Undocumented Dominican Migration [1 ed.] 9780292745322, 9780292725850

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Undocumented Dominican Migration

Undocumented Dominican Migration

Frank Graziano

University of Texas Press   Austin

pp. ii–iii: Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Copyright © 2013 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2013 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions

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Z39.48-­1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graziano, Frank, 1955–  Undocumented Dominican migration / Frank Graziano. — 1st ed.   p.  cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-0-292-72585-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dominican Republic—Emigration and immigration. 2. Immigrants— Dominican Republic. 3. Illegal aliens—Dominican Republic. 4. Refugees— Dominican Republic. I. Title.  JV7395.G73 2013  304.8097293—dc23 2012031510 doi:10.7560/725850

For the victims of hope

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Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 Miguel 31 Across the Mona Passage 36 Orlando 79 The Culture of Migration 86 Marta 121 The Psychology of Migrant Motivation 126 Raúl 163 Border Enforcement 168 Saúl 217 Notes 223 Bibliography 271 Index 305

A Dominican navy beach station on Playa Limón

Preface

The beach is windblown and covered with debris; the palms rise gently at odd angles. Families of pigs, foraging in the scrub, menace and grunt to protest my approach before retreating at a ridiculous trot. The piglets, sidelit, give an afterglow of indecent pink. I’m heading toward a naval outpost in the distance—it’s on the beach to impede undocumented migration—but my access is blocked by a river. I try to wade across, pause, and back off; it’s too deep. That’s when I heard the motorbike. The driver dismounted, hid his shoes under coconut husks, stripped down to briefs that were impossibly white, and walked toward the surf with his fishing net. I waved; we talked. His name was Rafael. He knew the river and guided me across, then reappeared for the return after I interviewed the recruits at the naval station. Rafael related that for a ten-­year period in the 1980s and 1990s he had been a captain of yolas, the wooden boats used by undocumented migrants to cross the Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. I invited him to my hotel to record an interview, he agreed, and we went together on his motorbike. Rafael’s career as a yola captain ended in 1995 when one of his trips was interdicted at sea and he was prosecuted in Puerto Rico for migrant smuggling. He served half of a three-­year sentence in federal prison and was deported. Under U.S. law Rafael is considered a smuggler, but like most yola captains he had no role in the organization of illegal voyages. Yola captains are generally fishermen who are hired by trip organizers to

x Undocumented Dominican Migration

transport passengers. The captains supplement or replace their meager fishing incomes with this more lucrative opportunity. They are guilty because they knowingly accept employment in the illegal transport of migrants, but their arrest is of little consequence in the disruption of organized smuggling. Another fisherman can always be recruited, and the trip organizers, who generally work in collusion with corrupt Dominican authorities, remain free to continue their enterprise. One must distinguish, therefore, between the organizers of migrant smuggling operations (organizadores) and the captains (capitanes) who pilot the boats. That distinction must in turn be qualified by two others: on locally organized voyages the organizer and the captain are often the same person (in which case culpability before the law increases, although the scale is small); and on trips that are self-­organized by family and friends there may be no captain because the responsibilities are assumed collectively by the migrants themselves. In all cases, the word “captain” is misleading because it implies a significant vessel and a sophisticated operation. Yolas, quite to the contrary, are rustic, unseaworthy boats powered by outboard motors, and the captains have no qualifications other than widely varying maritime knowledge and experience. Many captains fatally bungle their transports simply for lack of expertise. The United States Coast Guard refers to captains as “masters,” meaning the person legally responsible for the vessel. The captains are accompanied by one or more crew members or assistants (ayudantes), who in the U.S. legal system tend to be prosecuted as co-­captains. Crew members come from at least three sources: they are provided by the organizer, they are trusted friends or coworkers of the captain (sometimes the helpers on his fishing boat), and they are migrants—usually the poorest—who offer their services in exchange for all or part of the smuggling fee. Members of this last group are the most unfortunate, because their poverty, rather than their willful complicity in smuggling, makes them vulnerable to prosecution. The word “smuggler” itself confers an eerie stigma that hardly corresponds to Rafael or the other yola captains I interviewed. U.S. federal agencies describe migrant smuggling as the work of criminal gangs, perhaps adapting that concept from drug trafficking, but I encountered instead the disorganized or loosely organized ventures of forthright men—many of them young—who had a skill that was marketable and who satisfied a need in their communities. There are undoubtedly unscrupulous and murderous criminals among them, particularly in the high-­volume orga-

