Speaking during the weekly La Semanal press conference on Tuesday, 30 April 2024, President Luis Abinader valued that Haiti has taken the step to appoint a president of the Presidential Transition Council (Edgard Leblanc Fils) and an acting Prime Minister Fritz Bélizaire. Abinader described these as “advances” in the midst of the extreme crisis affecting Haiti.
“I think it is progress that people are being selected and there is someone with whom they can interact,” said the President when answering a question on LA Semanal with the press from the Presidential Palace.
Abinader said that he does not know Belizaire, but that he is glad for any improvement in Haiti.
Speaking during the Grupo Corripio interview on Haiti also on Tuesday, 30 April 2024, President Abinader spoke of the dilemma of Haitian migration in the Dominican Republic.
An estimated two million Haitians have already migrated here, many blending and marrying Dominicans, others setting up Haitian enclaves. There is concern the slow but consistent Haitian migration could in the future decide a Dominican election.
Meanwhile, during the interview the President stressed that he has had to adopt very special positions regarding the situation in Haiti. As reported in Listin Diario, Abinader mentioned some of the measures his government has taken to control the migration of Haitians to the Dominican Republic, giving priority to national security positions.
“Given the situation in Haiti, if we open a little bit, Haiti will get in here and I cannot allow that,” said the president.
During the interview, the President shared little-known details, such as that when he came to government in 2020 he sought to normalize the situation with Haiti. He explained that was why in 2020 he signed an agreement with the late former president Jovenel Moise to build two maternity hospitals on the border on the Haitian side. These would be supported by Dominican medics that would train the Haitians. Today, Dominican taxpayers are burdened with medical services to undocumented Haitians that arrive at the emergency rooms or consultations of Dominican public hospitals to receive free services. Almost 40% of births at public hospitals are to Haitian nationals.
Abinader said talks in 2020 had led to the Haitian government accepting that given the weak civil registry in Haiti, the Dominican government would issue Haitian IDs to Haitian natives that had migrated here. But those plans collapsed when five months later Moise was murdered, he explained. “From there everything has been chaos,” he commented.
Likewise, the President declared that it is not possible to grant work permits to Haitians, since their country has not been issuing identification for almost a year. “For almost a year in Haiti, more than 90% of Haitians do not have access to getting a passport or an identification card,” he said. Abinader stressed that he has had to adopt very special positions regarding the situation in Haiti, now under the control of gangs and practically without a government. “That is an issue that unfortunately we had to do at this time to safeguard security in regards to the situation that Haiti is experiencing,” he concluded. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians that have regularized their status in the Dominican Republic have done so using fake IDs given the decades of the collapse of the Haitian civil registry in Haiti.
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Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
Listin Diario
1 May 2024