The Unión Nacional de Empresarios, a local business association, proposes that the international community permit the DR to use the RD$7,500 million per year foreign debt payments to build development projects on the frontier with Haiti that would contribute significantly to reduce poverty in that nation. The UNE says the DR, a country with a per capita income of US$2,000 a year cannot be compared to countries that have per capita of US$20,000 that can afford mass immigration. He says that one out of every four households in the DR live below the line of poverty, making US$60 a month. UNE supports the initiative of the Fernández administration to turn the DR into the principal spokesman in international forums to request that the developed world provide support so that Haiti can abandon 19th century living standards and join, in a few decades, the nations of the continent that have entered into the 21st century world. He says that in the DR, the political, economic and social leadership is convinced that only by improving living conditions in Haiti will Haitian migration to the DR be reduced. The same can be said for the US and the DR. As living conditions in the DR improve, there is less migration to the US and Puerto Rico. The Migration Department said that more than 2,000 Haitians have been deported in November, and that controls on the border have been reinforced. Nevertheless, frontier provincial authorities say that most of the deported Haitians return the next day to the DR.