Preface xi

nized smuggling operations that were typical in the 1980s and 1990s, but the great majority of captains are men with principles and behaviors consonant with those of their society. This consonance is not shared by U.S. law, however, and in that discrepancy the criminality emerges. Perceptions of deviance are context-­specific—the rules change when migrant boats cross into U.S. jurisdiction. Throughout this study I use the word “smuggler” only in generic contexts and prefer the precise term—“organizer,” “captain,” “crew”—as the occasion warrants. These word choices are integral to my greater intent to humanize or deinstitutionalize migration and to extract it from the criminal context within which it is often interpreted. Even the words “migrant” and “immigrant” are misleading, because they reduce an entire range of human experience to a transition and dislocation, an alien-­ation. The migration is prioritized, magnified, and stigmatized to such a degree that it eclipses the life to which it is integral. The father, the mother, the worker, the lover, the person who thinks, aspires, struggles, and celebrates, who falls ill and gets well, who is honorable or not, deserving or not, all forfeit their relative significance as they collapse into the one word—“migrant” or “immigrant.” My intent, therefore, is to situate successful and unsuccessful attempts at migration within a broader range of life experiences and to consider migration as a reasonable, responsible, and even necessary choice given certain global, socioeconomic, cultural, and familial conditions.1 I likewise endeavor to destigmatize U.S. border enforcement agencies, at least those in Puerto Rico. If one needs a villain in the federal government, the better candidates are the presidents, senators, and representatives responsible for generations of incoherent, reactive, misguided, and politically conditioned immigration policies, compounded by economic and foreign policies that have harmful impacts on millions of lives. Throughout this study I incorporate knowledge and perspectives from the Coast Guard, United States Customs and Border Protection, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico. With the exception of some public affairs officers and most Freedom of Information Act officers, I found the personnel of these agencies to be forthcoming and generous with their knowledge and expertise. My positive regard for them was reinforced by migrant and captain informants, who often without prompting spoke highly of U.S. border-­enforcement personnel, particularly the Coast Guard. The migrants expressed gratitude for the humane treatment and unexpected kindnesses while in custody,

xii Undocumented Dominican Migration

and the captains expressed admiration for tactical competence and ingenuity. All of them face U.S. border enforcement with dread, of course, and they wish it would disappear or leave them alone, but they also understand the rules of the game and appreciate the dignified treatment at a time when they are powerless and vulnerable. These sentiments contrast sharply with migrants’ assessment of Dominican navy personnel, who reportedly treat them roughly and without respect, steal their money and possessions, and imprison them to extort bribes. The term “migration” throughout this book refers to undocumented international emigration from the Dominican Republic unless otherwise indicated explicitly or by context. Despite increasing use in scholarly literature of “unauthorized” (among other qualifiers—“illegal,” “irregular”— and the government’s “entry without inspection”), “undocumented” is the most precise term in the present context and I use it whenever an adjective is needed. To avoid unnecessary repetition, “under current law” or “under current policy” is the implied qualifier in pertinent contexts throughout the book. Dominican migrants generally think of Puerto Rico as a realm separate from the United States (the latter often referred to metonymically as “Nueba Yol”—the Dominican pronunciation of New York), but because Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, I use inclusive language by referring to the forty-­eight contiguous states as “the mainland.” Instead of migration “to Puerto Rico and the United States,” for example, I use “to Puerto Rico and the mainland.” For clarity, when the context requires it, I vary from Dominican usage and use “yola” in reference only to the wooden boats made specifically for transporting migrants; other boats are identified as appropriate (“fishing boat” or “tourist boat,” for example).2 For decades migration scholars have advocated studies that are strongly interdisciplinary and that integrate “macro- and micro-­level approaches into coherent multilevel models.” Douglas S. Massey and his collaborators observed more than a decade ago that descriptive empirical studies, although useful for demographic purposes, “provide little basis for coming to terms with the fundamental forces driving immigration into North America.” They added more generally that “social scientists do not approach the study of immigration from a shared paradigm, but from a variety of competing theoretical viewpoints fragmented across disciplines, regions, and ideologies. As a result, research on the subject tends to be narrow, inefficient, and characterized by duplication, miscommunication, reinvention, and bickering about fundamentals.” Recognition

Preface xiii

of the complexity of migration “has led to a renewed interest in the nature of migrant decision making, a reconceptualization of the basic motivations that underlie geographic mobility, [and] greater attention to the context within which the decisions are made,” among other factors. And finally, “a complete account of migration requires theories and data that link larger social structures with individual and household decisions, connect micro- and macrolevels of analysis, and relate causes to consequences over space and time.”3 My exploration of the interacting structural, cultural, and personal factors that motivate migration is perhaps not what these social scientists had in mind, but my departure from the norms of migration scholarship is purposeful. As my research progressed it became increasingly apparent that the concerns of migrants and the concerns of social-­science scholarship are largely disconnected. This occurs, in part, because most social-­ science approaches to migration stress structural forces and the consequences of globalization rather than individual experience, and because economic and policy concerns condition perspectives, research design, nature of inquiry, subjects of study, and methods of analysis. (A purpose of such research is to inform policy, but policy makers routinely dismiss it or subordinate it to political considerations, such as getting reelected.) The immediacy of migrant experience is quantified by empirical protocols, abstracted in statistics, subordinated to structural determinism, refracted through scholarly trends, and sidelined by ridiculous polemics. It is also misrepresented by presuming rationality. As Massey put it, “Sociologists have unwisely elevated the rational over the emotional in attempting to understand and explain human behavior . . . By failing to theorize emotion and by ignoring interactions between rational and emotional cognition, sociologists derive an incomplete and misleading view of human social behavior.”4 People who migrate are not demographic units or constituents of a robotic labor force mobilized without volition but rather are complete and complex human beings who are motivated by multiple factors, many of which are unquantifiable. I have endeavored, consequently, to remain as faithful as possible to my sources (notwithstanding the degree of deformation inherent to any representation); to build an informant-­centered study upward from the migrants’ experience without romanticizing that experience; and to stress the migration of individuals—Marta, Carlos, Morena, Saúl—in the greater context of their lives, their culture, and the world around them.

