A front-page picture of a Native American Indian, with full headdress, selling gewgaws in Santo Domingo’s Colon Park is certainly eye catching. The story reported by El Caribe says that the Dominican Republic does not have the necessary controls to know who is residing in the country. While Haitian nationals are still at the forefront of official concerns at the Migration Department in Santo Domingo, Minister of the Interior and the Police Franklin Almeyda still insists on a national census of foreign residents. There are no mechanisms for controlling the number of undocumented foreign nationals living in the Dominican Republic. Many illegal aliens residing in the country walk freely around the cities with nobody bothering them, because, according to El Caribe, the Migration department only worries about undocumented Haitians. The case of a Spaniard who has lived in the DR for 35 years shows the authorities’ inaction when it comes to pursuing other foreign nationals with the same intensity as they go after Haitians. This Spaniard came to the Dominican Republic in 1971 and has never taken out any of the required papers. He told reporters, “I am here because of the relations between this country and Spain.” A German man reported that he had been living here for 15 years and nobody has ever bothered him about his residence papers. When asked about this, an official from the legal department of the Migration office told reporters that “it is not the same to buy a ticket to come here from Europe, Asia or any other continent, as it is to walk across the frontier that divides us from Haiti.” According to Immigration Department figures, Americans make up the largest foreign population with 10,027 documented residents. There are over 4,500 Cuban residents, and nearly the same number of Spanish legal residents.