The bodies were found scattered along the side of the road: suffocated to death and thrown out of the truck in which they had been traveling. The 25 Haitians were headed across the Caribbean island to the Dominican Republic this month, and to what they probably hoped would be a new beginning.

"We can not bear this disrespect," explained Anelio Ciceron, a Haitian farm worker standing at the northern Ouanaminthe-Dajabón border crossing two days later. "But we have no recourse, because we are Haitians. And to be Haitian is to be powerless."

An estimated 700,000 to 1 million Haitians, most of them illegal, live in the Dominican Republic, home to 8.8 million people. Haitians come in by foot over the border bridges, holding tight to their visas, or wading below those bridges, without papers. They pour across the 243-mile frontier hiding in the backs of cramped trucks, and in the trucks of cars. They come for one reason.

"My heart is in Haiti. My wife is in Haiti. My children are in Haiti. But work - that is lacking in Haiti," says Jonnie Senatin, who has been working on a sugar plantation in the east of the country for 15 years.

Haiti, a country about half the size of the Dominican Republic, has more than 75 percent unemployment, according to the CIA World Factbook. The Dominican Republic (DR) is faring better, with 17 percent unemployment, and one of the highest growth rates (7 percent) in the region last year.

It's not quite the sort of disparity that exists between the US and Mexico, but the dynamics create a similar debate here over illegal immigration: Whom does it benefit and whom does it hurt? Can, and should, it be stopped? And what part does racism play in the story?

Both countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but language, culture, physical appearance, and a long history of mutual antagonism and conflict - from Haiti's 22-year rule over the DR in the early 1800s to the 1937 massacre of up to 30,000 Haitian migrants in a campaign ordered by then-Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo - keep them apart.

Haiti's deteriorating economy and political instability in recent years has further strained relations, as ever more Haitians flee to take on the low-paying jobs in construction sites; cattle ranches; and rice, coffee, and sugar fields across the border.

In August, four young Haitian men were gagged and set on fire in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo. Last month, Dominicans burned about 20 shacks occupied by Haitian migrants and beheaded two workers in reprisal for their alleged involvement in the killing of a businessman.

When Dominican President Leonel Fernandez traveled to Haiti two weeks later, he was met by hundreds of demonstrators throwing rocks and chanting, "Fernandez, racist, stop murdering Haitians."

The Dominican human rights organization National Committee for Migrations voiced concern last month over increasing "outbreaks of xenophobia" targeting Haitians. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an opinion that the Dominican Republic is illegally denying birth certificates to babies born here to Haitian parents. And Human Rights Watch has called on the government to afford equal schooling opportunities to Haitian migrant children.

Armed Forces Minister Sigfrido Pared calls the continual immigration of Haitians "an attack" on Dominican sovereignty and beseeched the international community to help.

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