xiv Undocumented Dominican Migration

The book is conceived in the humanities as an interpretive ethnography with an integrated multidisciplinary approach. I have tried to find a balance between an engaging narrative accessible to nonspecialist readers and a scholarly rigor suited to the topic’s complexity; the prose shifts registers accordingly. The research is primarily evidenced in (and sometimes relegated to) the notes, which are consolidated at the end of paragraphs. My focus is on emigration, not immigration, which is to say on the factors that motivate and deter migration, on the decision-­making and planning processes, and on the movements and disruptions of migration itself. The study is based on seventy-­four interviews with migrants and captains, plus a few other relevant individuals such as family members and teachers. Seven research trips were made to the Dominican Republic: three one-­month trips to the Samaná Peninsula (with one side trip to Miches) in 2007, 2008, and 2009; a one-­week trip to Miches in 2008; a one-­week trip to Santo Domingo in 2009; a five-­week trip to the Samaná Peninsula and Santo Domingo in 2010; and a one-­month trip to Bayahibe in late 2010 and early 2011. A few additional interviews were done in Chicago during summer 2011. The informants were accessed by referral from one to another in what is sometimes referred to (unfortunately) as the “snowball method.” The information provided by all sources was multiply verified and reverified (“triangulation”) and a biased sample was avoided by pursuing referrals in different towns and through the contacts of different assistants. The interviews were done on the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic (the sample is biased to that degree), in El Cedro, Las Galeras, Las Terrenas, Naranjito, Sánchez, and Miches. The initial interviews, which were recorded, generally lasted about forty minutes. When outstanding informants were identified through these short interviews, I requested one or more subsequent meetings. This occurred on thirteen occasions, four with smugglers and nine with migrants. In these cases I spent between three and eight hours with each informant.5 Throughout the study the informants are identified by first names, some of which are pseudonyms. This standard is maintained even when last names are published in news or trial documents. I was ambivalent about including photographs of the migrants, but after consultation with social-­science colleagues I decided finally in favor for three reasons: the photographs do not put the migrants at any legal risk; the migrants themselves prefer inclusion; and the photographs are consonant with the book’s broader intent to humanize and personalize migration. Photo-

Preface xv

graphs of captains are not included. Unless otherwise indicated in the captions, all of the photographs were taken by me during the fieldwork. Informants from U.S. federal agencies are identified in the text by their titles or by descriptive indicators of their positions. I realize that some of these informants in law enforcement and prosecution might not always agree with my interpretations, but I offer my views in goodwill, in the spirit of mutual respect for difference of opinion, and in the belief that a complex representation is at once synthetic and dynamic—a composite of interacting, competing, and even contradictory points of view. During a ten-­day research trip to Puerto Rico in 2008, I interviewed the commander and a cutter captain at the United States Coast Guard sector headquarters in San Juan and an operations officer at the air station in Aguadilla. On the same trip I interviewed the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of migration-­related prosecutions, a Special Assistant United States Attorney, and the chief of the criminal division at the United States Attorney’s Office in San Juan; and, at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Aguadilla, the patrol agent in charge of the intelligence unit at Border Patrol and a director at Caribbean Air and Marine Operations. The director of CBP’s Office of Field Operations in San Juan was subsequently interviewed by telephone. In January 2009 I interviewed the Coast Guard strategic intelligence specialist in Virginia who monitors maritime migration in the Mona Passage, in March 2009 a Coast Guard attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, and in October 2009 the previously interviewed cutter captain, now stationed at the Coast Guard Office of Law Enforcement in Washington, D.C. In June 2010 I interviewed another Coast Guard cutter captain and the chief of response operations, both at Sector San Juan, and the new Coast Guard attaché and the Coast Guard liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo. In San Juan I also re-­interviewed the Assistant United States Attorney, the Special Assistant United States Attorney, and CBP’s director of field operations, the last of these together with a CBP chief and two operations specialists. During the same trip, now in Aguadilla, I interviewed the lead intelligence agent at Border Patrol and the pilot of a Dash 8 surveillance aircraft at CBP’s Caribbean Air and Marine Operations. Throughout the project I also corresponded extensively with key informants and with public affairs officers at the mentioned agencies. Unpublished documents, statistics, and digital imagery of boat migration were also acquired from these agencies, many through Freedom of Information Act requests. The fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico was com-

