January 7, 2009
Santo Domingo.- National Council Border (CNF) president Radhamés Batista Tuesday said the immigration authorities may file charges agaisnt the priest Regino Martinez, for the smuggling of alien into a church at Dajabón (northwest).
He said Martinez’s attitude is “incoherent” because he denounces an alleged conspiracy by the border’s civilian and military authorities of trafficking with aliens, while committing a criminal action in broad daylight.
The CNF president said Martinez can’t act as a priest to violate Dominican immigration laws. "We believe no one is above the law and though there’re no rules to implement the Immigration Act, in cases such as those in Dajabón, no one can argue that they’re working on this side and are entitled to remain in the country illegally, because they went to visit their family on the other side."
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26 June 2008
SANTO DOMINGO. - “Until there is a Migration Law or regulation by consensus, adapted to our Constitution, while there isn’t institutionality the problem of the immigrants is never going to be solved,” said the priest Regino Martinez, director of the Jesuit Refugee and Immigrants Service.
The prelate, in reference to the current increase in undocumented Haitians who beg in the country’s streets, said “what anarchy and the lack of laws generate is disorder, violence and repression.”
He said it’s a national problem which must be faced by the State. “It’s not a question of whether Immigration director Carlos Amarante has the sufficient human, economic or technical resources to control the situation; the issue of the children begging can’t be individualized.”
Martinez said the traffic of illegals shouldn’t be treated “in a gross, violent manner, nor with corrupt or repressive controls,” and denounced that in Palo Verde, Hatillo Palma and Villa Vásquez the immigrants are taken with or without ID cards and their rights are violated.
Amarante said that the routine sweeps of Haitian immigrants will continue, within his entity’s possibilities.
Link (here)
According to the same source, Martinez declared that Haitians gather around an area called La Gorra, in Dajabon, from where they are taken to other points within the Dominican Republic; also, that in one particular case, corrupt authorities at a border check-point resorted to detention only when the driver of a vehicle loaded with Haitians offered a final amount of 20k pesos as bribe, instead of the 50k the authorities demanded.
Link (here)
Haitian Workers Face Abuses in Dominican Republic, Says Priest
Feb 8, 2006
Despite the Dominican Republic's poverty, its relative economic and political stability attracts neighboring Haitians, who slip across the border looking for work, said Jesuit Fr Regino Martinez, who has lived for 31 years along the Dominican-Haitian frontier. He directs Border Solidarity, a Jesuit-run organization in the Dominican Republic working with Haitian immigrants.
The Haitians' illegal status makes them vulnerable to abuses, including death, said Fr Martinez, who buried 24 Haitians whose bodies were found January 11 along a road on the Dominican side of the border.
Dominican police said the dead were thrown from a van after they had suffocated in it. The van was transporting the Haitians to Santo Domingo after they slipped across the frontier with the help of professional smugglers, police said.
Fr Martinez said that although accords between the neighboring countries allow Haitians to work in the Dominican Republic, many Haitians are so poor they do not have the identity papers needed to get a Haitian passport or a Dominican visa. Yet the demand for Haitian manual labor in the sugar cane and tourism industries continues to be so great that Haitians illegally move to the Dominican Republic, he said.
A major problem caused by the Haitian influx is that the Dominican Republic is also a poor country and "it is hard for it to take care of all these people," the priest said.
Fr Martinez was forced to bury the Haitians in a mass grave after protests on the Haitian side of the border became riots, preventing him and several other Jesuits from returning the bodies to Haiti.
Fr Martinez estimated that there are several hundred thousand Haitians in the Dominican Republic illegally; he said one of Border Solidarity's main activities is to try to legalize the status of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic
Link (here)
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