Those racist, white supremacist, xenophobic (Dominican) Republicans are at it again. Building a wall, when we all know walls don’t work, just to keep out their Haitian neighbors and fellow global citizens. The inhumanity! The horror!
No, I didn’t wake up lobotomized and therefore a leftie; it’s just fun to mock their ridiculousness every now and then.
Seriously, though, the Dominican Republic is indeed building a wall along its border with Haiti to try to control the stream of Haitians pouring into their country.
Haitians fleeing hunger and violence will soon be met with a 13-foot-tall border wall meant to keep them out of the neighboring Dominican Republic.The concrete and steel structure will stretch some 102 miles (164 kilometers) along the border of the Dominican Republic. Only one border wall in all of the Americas — the one separating the US from Mexico — is longer.In the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo, government officials diplomatically describe it as a painful necessity to insulate one of the region’s most successful economies from one of the hemisphere’s most intractable problems.The wall is also, at some level, a reproach to an international community that has spent billions in Haiti but has been unable or unwilling to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis.
Given the conditions in Haiti, it’s hardly surprising that Haitians want to leave.
What happened to the billions of dollars sent to the tiny country? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. The corruption surrounding both Haitian relief efforts over a decade ago and that of the Haitian government are well documented.
Bloomberg continues:
On the other side of the border, Haiti is in free fall. The Creole-speaking country, which won its independence from France in 1804, has per-capita income one-fifth that of the Dominican Republic. It’s mired in political instability and in the grip of powerful, murderous gangs. Electricity and gasoline are often scarce. Nearly half of Haiti’s 11 million people regularly go hungry, according to the World Food Program.Amid bloodshed and poverty, tens of thousands of Haitians are internally displaced and the number of people fleeing the country for the Dominican Republic and elsewhere has surged. Deportations in the first half of 2022 already surpassed the total for all of last year.It’s in this context that the Dominican Republic recently awarded a $32 million contract to the Cofah Consortium to build the first 33 miles of the wall.. . . . Contreras, the economy minister, says the wall is more than just a brute obstacle to keep Haitians out.“This is not just a fence, it’s not just a wall. It’s part of a larger development package where the fence simply provides security,” he said in an interview. “Our border is terribly porous and very insecure, and we need to deal with that.”The wall will reduce the illegal immigration, drug running, arms trafficking, cattle theft and contraband that plague both nations, he said. It will also channel migrants, goods and services through legal checkpoints. In addition, the government is earmarking money for a port, a tourism hub and trade projects along the border that Contreras says will generate jobs for both nations.
Of course regressive activists are comparing the wall to President’s Trump’s and screeching about blah blah.
“Every wall in the world has been a failure — from the Berlin wall to President Donald Trump’s wall” on the US-Mexico border, said Joseph Cherubin, the head of Mosctha, a non-profit that helps Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican wall “is a waste of money meant to satisfy a group of nationalists.”
I’m not sure why lefties always mention the Berlin wall as if there is even a remote comparison between a wall intended to cage people in a tyrannical communist dystopia and a wall intended to help maintain a free nation’s sovereignty, indeed our very existence as a country. Attempting to leave the commie East Berlin dystopian nightmare meant possible (probable) death, yet thousands faced that fate on the way, they hoped, to freedom.
The construction of the Dominican Republic’s wall began in February of this year. In addition to maintaining their border and their nation, the Dominican Republic also wants to stem the tide of drugs and weapons streaming into their country.
Reuters reported at the time:
“The benefit for both nations will be of great importance,” said Dominican President Luis Abinader shortly before pushing the button to begin pouring concrete into the foundations of what will be the wall in the province of Dajabón, some 230 kilometers northwest of the capital.. . . . Abinader estimated the border wall will reduce the smuggling of commercial goods, weapons and help fight organized crime in both nations.He started the project, which aims to build a 164 kilometer wall, ahead of the anniversary of the Dominican Republic’s independence from Haiti on Feb. 27, 1844.Abinader said the first phase of the project will be completed within nine months at the latest.The 20-centimetre-thick concrete wall topped by a metal mesh will be 3.9 meters (12.8 ft) high and will have fiber optics for communications, movement sensors, cameras, radars and drones.The project also includes the construction of 70 watchtowers and 41 access gates for patrolling.
Good on them. If only Team Biden would follow their very sensible lead.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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