Opposition party senators representing Haiti-DR frontier provinces agree with President Leonel Fernández’s statement that the DR needs to lobby for international aid for Haiti. Senator Darío Gómez (PRD-Santiago Rodríguez) and Dagoberto Rodríguez (PRD-Independencia) and Francisco Jiménez (PRD-Bahoruco) expressed their own concern that there may be an avalanche of migration to the DR spurred by the conditions of hunger, misery and lack of opportunities in Haiti. Speaking at the start of classes of a new promotion of future Dominican diplomats at the new School of Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, President Leonel Fernández said that the only way the Dominican Republic can put a stop to illegal Haitian migration is by helping Haiti develop. President Fernández called for the assistance of the international community to promote development in Haiti, the same way it spent millions on promoting democracy. Senator Gómez said that the policing of the frontier is not the best way to contain Haitian migration. He said that the DR needs to motivate the international community to help Haiti develop socially and economicallly. Commenting on the president’s statements, Hoy newspaper says that it makes good business for Dominicans to help Haiti. As conditions in Haiti improve, less indigent Haitians will seek to migrate to the DR. In "Coctelera," the newspaper urges Dominican to press the international community to help Haiti to avoid future confrontations with the DR on the issue of migration. It criticizes that President Rene Preval has not received international assistance that was promised when democracy was restored. "Right now, with the problem of the Haitians, we are up against the wall: if we repatriate illegal Haitians, it’s bad, very bad, because it complicates the internal situation in Haiti and is said to be a violation of human rights The US defends with full force its Haitian brothers, as long as they are migrating to the DR and not to Miami. And the same can be said for Canada. Of France, little can be said. They are too far away to be affected by Haitian migration."
