Dominican Republic immigration to Puerto Rico
During the 2000s, one of the most recurrent themes in Puerto Rican newspapers has been the Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico.
History
Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, following the Spanish-American War. (Also ceded were Guam and the Philippines; Cuba was relinquished and became independent in 1902). Although an independence movement has existed in Puerto Rico throughout its rule by the United States, it has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. The Philippines became independent in 1946; Puerto Rico and Guam have remained associated with the US. Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917 and are allowed to move to the mainland without restriction.
By being, to a large extent, a part of the United States, Puerto Rico has enjoyed the richest per capita economy in all of Latin America, aided by substantial investment from American businesses.
When Luis Muñoz Marin became governor of Puerto Rico, one of his principal endeavors was to give Puerto Rico certain independent privileges, such as self rule and individual sports citizenship, so it was during his governance that Puerto Rico became a commonwealth of the United States, under which the island has a fair (though not complete) degree of autonomy.
The Dominican Republic, meanwhile, has suffered from persistent poverty since that nation gained its final independence from Spain. (See History of the Dominican Republic.) Misrule and corruption have led the country's economy into chaos. Though the country benefits from a profitable tourism industry each year, this and other economic activity (agriculture, industry, remittances); see Economy of the Dominican Republic) are not sufficient to sustain the population. Most of the Dominican Republic is marked by extreme poverty, which has lead to the steady increase of attempts by Dominican citizens to migrate to Puerto Rico over recent decades.
Overview
While some Puerto Ricans do not view Dominican immigrants as a problem to society, a large segment of the population, perhaps motivated by racism—despite the fact that a large percentage of Puerto Ricans are black themselves—sees the Dominican presence as a nuisance. These Puerto Ricans do not mind other Latin Americans for that matter, on their island.
What most Puerto Ricans are opposed to, however, is the way in which Dominicans travel to the island. Trying to escape from poverty and lured by the American dream, many poor Dominicans board small wooden boats, also known as yolas to reach Puerto Rico. These illegal trips often result in tragedies at sea.
Many yolas are commanded by people, either Puerto Ricans or Dominicans, who are somehow connected to the mafia and benefit from the prices imposed on travelers. Some people have paid up to 5,000 US dollars to be transported on a boat from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.
Dominicans who pay so much money to get to Puerto Rico on a boat hope that, if they reach Puerto Rico, they will not be caught and re-patriated by the appropriate agencies. Basically, that would be the only benefit of travelling by yola from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico: shall the yola make it to Puerto Rican territory, many passengers can escape without being detected by the police, the FBI or others. Many Dominicans who survive these trips and are not caught after arriving in Puerto Rico, either choose to go to Mayaguez, the largest city in western Puerto Rico, or to San Juan, where a considerable number of Dominicans reside.
Many of those yola travellers who get to Mayaguez, San Juan or any other area in Puerto Rico find it hard to get jobs, both because of their immigration problems and because of the competition for jobs with Puerto Rican workers. Therefore, some have turned to underworld activities such as drug trafficking and others, increasing the presence of the Dominican mafia in Puerto Rico and creating some mafia wars with Puerto Rican mafia groups.
Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico by sea has increased steadily since the 1940s.
Danger
Travelling illegally from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico can be as dangerous, if not more dangerous, as travelling from Mexico to the United States through the Sonora desert, for example.
Yolas are extremely small boats made of wood, and sometimes, in order to make more profit, trip planners and ship captains put hundreds of people together in boats that are very unfit for such large numbers of travelers.
Most illegal trips to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic begin in cities located at the Eastern coast of the latter country, particularly in the city of Nagua.
Boats travelling from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico navigate directly over the Puerto Rico trench underwater crater area. The Puerto Rico trench is an active seismic area that has been calculated to be larger than the San Andreas Fault in California. The activity there makes sea waves much stronger, which, combined with the amounts of passengers on yolas, makes it likely that a yola will suffer some type of accident during any moment of the trip. Another considerable fact is that most boat captains use the Isla Mona as a point of reference, and the Isla Mona area is surrounded by a large number of sharks.
Survivor stories about illegal trips from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico can be horrifying: tales of people being forced to jump into the sea, for example, are common. Passengers are usually forced off the ships when there is danger of sinking. Others tell of seeing their loved ones left behind, to their deaths, after a heavy wave has overturned one of these yolas. Yet many others also tell of corpses left on board; people also die of starvation or dehydration. Also, upon seeing the Puerto Rican coasts, some Dominicans rush their way out of boats before the yola reaches land; this practice, led by an emotional state, has led to many cases where the yola overturns, and many Dominicans make it to the coast safely, yet others lose their lives and have their bodies show up ashore hours later.
Illegal immigrant traffickers and ship captains are not exempt from some of these dangers either, as, many times, some of the ships travelling from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico have sunk and left everybody on the ship dead.
Famous tragedies in such trips include a 1989 sinking near Isla Mona where as many as 500 perished, and other, comparatively small, tragedies where groups of 30 or more passengers have died. Perhaps the most famous of these tragic trips was the Nagua tragedy, named so because the yola heading to Puerto Rico that time sunk while trying to make its way out of a beach in Nagua. More than one hundred died, including the ship's captain and the trip planner.
It shall be pointed out that not all illegal trips to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic end in tragedy: these trips are massively scheduled by traffickers, who sometimes travel up to three times each week from Puerto Rico to illegally bring Dominicans. But, because of the large amount of lives lost during these trips, both the governments of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have launched massive media campaigns to try to reduce them. In the Dominican Republic, videos of dead bodies on the water are shown on television, to try to deter people from travelling to Puerto Rico on yolas.
Law
Those who traffic illegal immigrants to Puerto Rico face large periods in jail if caught. Dominicans who get caught get flown back to their country, where they do not face criminal charges.
Government agencies usually depend on the services of commercial airlines such as American Airlines, Fina Air or Iberia Airlines to return illegal immigrants from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic.
