Alright Rick,
You make very good points. As I said before, I don’t know every single detail of this subject, so I don’t have a defined stance on it. The problem is that the lack of information or documentation makes understanding this issue much more tedious.
Let’s start with the National Coffee Council. After giving it some thought, I agree with you, dependence on Haitian labor is having a negative impact on the industry. But not in the way it is stated in the article, since Dominicans leaving the country has nothing to do with it. Most Dominicans that leave belong to the middle class (who can usually afford the tickets) and most of those who would work in these fields are in the lowest. The articles talks about “necessary conditions” to attract Dominican rural labor. I have an idea of what they are.
Haitians work under subhuman conditions which NO Dominican would stand.
This abstract, despite being a bit biased points at something that I mentioned before, the mechanization of the sugar or agricultural sector in general. You are right, if there weren’t a reliance on Haitians, the agricultural sector would be prompted to invest in machinery and better working conditions, otherwise they’d be out of business. But this brings me to the concept of barriers of entry. With cheap labor, barriers of entry to the industry are much less compared to a mechanized industry requiring a lot of capital investment for machinery. What effects does this have on potential startups?
Another thing is, if the Haitian factor is in fact eliminated, will this mean that there will be capital or knowledge to become capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive?
(Also, I also wanted to point out that Dominicans taking the Haitian jobs is not as easy to measure. This is due to the fact that wages of Haitians in relation to Dominicans are much lower. Replacing Haitians with Dominicans will not be 1-to-1.)
As for deflation of wages, I don’t think the impact will be HUGE. If DR were a much more developed (as is the case with migration to a developed country) with established higher wages, then yes, the impact would be significant. What I would agree with you is that it would be an impediment in raising the Dominican standard of living. But the problem is not Haitians, it is the government. They should be enforcing labor laws.
The reason why you get so many Haitians in El Seybo is because it is just north of the biggest sugar refinery and employer of DR. Some have moved from there to areas like Bavaro. In La Romana and El Seybo you find so many Haitians because they work the fields there. The seasonal recruitment of Haitians to work in the fields goes back to a century ago. I doubt anything would be done about this, since the sugar industry works hand in hand with the government.
That was only Agriculture. According to the CIA factbook, Agriculture in DR makes up only 11.2% of the GDP and 17% of employment.
As far as the informal sector, there are no concrete numbers as to how many Haitians are in the informal sector. I can assure you that most in the informal sector are Dominicans.
One question, do you have any figures on remittance from Haitians in DR to Haiti?
I didn’t think it was that much. With their mediocre wages, I didn’t think they had money left over to send. Do these people eat? Is it really 50% that goes back to Haiti?
I still believe that they contribute more to the economy than they take away IN the informal sector. Maybe you can get some figures to change my mind.
Construction won’t come to a screeching halt, but it sure will affect it. I read somewhere a long time ago that the development of the capital and many other areas in the country in the past decades would have been impossible without Haitians labor in construction. The question is, do the benefits of this development (in a country with much needed infrastructure) outweigh the possible wages that could have been earned by Dominicans?
I am also leaning towards Dominicans, but I would like to emphasize that the answer isn’t straightforward. Do we want the case in the US with the unions where these construction workers are paid $40 an hour, more than professionals?
The reason why construction prices would be inflated is not because of Haitians, but unfair business practices and lack of competition. If the government were to promote competition by breaking up collusions, this wouldn’t be the case.
Finally, I would like to question how alarming the Haitian situation is. All countries with significant migration into it, experience a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment whenever the economy has gone into recession. It happens in the US and France, and DR is no different. That article I used earlier points out at how the Haitian massacre in the 1930’s was a reaction to the depression. The 1980’s recession was similar. The recent economic collapse was followed by an anti-Haitian wave. My question is, how alarming is this situation? Is it alarming or is it that they are just noticing now?
I apologize for the lack of structure of this post.