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Organized smuggling rings control much of the illegal-alien traffic into Puerto Rico. They do an especially brisk business with Dominicans, many of whom sell all their belongings for a chance to get to U.S. soil. While some Dominicans land in Puerto Rico, others travel to the continental U.S., ( especially New York City. The going rate for a no-frills, no-guarantees trip across the Mona Passage is as high as $1,000. More deluxe trips, complete with falsified documents and a truck ride to San Juan, can cost thousands of dollars.
New smugglers have begun to operate from the French-Dutch island of St. Martin, which Dominicans can enter unhindered, for trips to the less congested east coast of Puerto Rico. Luis Monge, head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's antismuggling unit in San Juan, has targeted at least seven organizations that ship some 250 aliens to Puerto Rico a month. He claims that one man, Ramon Emilio Santana Camacho, is responsible for transporting some 30,000 Dominicans to Puerto Rico and New York since 1976. Although authorities have largely dismantled his far-flung empire, Camacho, who is something of a folk hero in the Dominican Republic, remains free and, according to Monge, is diversifying his operations into cocaine smuggling.
The Dominican exodus has grown along with the country's economic troubles. A huge foreign debt, high inflation and a 30% unemployment rate make it nearly impossible for people to make a living at home. Cutbacks in the U.S. sugar quota last year crippled the chief export industry and displaced thousands of agricultural workers. The refugee flight serves as an escape valve for social discontent, as well as a source of foreign earnings: the emigrants send home an estimated $280 million each year. Concedes Andres Moreta Damiron, the Dominican consul in San Juan: "Our government needs this injection of money."
The results are less positive for Puerto Rico. The island already suffers a 16% unemployment rate. Dominicans, many of whom will work for far less than the U.S. minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, are further undercutting Puerto Ricans in the job market. For Dominicans accustomed to making an average of $85 a month, Puerto Rico is a relative paradise. Many of the male newcomers work as mechanics or construction laborers. The women typically find jobs as housekeepers or cooks at open-air food stands, positions that Puerto Ricans tend to shun. Though the Dominican economy may benefit from such emigration, officials in Santo Domingo discourage citizens from making the perilous trip. Toward that end, they announced plans for a television commercial featuring photos of the blood-stained waters holding the bodies of those who died last week trying to make it to Puerto Rico.