xvi Undocumented Dominican Migration

plemented by research in all pertinent print and media sources, as represented in the bibliography. Hundreds of news articles and press releases were excluded from the bibliography; a few are cited in the notes when quoted or directly pertinent to a textual passage. To simplify references in the notes, I use “from” when quoting directly from any textual source (“the quoted passage is from”) and “in” for a secondary citation (“the quoted passage is in,” rather than “the quoted passage is quoted in”). The URLs of online sources are excluded from the notes; the sources can generally be accessed easily by searching their titles. The book is supplemented by a companion website that includes photographs, video clips, and text supplements, many of which are referenced at appropriate moments in the book’s chapters. These materials are accessible by visiting www.undocumented-­dominican-­migration.com.

Acknowledgments

My research on the Samaná Peninsula would not have been possible without the two assistants—Chencho in Las Terrenas and Carlos in Sánchez— who facilitated contacts, transported me to interviews, and welcomed me into their lives, their homes, and their friendship. I express my most enduring, sincere gratitude to them and to their families. I am also deeply indebted and grateful to the migrants and captains who trusted me with their stories. Marta, Sergio, Saúl, Orlando, Moreno, and Miguel are worthy of very special separate mention for their kindness, insightfulness, and patience in bringing me to an understanding of Dominican migration culture. In the United States, the writings and friendship of Raúl Martínez Rosario were likewise essential. In the United States Coast Guard I am grateful first and foremost to Darrell Nolen, senior alien migrant interdiction operations analyst in the Atlantic Area Intelligence Division; and to Lieutenant Commander John Fiorentine. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of public affairs specialist Ricardo Castrodad and staff attorney José Luis Suárez, both at Sector San Juan; of Thomas L. Amerson at the Research and Development Center; and of the following officers who generously shared their time and expertise: Captain (retired) Gary Palmer; Captain James Tunstall, Commander James Sutton, Commander Gene Rush, Lieutenant Commander Derek Cromwell, Lieutenant Commander (retired) Fred Griffin, Lieutenant Commander Brian Betz, and Lieutenant George R. Suchanek.

xviii Undocumented Dominican Migration

Chencho (seated) and Carlos

In U.S. Customs and Border Protection I was fortunate to be assisted by two exceptional specialists, Wendy Vallejo in operations and Jeffrey Quiñones in public affairs. Marcelino Borges, the director of CBP’s Office of Field Operations, was extraordinarily helpful, and I am grateful also to CBP chief Angel M. Avilés and operations specialist Carlos J. Gómez. In Border Patrol at the Ramey Sector in Aguadilla, my knowledge was greatly enhanced by interviews with two agents in the Intelligence Unit, Antonio Solís and Habacuc Laracuente. I am also grateful to Xavier Morales for logistical assistance. At CBP’s Caribbean Air and Marine Operations in Aguadilla, I was grateful to interview Ronaldo Ortiz, director of air operations, and particularly pilot Bret Frazier, who quadrupled my understanding of air surveillance and of migrant interdiction generally. At the United States Attorney’s Office in San Juan, I benefited enormously from the kindness and generosity of Evelyn Canals, Assistant

Acknowledgments xix

United States Attorney and immigration unit coordinator, and Eugenio A. Lomba-­Ortiz, Special Assistant United States Attorney. I am also grateful for the time and insights of José Ruiz, chief of the criminal division, and for the assistance of public affairs specialist Lymarie Llovet. At the United States Embassy in Santo Domingo, press officer David Searby was extraordinarily generous in facilitating interviews and— together with information specialist Nani Martínez—providing media from embassy campaigns. In the fraud prevention unit, manager Bruce R. Kraft generously shared his deep knowledge concerning document and marriage fraud. After more than a year of correspondence and telephone calls (mostly mine), the Bureau of Prisons and its contractor GEO Group permitted me to interview an inmate at the Flightline Unit federal prison in Big Spring, Texas. I am very grateful to the warden and to the kind and helpful staff members for their assistance. I also express my very special thanks to attorney Olga M. Shepard de Mari for her exceptional kindness and generosity and for facilitation of documents that were critical to my research. A pilot study for this book was published in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 15/1 (2006; actually published in 2010) as “Why Dominicans Migrate: The Complex of Factors Conducive to Undocumented Maritime Migration.” My very special thanks go to the journal’s editor, Khachig Tölölyan, for his encouragement and precise editorial sensibility. I also sincerely thank the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies and Latin American Collection for travel and research support through U.S. Department of Education Title VI funding. At Connecticut College, I am grateful for support from the John D. MacArthur chair research stipend, from the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and from the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts. I am also most grateful to Nancy Lewandowski for her unwavering support; to the Shain Library’s interlibrary loan staff for its gracious accommodation of my merciless requests; and to my friends and colleagues Paola Sica and Aida Heredia. And finally, I am endlessly grateful to my editor, Theresa May, for her kindness, solidarity, and remarkable efficiency.

