The director of the Department of Migration, Danilo Díaz said that the controls now in force at the frontier have turned the trafficking of illegal Haitians into a lucrative business. He told El Siglo that his Department ordered the suspension of the hiring and recruiting of Haitians living in the DR after receiving complaints of individuals trafficking with truckloads of Haitians interested in getting a first job in a Dominican sugar cane industry. The government recently privatized the operation of sugar cane industries in the DR, and these will again be hiring. The newly arrived Haitians are willing to work for less than the Haitians already living in the DR, which move on to better jobs. The senator for the province of Independencia, Dagoberto Rodríguez Adames denounced on 15 March in Congress that officers of the government are involved with the trafficking of the illegal Haitians that are being brought in by crossing the hills of Barahona and Independencia. The people traffickers reportedly are paid by farms that need the cheap labor. The government had authorized the private sugar companies, Conazucar, Pringamosa, Caña Brava, Central Romana and Barahona to hire workers from among the estimated 600,000 Haitian adults living in the DR. Contracting in Haiti is banned, but it is hard to distinguish who is a newcomer and who was already here. After the complaint was received, the Department banned the contracting of Haitians already living in the country. The idea is that the new companies offer better working conditions so that it is unnecessary to import cheap labor.
