Massive Haitian infiltration
DOMINICAN-TODAY - The participation of illegal Haitians in jobs in the country has been increasing.
There are no areas that have not been affected by this phenomenon.
From traditional, such as the sugar industry, agriculture, and construction, they have extended their presence to public transportation, street sales, domestic service, security companies, hotels, and an endless number of informal trades.
Although there is a regulation in the Labor Code (article 135) that establishes a quota of 20 percent of the jobs in formal companies for legal foreigners, this is not complied with.
And precisely, this is a challenge that President Luis Abinader promised to face when he proclaimed that jobs, primarily, should be for Dominicans.
In support of this legal predicament, the National Confederation of Transportation Organizations (CONATRA) has ordered its unions, federations, and companies not to allow illegal Haitians to be employed on their routes, much less to allow them to use them.
CONATRA is exercising an attribute that should be observed by the rest of the formal companies in the country if we genuinely want to reestablish the value that the migration law and the Labor Code itself have to regulate the entrance and permanence of foreigners on our soil.
It is a restorative measure since numerous cases have been reported of Haitian drivers or motoconchistas, primarily illegal, operating public transportation routes in rented or purchased vehicles without documents.
This massive presence of illegal Haitians is stirring up the spirits of many Dominicans and entities of society, who frequently protest against the misconduct or involvement of these immigrants in criminal acts in the face of the apparent negligence of the authorities responsible for enforcing the laws.
We cannot allow society to become fed up with this problem and then opt for drastic solutions if the authorities continue to be incapable of achieving it by the simple means of the law and the will of those in power.
Migrants from Africa and Haiti clash again in Mexico
James3 days ago
A migrant was beaten this Wednesday (April 6) by another migrant of a different nationality, leaving her unconscious, which caused a confrontation between foreigners from Africa and Haiti in the city of Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
The woman, presumably of African origin and who was beaten, fainted and they tried to revive her, but minutes later she recovered, picked up stones and tried on several occasions to break the security fence of the National Guard to throw the rocks at the Haitians who were behind the riot squads they had hit.
The extracontinentals attacked the migration elements using the metal fences that serve as protection and to divide the lines of migrants when they arrive to carry out procedures.
Likewise, in response to their anger, they threw stones at the Haitians who were sheltering to avoid further incidents.
For more than 5 minutes, the Africans and Haitians threw stones at each other, causing chaos and uncertainty among the people who circulated in the area.
Falua, of African origin, denounced that undocumented immigrants from Haiti are selling entrance passes to the offices for 1,000 pesos, when the documents are free.
“The Haitians are working with the immigration agents,” he said in an interview with Efe.
This is the first confrontation recorded between migrants from Africa and Haiti less than 48 hours after the reopening of the migratory regularization offices in Tapachula.
The region is experiencing a record flow of migrants to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30.
Mexico deported more than 114,000 foreigners in 2021, according to data from the Migration Policy Unit of the country’s Ministry of the Interior.
In addition, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) received a record 131,448 refugee applications in 2021.
HAITIAN WOMAN KILLS HER TWO CHILDREN
‘I don’t want them anymore,’ mother told Miami cops. They found her kids, 3 and 5, dead.
MIAMI HERALD
Updated April 13, 2022 7:59 PM
Odette Joassaint called 911 repeatedly, sounding agitated and incoherent, unable to explain why she was calling. It became horribly clear when Miami police officers arrived. “Come get them, I don’t want them anymore,” she told officers, according to a police report.
When police rushed inside her Little River apartment Tuesday night, they found Joassaint’s own children — Jeffrey and Laural Belval, just 3 and 5 years old — hog-tied and strangled. The heart-breaking discovery shook even veteran officers and homicide detectives.
By Wednesday, Joassaint, 41, had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and had been ordered held without bond in her first appearance in Miami-Dade Court. Joassaint, who wore a padded gown designed to prevent suicide, said nothing during the brief proceeding.
But according to Miami police reports she told detectives hours after the killings Tuesday night that she had been struggling financially and her “kids were suffering and that they would suffer less if they were dead,” according to a police report.
Frantzy Belval, the father of both children but estranged from Joassaint, painted a picture of an unstable mother who had not worked for a year, and had been begging to move back in with him. He said he’d consistently refused.
“I told her, ‘You are crazy. You create too much problems,’” Belval said in an interview with the Miami Herald..
The grieving Belval said the children lived with Joassaint full time, although they would normally visit him once a week on Saturdays. “They loved me so much,” he said. “Every week, I buy clothes for the kids.”
Public records show that Joassaint’s life had been in turmoil.
She’d gone through a series of nasty domestic spats with Belval. Each parent had been jailed at least once on allegations of domestic violence, and over the years they’d come to the attention of Florida’s child welfare agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families.