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Undocumented Dominican Migration

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Introduction

Complex Causation When Claudia boarded a migrant boat to Puerto Rico she had no idea that her migration was conditioned by globalization, neoliberalism, or even chronic poverty—she just missed her husband. He had migrated a few years earlier and Claudia was motivated by love, longing, and the anxiety that another woman would replace her. The anxiety generated a sense of urgency. Claudia had no idea that her family was transnational; that her perceptions were conditioned by relative deprivation; that a culture of migration—routine boat travel, easy access to smugglers, official corruption—predisposed and facilitated her migration. All of these factors were bearing down imperceptibly as Claudia exercised her free will and acted on her love and longing. Her simple human concerns had been permeated but nevertheless remained simple and human. And she had no idea that she would become a statistic for family reunification, for the feminization of migration, and, ultimately, for migrant interdiction operations. She just missed her husband. Thousands of undocumented Dominicans attempt the crossing to Puerto Rico, a sixty- to ninety-­mile journey on wooden boats known as yolas. As a commonwealth of the United States, Puerto Rico attracts migrants with its dollar economy and its access to the mainland without passports and visas. For some migrants Puerto Rico is the final destination; for others it is a temporary residence before continuing to New York and other U.S. cities.

2 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Individual decisions to migrate result from the dynamic interactions of structural, cultural, and personal factors that motivate or dissuade a given migrant. One migrant is more affected by some factors and another migrant by others, and many factors are never explicitly taken into account, but migration is always multiply determined by a causal composite. Structural forces predispose migration and a culture conditioned by poverty sustains it, but decisions to migrate, to stay home, and to return home are then precipitated by more immediate personal concerns. An appreciation of such concerns—aspirations, responsibility, desperation, beliefs—restores the emotive cognition that is irrelevant to most migration scholarship but critical to migrant motivation. The inclusion and integration of personal factors also avoids the causal determinism that is characteristic of structuralist arguments and the overemphasis on quantifiable data that is prevalent in social-­science scholarship generally. Undocumented migration is idiosyncratic, chaotic, and poorly suited to fixed systems that purport to explain motivation structurally and statistically. Migrants are social beings whose collective individual actions are transforming the very structures that mobilize them, and they are human beings whose humanity is simplified and devalued when adapted to the rigid limitations of empiricism. The complex causation of migration does not entail the operations of macro-­level factors on passive actors or the isolation of individual action from its context; it rather entails the mutual interactions and evolutions of the mentioned overlapping spheres—structural, cultural, and personal—as they negotiate a “balance of causal priority.” Frustration, ambition, vulnerability, flight, compulsion, loss, perception, values, knowledge and its interpretations, individual responses to structural pressures, and other unquantifiable factors make decisions to migrate very subjective and very human.1 The migration theory that most resembles this complex of causal factors is known as “cumulative causation,” a concept that was introduced by Gunnar Myrdal in 1957 and later developed by Douglas S. Massey. Myrdal, who was primarily concerned with circular causation as it relates to poverty, recognized that a process of social change can develop an internal, cumulative, accelerating momentum. In Massey’s development of the concept, “causation is cumulative in that each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made, typically in ways that make additional movement more likely.” International migration tends to become self-­perpetuating primarily because migrant networks and a culture of migration in sending communities facilitate new departures. The cumulative expansion of net-

Introduction 3

works—each new migrant links to family, friends, and community relations, which in turn link to others—provides knowledge that modifies perceptions and resources that reduce the expense and risk of migration. Social and economic changes in sending communities themselves—the familiarity with higher standards of living abroad, the beneficial effects of remittances on neighboring families, an enhanced sense of relative deprivation—are also conducive to continued and increased migration. As Massey sees it, the decision to migrate is “increasingly disconnected from social and economic conditions in the sending community and determined more by the accumulation of migration-­related human capital and social capital in the form of network connections.” He argues in summary that “migration decisions are made jointly by family members within households; that household decisions are affected by local socioeconomic conditions; that local conditions are, in turn, affected by evolving political, social, and economic structures at the national and international levels; and that these interrelationships are connected to one another over time.”2 Massey’s theory is based primarily on research among rural Mexicans. The complex causation of undocumented Dominican migration conforms to many of the observations proper to that fieldwork—the social context altered by migration, a degree of self-­perpetuation, the role of migrant networks, an enhanced sense of relative deprivation, and the interrelations of micro- and macro-­level factors—but also differs from the tenets of cumulative-­causation theory in several important respects: • Network connections, while important, are not the dominant factor in decisions to migrate, and these decisions are not disconnected from social and economic conditions as network connections become stronger. Cumulative causation stresses the self-­perpetuation of migration “regardless of the conditions that originally caused it,” but Dominican migrant flows vary significantly in response to economic fluctuations and to border enforcement.3 • Decisions to migrate are less reasoned and more informal than they are represented in cumulative-­causation theory (and in sociology generally), in part because motivation is generated not by rational choice but rather by the interactions of emotion and cognition under cultural and structural pressures. Many migrant decisions are made with little or no planning, and some are spontaneous.4 • The decisions are often made by individuals, not by families, even to the degree that many migrants depart on yolas secretly, without

