The Huffington Post is on the attack prowl again, this time trying to make Senator Jeff Sessions out to be anti-Dominican for stating the facts as they are: most immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States arrive there because of family links, not because they have skills which the American economy needs.
Although Dominicans are seen as the "new Italians" for quickly moving up to the middle class through education and small business ventures, America is no longer a quickly expanding, newly-industrial nation as it was in the late 19th century. Concerns of overpopulation, underemployment, and higher crime mean that the American people have the right to demand that the country stop importing people who need a generation to reach the middle class. Like wealthy countries in Northern Europe, the United States should concentrate on importing highly-skilled immigrants who will immediately jump into the middle class, with many quickly ascending to the upper echelons of society.
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| Softer on immigrants than Dominican politicians. WKM |
In 2013, the Dominican Republic's Constitutional Tribunal made a sweeping decision which affected over 100,000 people whose parents were low-skilled, foreign nationals. Decision 168-13 meant that anyone born on Dominican soil all the way back to the year 1929 would have to prove their right to citizenship, increasingly valuable as the DR remains in place as the fastest-growing economy in Latin America.
Although a good number of the children of sugarcane workers brought over from Haiti in decades past have gone on to succeed in Dominican society and contribute at high levels, most represent a financial burden to the state, with very few being able to acquire the 300 dollars needed to pay for their citizenship applications.
The United States faces the same situation as the Dominican Republic: "Haitians are creating a false document to show these are relatives or their spouses and they are married when it is not so." They are importing poverty and using benefits.
Although President-elect Donald Trump's immigration policies may seem harsh at first glance, they are much more humane than Dominican or European policies. The United States does not deny citizenship to the children of low-skilled immigrants, something which Dominicans and Europeans regularly do.
Considering the horrible state of America's infrastructure and its overcrowded inner cities, however, denying birthright citizenship to the children of unskilled immigrants may soon become a necessity to prevent the collapse of society.
