Sugar cane is one of the most important exports for the Dominican Republic. It's a vital resource of this impoverished Caribbean nation.

But for the hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrant workers in the sugarcane fields, life is anything but sweet.

From Santa Domingo, correspondent Rob Reynolds explains.




I am only posting this to Share Information, for the sake of the debate. I am not pro Haitian but very pro Dominican.

But I have a question; if a United States citizen has a child in the Dominican Republic that U.S. citizen has the right to obtain U.S. citizenship for that child.
My question is, how come the illegal immigrant Haitians in D.R. not doing the same for their offspring.
Get them Haitian documents, any document is better then no document. Any passport is better then no passport, that why he or she can leave the island if they choose to.
Yours truly
Chillaxin201

And here we go again.

Exploitation is every where in the world, do you know a little about the mexican season farm worker in the US, the poor are being exploited in Haiti too, not sure why do you think the Dominican republic will be immune ??

Chill, I'd recommend you to leave behind your leftist all-rich-people-are-exploiters and all-inmigrant-workers-are-innocent ideas for one minute and ask yourself the following questions: Do those workers have a better alternative on their own country? and, aren't the haitian elites that are trafficking and selling those workers like cattle WORSE monsters than the dominican and foreign sugar barons to which they're sellling their "merchandise"? If you were one of those workers, would you rather die of hunger, disease or a bullet in the chest in Haiti than to be exploited and at least make some money on the DR? Not to justify that explotation, but you should consider the following facts:1- The sugar industry is not the main sector using haitian labour on the DR., 2- Not everything is black and white, good people vs. bad people on this life, you know, and 3- Many dominicans (no matter their skin tone) are living in similar or worse conditions than the abovementioned haitians. So please, I beg you, consider them on your analysis, cuz' every leftist whiner complaining about the haitian working conditions on the DR seem to forget that poor dominicans DO EXIST and need someone to defend them, too.

Withdrawing my comment.

--- double --

It seems to me the sugar plantation is a blight on Antillean & Caribbean societies. Most of the good and interesting in Dominican history stems from the long absence or insignificance of sugar on our side of the island ... much of the tragic has come from it's inevitable presence.

As for the vid above can't watch it right now but I echo Laut's advice to you chill ... not saying abandon your politics or don't call out injustice where you see it, but just make sure you don't only interpret Dominican reality through lens crafted by and for US reality. Not only will it skew your judgments but you'll alienate potential allies like Lautaro who are reasonable ppl but will always be put off by the vehement and accusatory style of US social politics.

That's a rather harsh judgement, considering that there are worse cases out there. For example, did you know that in Japan the native Yamato discriminates against people coming from japanese communities overseas (like the ones on Brazil and Peru to mention some), sometimes by the tiny fact of some of them having western names? Did you know that the japanese gov. don't allow its citizens to name their children anyway they like, forcing them to choose only Yamato names or else? If that isn't a worse sample of xenophobia for you, then I don't know what it is.

very True. Seen it with my own eyes. And they will disown those who marry outside of Japanese culture. Hell many Asians Koreans, Philippino, etc are discriminated in Japan. Then on the other side of the Hemisphere we can look at Argentina. the older Cuban generation Hickville in the USA etc.

Exploitation exist everywhere, even here in the Old US of A. Its just that sometimes the media needs something to increase ratings and promote some bleeding heart liberals agenda.