4 Undocumented Dominican Migration

informing family members. The decisions are usually made, however, to benefit families (to support one’s children, for example).5 • The potential loss of the smuggling fee is a primary concern as most Dominicans consider migration, and for this reason their perceptions of smuggler reliability, border enforcement, and job availability are critical. • Interacting social and cultural factors, referred to in summary as a “culture of migration,” predispose migration as suggested by cumulative-­causation and other theories, but the culture of undocumented Dominican migration encompasses a broad range of factors—values, attitudes toward the law, corruption, and routinization of undocumented departures, for example—in addition to the commonly mentioned emulation, networking, relative deprivation, and illusions of migrant life abroad.6 • While it is often correct that “each act of migration alters motivations and perceptions in ways that encourage additional migration,” the reports from failed and return migrants, and from unemployed and underemployed migrants abroad, tend to discourage migration.7 Complex causation, in summary, entails the interactions of individual disposition, cultural context, and domestic and global conditions as they together generate migration. The structural factors that are most pertinent to undocumented Dominican migration are summarized in the next three sections. These include, respectively, global economic factors, benefits of migration to the Dominican government, and chronic poverty. These factors are supplemented on the companion website by “United States Foreign Policy,” which explores U.S. interventions in the Dominican Republic as a contributing cause of the migration that, in turn, U.S. border enforcement attempts to curtail. All of these factors, together with the personal, cultural, and border-­enforcement factors treated in later chapters, are interactive in the complex causation of migration. Global Economic Factors Conducive to Undocumented Migration Wage Differentials Many Dominican informants relate that in Puerto Rico the income is higher and the cost of living is lower: ganas más y cuesta menos. Tito elaborates: In the Dominican Republic you work a day just to eat that day,

Introduction 5

but abroad you work a day and can eat for a week or month. With such views the migrants express a central premise of neoclassical economics, that differences in wage rates between countries induce workers to migrate internationally in pursuit of higher income. More recent economic theories have added, among other observations, that migration results from economic failures that jeopardize material well-­being and impede economic advancement; and that decisions to migrate are not made by isolated individuals but by groups—usually families—in which people act collectively to maximize anticipated income and to minimize risk in the event of domestic economic decline. In addition to monetary gain, higher wages also confer status and prestige. Even demeaning jobs by U.S. standards can be perceived as prestigious—if only because the jobs are abroad—and the prestige is enhanced by remittances that improve relatives’ standards of living in the home country.8 All of these ideas apply in varying degrees to undocumented Dominican migration but with a qualification regarding individual and group decision making. Economic theory gives the impression that migrants think like economists, making calculations of economic fluctuations and cost-­benefit ratios and then planning for the long term by diversifying portfolios with remittances. The great majority of yola migrants are not formally educated and their approach to problems is less ponderous than that of the scholars who write about them. In most cases a prospective migrant resolves individually and sometimes arationally to make the journey and then evades anticipated objections or convinces others to support the decision. Some couples or families do discuss migration as a means of advancement, but the discussions rarely entail more than “I’ll go and send money home” or “We’ll save until we can build a house, and then I’ll come back.” The planning sometimes concerns the very human and noneconomical matter of who will face the danger: “My oldest son wanted to make the trip and I told him: ‘David, I’m the one who should go, because if the yola is lost, nothing is lost; you’re very young.’” In most cases the decisions are made with little or no formal planning and in the absence of accurate information that might inform a choice. There is generally a vague sense that income would increase by working abroad— “I could make more money in Puerto Rico, like my cousin”—but without considering, for example, the double expense of living abroad and sending home remittances.9

