Ok, on second thought, my "might not be a bad thing" comment, is only in the context of intimidating local criminals - i.e. they might have second thoughts on which expats they want to target. But this also has alot of negative connotations that go beyond any of their activities. For starters, their presence was somewhat under the radar, at least from a law enforcement perspective. Now that they have started a chapter, I wonder how many Canadians will be scrutinized upon returning to Canada, being searched, ect. I know that I, as a young guy, when I tell a customs officer I am coming from the DR automatically get told I'm going to be searched, more than half the time anyways. But I'm thinking that this can get even worse, having a branch of a Canadian crime organization based there, could mean that such things as sponsorships, visas, tax audits, personal investigations, etc. could increase for your regular Canadian, just because the HA have set up shop, I seriously hope not, but something tells me this could be a consequence.
As for my initial statement of them "might not be a bad thing", I doubt that their will be any increased violence because of their presence, however, there might be an increase of shady expats in the North, but there's nothing new there. I don't think they are there to trade drugs to locals, they are most likely to use it as a transit base, aswell as perhaps traffic to expats and tourists - as for human trafficking, US State dept, estimates that about 50 000 dominican women are trafficked each year, HA run strip clubs, 2 and 2 together tells me that there is a good chance they'll be involved in that.
Hopefully now that they have put themselves under the radar, they will have an eye kept on them, and that it won't affect law abiding Canadians, nor the locals.
As for my initial statement of them "might not be a bad thing", I doubt that their will be any increased violence because of their presence, however, there might be an increase of shady expats in the North, but there's nothing new there. I don't think they are there to trade drugs to locals, they are most likely to use it as a transit base, aswell as perhaps traffic to expats and tourists - as for human trafficking, US State dept, estimates that about 50 000 dominican women are trafficked each year, HA run strip clubs, 2 and 2 together tells me that there is a good chance they'll be involved in that.
Hopefully now that they have put themselves under the radar, they will have an eye kept on them, and that it won't affect law abiding Canadians, nor the locals.
Beautiful niece on the Jennie Crank diet.