SANTO DOMINGO.- The Bar Association of the Dominican Republic (CARD) denounced the collaboration of the civil and military authorities and the business community in the massive substitution of local labor by undocumented Haitian workers in the agricultural and construction sectors.
The union’s president, Miguel Surun Hernández, indicated that this “complicity” constitutes a criminal activity of illegal migrant smuggling, punishable by up to 20 years in prison by Law 137-03 on Illicit Smuggling of Migrants and Human Trafficking.
“With all of this, the only aim is to favor businessmen who employ up to 80% of undocumented labor,” he said.
The lawyer mentioned that article 135 of Law 16-92; and articles 135, 144, 423, 424, 433, and 434 of the Labor Code, as well as articles 69, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108 and 121 of Law 285-04, of Migration, prohibits and penalizes not only the hiring of undocumented foreigners but also punishes profiting from the crime of human trafficking with prison terms.
Surun Hernández cited the case of agricultural and construction companies that engage in this practice to the detriment of local labor “under the umbrella of civil and military authorities for the benefit of businessmen,” which could mean that countries be penalized.
“We have legally summoned the Ministry of Labor and the General Directorate of Migration to submit employers, companies in the construction, agricultural, tourism, free zone sectors and all those entities and natural and legal persons, final beneficiaries of the crime of illicit trafficking in persons, ordering the expansion of the deportation program for all foreigners illegally residing in our country, under the warning that they will be formally submitted to Justice under the protection of compliance contemplated in Law 137-11”, said the unionist.
