Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

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Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
A few Chinese came from the other Caribbean islands and
established a reputation for diligence and industriousness.
More followed with the United States occupation of the island
(1916-24). They began as cooks and domestic servants; a number
of their descendants are restaurateurs and hotel owners.
The most recent trickle of immigrants entered the country
from the 1930s onward. Many founded agricultural colonies
that suffered a high rate of attrition. Trujillo, who favored
European "whites," admitted German Jews and Spanish civil
war refugees (both in the 1930s) ,
Japanese (post World War II)
and Hungarians and Spaniards (both in the 1950s). More Chinese
came from Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s; by the
1980s, they were the second fastest growing immigrant group
Haitians being the first. Many had sufficient capital to set up
manufacturing firms in the country's industrial free zones. In
the 1990s, Chinese from Taiwan and Hong Kong continued to
come to Haiti, along with some Japanese, Spaniards, and Venezuelans.
Haitians
Modern Haitian immigration to the Dominican Republic
dates from the late nineteenth century, when increasing North
American capital raised sugar production. Dominicans have
never welcomed these immigrants, first, because of the legacy
of the oppressive Haitian occupation and the Dominican struggle
for independence and, second, because of Trujillo's and
then Balaguer's views of Haitians and their anti-Haiti policies.
The Haitian presence resulted from economic necessity born
of the reluctance of Dominicans to perform the menial task of
cane-cutting. The 1920 census listed slightly under 28,000 Haitian
nationals in the Dominican Republic. Successive governments
attempted to control the numbers of Haitians entering
the country; the border was periodically closed in the 1910s
and 1920s. But by 1935 the number had increased to more
than 50,000. Trujillo ordered a general roundup of Haitians
along the border in 1937, during which an estimated 5,000 to
12,000 Haitians were killed (see The Trujillo Era, ch. 1)
Since the 1960s, a series of bilateral agreements has regulated
legal Haitian immigration. In 1966 Balaguer contracted
with the Haitian government for 10,000 to 20,000 temporary
Haitian workers annually for the sugarcane harvest. When this
agreement expired in the early 1980s, there was a great labor
shortage on the Dominican State Sugar Council (Consejo
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