6 Undocumented Dominican Migration

World Systems As described by Saskia Sassen, the consolidation of a world economy “creates the conditions in which international migrations emerge as a massive labor-­supply system.” Capitalism extends outward from developed nations and penetrates countries of the developing world, and consequently “noncapitalist patterns of social and economic formation are disrupted and transformed.” A result is massive displacement from traditional livelihoods, creating mobile populations prone to migration. Already in 1989 Aristide R. Zolberg observed that “no corner of the globe is now left that has not been restructured by market forces, uprooting the last remnants of subsistence economies and propelling ever growing numbers to search for work.”10 At the same time, workers in developed countries such as the United States resist low-­paying, labor-­intensive jobs, even in times of high unemployment, thereby creating a strong demand for immigrant labor. A mobile, unemployed labor force in one country connects with the demand for cheap labor in another. The supply and demand of labor are also affected by population growth, which is almost six times faster in developing countries. Rapid population growth combined with job shortage and poverty induce young people in developing countries to migrate in search of employment, while in developed countries slow growth and an aging population create a need for immigrant labor.11 Historically, the labor flows to the United States—including Puerto Rico—have been cyclical, with many migrants coming and going but not settling permanently. Enhanced border enforcement has disrupted that cyclicity because multiple crossings are now unfeasible due to the risk and cost, and an unintended consequence has been the consolidation of an undocumented population in the United States. This, in turn, has accelerated the growth of an impoverished underclass, including a second generation born into an urban, U.S. version of the disadvantage that migrant parents escaped in their countries of origin. Migrants’ quest for a better future for their children often results, consequently, in downward assimilation, which perpetuates a cheap labor force together with the social problems associated with urban poverty, including crime.12 Neoliberalism Neoliberalism (also known as “the Washington Consensus”) refers to policies that promote deregulation, liberalized foreign trade and investment,

Introduction 7

and privatization of state-­owned enterprises. In theory neoliberalism benefits developing countries, but in practice the imposition of structural adjustments has been mostly detrimental to economies and societies. It has also aggravated disparities in the distribution of wealth, both domestically and globally. The ratio of income differentials between the richest and poorest countries is currently about 70:1. Over half of the world’s population—2.8 billion people—lives on less than $2 daily, and many consume less in a month than most Americans consume in a day. In Latin America, nearly 80 million people live in extreme poverty, with daily incomes of less than $1. The consequences, insofar as migration is concerned, are apparent: “The number of migrants seeking to move from disadvantaged to relatively privileged countries is likely to increase,” and this is “fueled by a widening gap in economic and physical security between adjacent regions.”13 The levels of income inequality in Latin America are among the highest in the world, and the Dominican Republic, though less severely polarized than some other countries in the region, has a Gini coefficient of 48. Dominican poverty and wealth disparity are perpetuated by weak institutions and corruption; by policies and allocation of resources that benefit a small minority; by insufficient political will to make long-­term, pro-­poor developmental commitments; and by the adoption of neoliberal policies that have worsened the inequity that these policies purport to alleviate.14 The economic restructuring of the Dominican Republic began in the 1970s with a transition from agricultural exports to an economy based on tourism and export-­processing free trade zones (also known as zonas francas). Prior to the global recession beginning in December 2007 there were about sixty of these zones in which some 600 firms operated; in 2010 there were fifty-­five zones with about 450 firms. Tax exonerations, exemption from domestic laws that protect labor, and low wages make these zones attractive to foreign corporations. The establishment of free trade zones was complemented in the Dominican Republic by other neoliberal reforms, such as the privatization of state-­owned enterprises including an airline, a hotel chain, sugar mills, and electricity companies. The Dominican Republic consequently experienced an initial burst of growth that benefited the elite, foreign investors, and to some degree an emerging middle class, but the majority of Dominicans were excluded from the economic benefits and little was accomplished to ameliorate poverty. The overall effect for workers was detrimental: a doubling of unemployment between 1971 and 1991, inflation that decreased minimum-­ wage purchasing power to half the value it had in the early 1970s, and

8 Undocumented Dominican Migration

repressive containment of social discontent resulting from impoverishment. The symptoms of chronic poverty—unemployment, illiteracy, infant mortality, malnutrition, social instability—were prevalent. In short, the incorporation of the Dominican Republic into global capitalism did more to foster migration than to improve the social and economic conditions that might induce potential migrants to stay home.15 Similarly, the U.S.–Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement (known as DR-­CAFTA), implemented in the Dominican Republic on March 1, 2007, eliminates barriers to trade and investment and may benefit some social sectors, but among the population inclined to migrate the positive effects have been minimal. Exploitation, conversely, is prevalent: “D.R.-­CAFTA fails to require compliance with even the most basic internationally recognized labor rights and norms.” In recent years there has also been a significant decline in free trade zone employment, partially as a result of competition from similar zones in Central America and Asia. At their peak the Dominican free trade zones employed 200,000 workers; by 2010 the number had fallen below 120,000.16 Even the term “Washington Consensus” suggests that neoliberal policies are designed by and for the benefit of wealthy countries that have the capital to invest in the opened free markets and to benefit from the structural adjustments that create a favorable profit environment. Neoliberal discourse is embellished with the promise of a beneficent future in which a measure of prosperity is shared by all, but the benefits in developing countries tend to accrue to a politically powerful elite. National interests are subordinate to multinational corporate interests, and poor Dominicans are subjects of “a system in which the model of economic growth and the institutional order create wealth while reproducing poverty.” The neoliberal globalization of corporate capitalism yields huge profits for some while maintaining and exacerbating the poverty of others. Its relentless and sometimes ruthless quest to maximize profit results in profound damages to social stability, labor rights, education, housing, and health care, but also to traditional lifestyles and values.17 All of these consequences collectively are conducive to labor migration, but the neoliberal concept of liberalization excludes the free movement of labor. Capital and trade move freely across borders but labor is blocked, and this blockage causes “a distortion of the globalization process” and forces workers to migrate illegally. Undocumented immigrants who do enter the United States (there are currently some 11 million) are excluded socially but at once included in the workforce “under imposed

