:
Originally Posted by Funwhileserving
Thank you all for you input. This is exactally what I wanted to hear. Our church has gone on mission trips all over the world and realize the contradiction in what we are doing. We are doing it for spiritual, personal, and religious reasons. I think Chip hit the nail on the head with his post. Those of us who have gone on other trips talk and think about them constantly. Roast Goat head in Africa, Beef Tongue from a street vendor in Ecuador (bad idea) severe laceration and stitches in Nicaragua, and Vacation Bible School for a week in the rain in Beliz are some of the favorites.
Haitian Refugee??? I don't know where that came from, possibly it was, actually, out of thin air. The word our materials use is Batey, Maybe I'm thinking of Gaza. We know the Haitians we allowed, invited, to come work in the DR sugar industry. The sugar industry mechanized leaving lots of Haitians out of work. They don't want to go back to Haiti because it's worse there. They take what work they can get at slave wages. We will be building outhouses for families, and we have an M.D. and and R.N with us who will be doing medical stuff.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and give me any other insights. Don't go easy on me just because I'm a cross-wearer (checks ears for gold crosses).
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Hi and welcome to the DR1 forums Funwhileserving!
Let me clarify some points so that you become educated on Dominican-Haitian issues and related...
First of all, let's start with I'm a Dominican citizen, born and raised in the DR...
Now... With that out of the way, let's move along to the issues:
Haitians in the DR are NOT refugees of any kind or type. Haitians living in the DR are classified as follows:
#1 - Those that hold a permit to work in the country, and do travel from Haiti to the DR multiple times a year. They work for the Hotel industry geared towards tourism. Those that hold positions in private biz in the DR, that range from professional duties to menial ones like house maids, construction sector, agriculture, etc...
#2 - Those that just cross the porous border (Which is made out of vegetation, a river crossing it and the natural mountain ranges of the area. Simply put, no border walls to speak of) without any kind of legal documents or permits, which includes their own national documents that could identify them.
They're the Lion's share of the Haitian migrants to the DR. Here they settle just as they do at home since God knows when. They build abodes that have been perfected via decades of hereditary experience, with just anything they ca get their hands on. They populated our river banks, ravines and every other non-populated area by Dominicans.
They use their traditional fuel for cooking their meals, namely our trees turned into charcoal, bringing further deforestation to our lush green mountains and green areas. They don't own anything other than the clothes that hides their nakedness as they come here. In fact, you could switch the "refugees" moniker and use "poorest ever to walk the face of this Earth" instead to identify these.
The sugarcane industry employs a very diminutive number of Haitian workers, since sugar became a far cry of an industry in the DR. Their numbers are severely diminishing as the industry is forced into mechanizing their systems in order to be more competitive and cut the costs related to the Zafra.
The people you're going to aid as you mentioned are not the ones tolling for the sugar barons or anything close to that. They're simply put, very poor people that fled their ever getting poorer country in order to feed their families and themselves in the DR.
I couldn't care one way or the other how you want to call them, either refugees or dirt poor migrants, but one thing you must really consider is that very little impact, if any, your work will have in the reasons why they're in that situation to begin with.
This kind of aid should be performed IN Haiti, as it's where any constructive aid could in fact begin to solve the underlying issues that created this migration in the first place.
Haiti needs to have the most basic of basics in place, so that the people could have the support to feed themselves and find a way out off from their collective misery that abounds in the country.
Something as simple and inexpensive as funding a public well, could impact more people there than you could ever try by feeding, clothing and providing housing for a people that are GOING to end up deported back to their miserable past living conditions at any time the gov wants it.
Only Haitians born to at least ONE Dominican citizen can claim their Dominican citizenship and therefore "documents" which allows them to exist in legal terms in the DR. These people, the vast majority, you'll be involved with in your trip; are the ones that were born in Haiti or to Haitians parents without legal status in the DR while getting FREE medical care in DR's hospitals to that aim.
We're not the bad guys here; simply we're also a poor country in development. The last thing we need is to add more poverty to the one we already own!
Poverty is not a crime but a public shame of any society...
Most Dominicans don't even give your work as missionaries to these people any thought, but one thing you must understand is that, by doing the kind of things your groups want to do, you’re in fact breaking the law as your aid, creates even a major influx of undocumented migrants into the country. Once that eventually will be exploited b/c of their sheer numbers by employers and result in the loss of jobs to the citizens in the country.
One huge factor of the flow of undocumented migrant is that wages become stagnant and don't ever meet the corresponding inflation and adjustment for economic conditions in the country. That's to say, wages are the same in the agricultural, construction and related sectors where the flow of migrants is evident, to that of decades ago. No Dominican citizen could seriously consider taking up a job that would mean that at the end of the week, his paycheck would be less than his actual expenses for the most basic of living conditions in the country.
Simply put, a Dominican can't compete for wages that an undocumented migrant (which can just build a home out of scraps, without running water and w/o electricity, basic commodities of the modern times) could. The gap is abysmal to say the least.
The more the illegal migrants are rewarded via these kinds of aids, the more their numbers will become...
If you really want to do the Lord's work in this Island of the Caribbean, please do consider that serving the people at the root of their problems, can achieve the results that serving their needs in a soil that is not theirs and will hardly ever be with outstanding results.
Why treat the blood trickles, while the wound is open and festering right within your reach? Isn't more humane to assist the fallen to their feet and tend to their wounds so that they heal without infections?
I know exactly why! The majority of NGOs and religious groups FEAR the constant violent spurs within Haiti and the possible kidnapping of volunteers while serving there. But again... Why would one think that one can make a change by observing and tending to the wounded, while the reason for them in the first place is there to be shut down for good?
The DR has got poor and people that need aid of all kinds, yet their needs are ignored b/c others from another nation are arriving by the thousands and turning them into transparent people, that seem not to exist but to our own citizens...
How would you feel if the roof of your home was blown away by a hurricane and when aid arrives, it turns out that those undocumented foreign people that you provided shelter to in your spare rooms were the only ones getting that aid, while you the home owner were just ignored by them? That's exactly the sentiment of the citizens and owners of the Dominican Republic have on this matter... Why wouldn't they?
Want to aid the Haitian people? Go to the heart of the problem in Haiti...
Want to aid the Dominican people? Do so in our poor barrios and cities...
No people in the face and history of the world have aided and provided more support for the Haitian people than those that today are called Dominicans. Period!
If anything NGOs and religious based aid groups that want to help the Haitian people could use the resources of the DR and its people to assist them in getting their aid to Haitians in Haiti 100% free from the corrupted and worthless Haitian gov.
Continuing to do the work you do in the DR is a slap in the face of every and each Dominican citizen that can't afford medicines for their children, to feed a real meal to their families, provide shoes for their naked feet, learn from the energy of the Lord's words as it only can provide nourishment to the soul as any foods can't.
So when you ask me how DO the Dominican people feel about your work with the Haitian refugees IN the DR, I hope this provides you with a glimpse of how does it feels to be ignored IN your own country by those that trumpet internationally their aid to the Dominican Republic's poor...
Believe it or not, not all Dominicans live in Punta Cana's marvelous villas or Casa de Campo's green fields, in the co-ops of Juan Dolio or the nice villas all around the country. Many are just living it day to day without any food, electricity, shoes or even a roof over the heads, just like.... Hmmmmm... Those "refugees" in our country...
Arturo Pichardo.
!
OK - glad to be of controversial service.
