Haitian migrants face rising backlash next door

"This is a problem that can only be alleviated by helping Haiti," agrees Bernardo Vega, former Dominican ambassador to the US. "As long as Washington contains the flow of Haitian boat people to [US] shores, they don't see a problem - but it increases pressure on us, as the Haitians have nowhere to escape to but here," he says.

But while the government calls for an end to illegal immigration, the upper class continues to benefit from their cheap labor, charges Guillermo Starcinon, a Dominican Merengue singer. "They pay them slave wages and call immigration police on them before payday. Of course they want this," he says.

It's the Dominican poor who suffer, says Mr. Starcinon. "We know what it's like to be immigrants. We ourselves are immigrating to America all the time, so we feel sorry for the Haitians." But, he stresses, "they are working for nothing, are sometimes violent, and they are bringing us down."

Mr. Senatin lives in a sugar-company settlement in St. Jose de Los Llanos. He has no running water, shares a bunk bed in a shack, and makes about 85 pesos ($2.50), on a good day, which he keeps under lock in a secret place. At the end of the year, he manages to send his family 7,500 pesos (about $227). It's almost double what he would make at home, if he could find work.

In all the time he has lived in the Dominican Republic, Senatin says, he has not made one Dominican friend.

"We're not liked here. I know that," he says without sentiment.

Adriana Yuan, a Haitian woman who sells hair extensions and perfume on a sidewalk in Santo Domingo, does not want to talk about bad treatment and tough conditions here.

"I work all the time, from morning until night, and I keep my head down," she says. "If someone says they don't want my hair extensions because I am a dirty Haitian, that is OK. I am just working here."

Michele Oriol, a sociologist in Haiti, argues that complaining about the treatment of the Haitians is a folly.

"All these human rights groups should not be so selfish when it comes to criticizing the [Dominican Republic]," she says. "They need to do their homework: We don't have any economic possibilities in Haiti."

Complete villages in Haiti are being sustained by money sent home from the Dominican Republic, she argues. "Sure, it's not paradise," she says, "but look at the big picture - if they were turned away instead, people here would starve."

Father Christopher Hartley, a Roman Catholic priest who ministers to the workers in St. Jose de Los Llanos, disagrees. "Poverty should not serve as anyone's excuse for abuse of power," he says. "Desperation of these people is no excuse for the way they are being treated."

Back at the Dajabón border crossing, Dominican authorities recently tried to drive the bodies of the 25 would-be immigrants back to Haiti for burial. They were met with violent protests in which two more Haitians were shot.

"We will keep on being disrespected, and we will keep on dying," says Ciceron, the farm worker. "But we will keep on coming across, too. We don't see a better option."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.

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