Fewer Haitians mean higher prices in Dominican Republic

San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic.- A group of irregular Haitian immigrants is deported from the Dominican Republic through the Dajabón pass; In a matter of weeks, like a butterfly effect, the price of rice with beans is more expensive in the markets of Santo Domingo.

The nexus between these two events with no apparent causal relationship between them is very evident for farmers in the province of San Juan (west), one of the main agricultural areas of the Caribbean country.

And it is that in these fertile valleys at the foot of the Central Cordillera, nine out of ten rural workers are Haitians, and most of them lack papers, which is why they are easy targets of deportation campaigns for irregular immigrants.

So far this year, 6,162 Haitians have been deported to their country, according to official Dominican statistics.

The availability of labor has been further affected because since 2020 more than 200,000 Haitians have voluntarily returned to their country due to the pandemic, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). So far this year, 6,162 Haitians have been deported to their country, according to official Dominican statistics.

“This year there has been a lot of difficulty with labor and that contributes to problems for harvesting and for the different tasks,” the farmer Agustín Báez told Efe.