The exact scope of the agency’s involvement with the family was not clear on Wednesday. DCF, citing a confidentiality law, declined to provide more information on the family.
“The events that unfolded yesterday in this home are devastating. The Department is working closely with law enforcement to uncover the circumstances that caused the tragic and untimely death of these two children,” the agency said in a statement. “We have launched a full investigation and will provide updates regularly and publicly.”
It was Joassaint’s own 911 call that brought Miami police to her apartment home on the 100 block of Northeast 75th Street.
“She was having a mental crisis and was irate,” said Miami Police Spokesman Michael Vega, describing the disturbing call. The scene inside the Little River apartment was gut-wrenching: two kids, laying in bed face-down on a bed, hands, feet and necks bound together. According to the police report, Joassaint said she strangled each child with a red ribbon. Officers and Miami Fire Rescue tried desperately to resuscitate the children.
During hours of questioning, the distraught Jossaint ultimately confessed, police said. An appointed public defender could not be reached for comment.
The children’s father told The Herald that Joassaint had lost custody of a third child, a 14-year-old girl, a claim that could not immediately be verified.
The couple had come to the attention of police and state child-welfare authorities in the past. In March, Belval said, the police were called to her apartment when they got into an argument in front of the children. No one was arrested.
In 2017, Joassaint was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Homestead after police said she got into a heated argument with Belval over money. She’d bitten Belval, leaving teeth marks on his arm, and was “the primary aggressor,” according to a police report. Prosecutors wound up dropping the case.
Two years later, when Joassaint was pregnant with their youngest, Belval was arrested in North Miami Beach on a charge of aggravated battery. He was accused of striking Joassaint — who sported a swollen eye and small cut on her lip — during an argument over her being on the phone too long.
Joassaint, however, refused to give a statement to the police. Prosecutors did not press the charge.
She did, however, go to family court to get a restraining order, alleging multiple instances of abuse. Among the allegations: that he threatened to pour boiling water on her, and “brandished” his gun and threatened to shoot her.
A permanent injunction was issued, but later withdrawn after Joassaint wrote the court saying they wished to “reconcile for our children’s well being.”
Her petition also noted that the DCF “[has] gotten involved in the past.”
This story was originally published in the Miami Herald April 13, 2022 9:49 AM.
Opinion: Haiti needs Washington’s help to exit its quagmire
Editorial Board | April 10, 2022
The Washington Post
Haiti passed a grim milestone in February, when the traditional presidential inauguration day came and went with no president taking the oath of office, no realistic prospect of presidential elections, and no established consensus on how to restore some semblance of functioning democracy in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Meanwhile, the Biden administration props up an interim prime minister whose writ, so far as it runs, is to preside over a government with no claim to legitimacy.
That prime minister, Ariel Henry, was named to the job by President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated two days later, before Mr. Henry could be sworn in. On Feb. 7, Moïse’s term expired. Mr. Henry has said he will organize elections this year, but that promise is empty, given how far-fetched it is that balloting could be staged amid rampant insecurity and the current power vacuum.
A potentially hopeful sign was the emergence last year of a coalition of civic organizations that proposes installing an interim government for two years, after which elections would be held. The coalition, which calls itself the Montana Accord, after a hotel in the capital where it meets, consists of political parties, faith groups, professional associations, human rights organizations and trade unions.
However broad-based, the coalition has no more constitutional legitimacy than does Mr. Henry. Moreover, its plan to run the country with a prime minister plus a five-member council exercising presidential powers is unwieldy, to say the least. Even if it assumed power by some unforeseeable means, there is no credible prospect that it would establish control over the nearly 15,000-member police force, which is rife with corruption. Without that, chances are nil that it could stabilize Haiti, mount elections and resuscitate the economy.
The country of more than 11 million has just a handful of elected officials, the terms of scores of others having expired in the absence of elections. Mr. Henry took office largely on the strength of support from a U.S.-led group of ambassadors. But the government and national institutions are in shambles.
Moreover, Mr. Henry’s commitment to bring Moïse’s killers to justice has proved not just hollow but suspicious after a report that he was in contact with a key suspect before and just after the assassination. Although signs point to the involvement of drug-trafficking figures in the president’s killing, most of the kingpins who have been implicated remain at liberty. Haiti’s own authorities have made no meaningful progress in the murder investigation. Meanwhile, according to The Post, U.S. prosecutors, who allege that the killing was partly planned in the United States, have charged two suspects and are seeking the extradition of a third.
The Biden administration has ruled out sending troops, instead paying lip service to finding a Haitian-led exit from the crisis. If there is such a way out — a big if — it might consist in a consensus between the Montana Accord coalition and Mr. Henry’s own forces. Forging such an agreement should be high on the Biden administration’s agenda. But there is little sign Washington is paying attention to events in the impoverished country — despite its long history of devolving into crises that then become impossible to ignore.