According to a recent news report, 92% of Dominican businesses(non specific) contract foreigners to work in the DR for them. Maybe it would be nice for someone to create a database of such businesses here in the DR.
El Dinero - El 92% de las organizaciones contrata personal extranjero
Not wishing to play devils advocate, but in Chips defense, I think the article is missing the very important words of "92% of the organizations
interviewed employ expatriates". If they were interviewing some of the larger organisations in the DR, the figures would probably be correct, but they have not given an indication of the number of businesses they surveyed (gotta love statistics!).
You also need to remember that there are children of Dominican parents who were born overseas that would be classified as expatriate for the purposes of the study. From my limited experiences here, many Dominicans born overseas come to the DR once their education is complete to work and spend time with their extended family.
I am here as an expat filling a senior management role for a foreign owned company. The company I work for would prefer not to have to pay the high price for expats, but the business is as such that we need to ensure that the interests of our overseas shareholders are managed effectively, something that can be a little difficult when you don't know the 'lay of the land'.
There is also a massive skills shortage here in the industry that I work (sorry, I'm not at liberty to disclose details) so we will have to bring in an expat management team next year. If we could employ locally, we would and we are exploring every avenue available to us.
Getting back to the article, although it is poorly written and seems to miss some important details, it could in fact hold some merit.
Chip, thanks for sharing the article.