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[Translation of a column from the Brazilian web site Carta Maior for January 14. See original here and related articles here and here.]

By Gilberto Maringoni

The administration of the daughter of Bulgarian immigrant Pedro Rousseff, who arrived here in the late 1930s in search of a better life, has just placed restrictions on the entry of immigrants into Brazil.

Last Friday, the National Council on Immigration, an agency tied to the Ministry of Labor, decided that it would halt the annual entry of more than 1,200 Haitians who come to the country in search of better luck. This is a matter of a perverse version of the policy of racial quotas, promoted by several sectors of Brazilian society as a means of providing those of African descent with access to universities and public offices. Now they are quotas to prohibit and not to facilitate. (more…)

New director of immigration is openly anti-Haitian

[Translation of an article from Agence Haïtienne de Presse for March 9. See original article here and related article here.]

Santo Domingo, March 9 – The ministers of the treasury, the interior and education of the Dominican cabinet, as well as the director of immigration, have been replaced.

The new functionaries are Daniel Toribio, José Ramón Fadul and Josefina Pimentel. In the General Directorate of Immigration, involved mostly with Haitian migration, the appointment of the secretary general of the Fuerza Nacional Progresista (FNP – National Progressive Force) party, known for openly anti-Haitian rhetoric, is seen as a sign of a hardening of Dominican migration policy toward Haiti. (more…)

Profits and xenophobia

[Translations of three articles from Dominican newspapers on relations with Haiti and Haitians.]
Dominican exports to Haiti doubled last year
Haiti is now the country’s largest trading partner

[From Nuevo Diario for February 18. See original here.]

Dajabón – The export of Dominican products to Haiti last year reached a value of 462 million dollars, making the neighboring country the Dominican Republic’s most important trading partner, ahead of Puerto Rico and the United States, general director of customs Rafael Camilo announced in this border city on Thursday. The government official stated that among the principal food products sold to Haiti are wheat flour, soybean oil, broken rice, bottled water, crackers, pasta, bananas and chicken parts and giblets.

He added that construction products like cement, steel reinforcing rods, zinc sheets and stainless steel cable are another important part of the commercial exchange between the two countries occupying the island of Hispaniola.

Camilo offered these data after participating in the inauguration of a new building to house the offices of Customs and Migration in Dajabón, on the border in the northern region… (more…)

The housing problem and the controversy over immigration

[Translation of an article from La Nación of Buenos Aires for December 10. See original here.]

by Maia Jastreblansky

The origins of the conflict. The violent incidents in Villa Soldati, which have resulted in three deaths so far, have their origins in the serious housing shortage, which has worsened in the southern area of the national capital.

According to the Instituto de la Vivienda de la Ciudad (IVC – City Housing Institute), some 500,000 people in the city are in need of housing assistance. There is a housing emergency resulting from the marked growth of makeshift dwellings.

In the area surrounding the Indoamericano Park, an important green area for the city and the epicenter of the occupations, are Villa 20 and Los Piletones. It is in the context of a housing crisis that the residents of those surrounding areas decided to cross over into the park and begin dividing it up into lots for the construction of new dwellings. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for November 6. See original article here.]

by Arturo Cano

Salvador de Bahía, November 5 – The election of Dilma Rousseff has unleashed a wave of racism in Brazil. And not because the president elect is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, a communist who became moderately wealthy, but because in the northeastern region, the poorest and the darkest of the country, the vote for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT – Workers’ Party) candidate was substantially larger than that for José Serra, candidate for the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB – Brazilian Social Democrat Party).

On every side, traces of racism and regionalism are surfacing: “Do São Paulo a favor: hang a northeasterner.” The sentence urging the killing of inhabitants of the northeast of Brazil because “they are not people” was written by law student Mayara Petruso on Monday morning. By then it was known that the PT candidate had gotten the majority of the 12 million votes in the north and the northeast of the country that made the difference. Petruso, in the southern city of São Paulo, voted for Serra. (more…)