Introduction 9

conditions of enforced and protracted vulnerability.” In this perspective, a function of borders is the maintenance of inequitable wealth distribution and “the extraction of cheap labor by assigning criminal status to a segment of the working class—illegal immigrants.”18 In another perspective, however, the interests of corporate capitalism and of U.S. border-­enforcement policy are in conflict: many industries depend on the undocumented immigration that border enforcement attempts to reduce or eliminate. The dependence on undocumented cheap labor is frustrated by the politically expedient need to control the volume. Corporate capitalism nevertheless benefits: neoliberalism generates corporate wealth abroad and in doing so exacerbates local poverty; that poverty motivates international migration, which creates a cheap and docile labor force for corporations in the United States; and a border-­ enforcement/industrial complex—which maintains an expensive enforcement regimen, including prisons for mandatory administrative detention—provides corporate contracts subsidized by taxpayers. It’s a trifecta. Benefits of Migration to the Dominican Government When masses of migrants depart in search of opportunities abroad, the demand for scarce domestic employment is reduced and the burden on social programs (education, health care, pensions) is lowered. Remittances from migrants working abroad redouble the benefits by alleviating the poverty of others. The economy is energized by increased consumption, housing is improved, and—to some degree—small businesses are developed with invested remittances. Poor Dominicans who have migrated to work abroad thus doubly contribute to remedying the grim situation that motivated their migration, once by their absence and again by supporting others. These safety-­valve functions of migration—the release of potentially explosive social and economic pressures—also include the “export of discontent,” as exemplified by the migration of opposition activists after Joaquín Balaguer assumed the presidency in 1966. Unlike economic migration today, these first departures were politically motivated, largely from the urban middle class, and facilitated by the United States in order to consolidate Balaguer’s power. Economic migration followed—discontent comes in many forms—and eased the social pressures of disillusionment and frustration that result from entrapment in poverty. The hundreds of

10 Undocumented Dominican Migration

thousands of migrants with immigrant visas over the subsequent decades were complemented by uncounted others who benefited from liberal distribution of nonimmigrant visas and from acquiescence to visa overstays (and thus to undocumented labor) in the United States.19 Dominican migration began at a favorable visa-­granting time and accrued “a large legal population, allowing permanent family-­based immigration to gain considerable momentum.” Later, when the Dominican Republic suffered economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s and 2003–2004, the waves of new migrants faced different circumstances. The infrastructure was in place, critical mass in the United States had been established (and augmented by the 1986 amnesty), the network continued to draw and to facilitate new departures, but visa ineligibility and bureaucratic resistance frustrated migration within the system. The blocked momentum diverted to undocumented migration by yola, which over the past few decades has become an established compensatory channel to economic advancement.20 The Dominican government benefits multiply from these waves of migration, to a certain degree depends on them, and despite intermittent disruption has tacitly condoned undocumented departures. As early as 1978 a CIA report observed that “given the bleak employment prospects, the Dominican Government will resist taking strong measures to deter illegal migration.” The government has done little to impede undocumented departures; on the contrary, some of its agencies, notably the Dominican navy, have for decades profited with impunity from complicity in migrant smuggling.21 The burden of basic social security is displaced from a government to its citizens—its poor citizens—when migration and remittances become compensatory means to subsidize a nation’s economy. According to Dominican Central Bank statistics, households in the Dominican Republic have received remittances from family members abroad as follows: $3.22 billion in 2008, $3.04 billion in 2009, and $2.99 billion in 2010. These sums represent about 10 percent of the Dominican Republic’s gross domestic product. A 2004 Inter-­American Development Bank study found that more than 70 percent of an estimated 2 million Dominican adults working abroad (in the United States and other countries) regularly remit to 38 percent of adults (1.9 million) in the Dominican Republic, for an estimated total of $2.7 billion. As Luis Guarnizo explained in 1997, “Migrants’ monetary transfers (excluding their business investments) now constitute the second, and according to some the first, most important source

Introduction 11

of foreign exchange for the national economy, and they are a sine qua non for Dominican macro-­economic stability, including monetary exchange rates, balance of trade, international monetary reserves, and the national balance of payments.”22 The migrants most able to remit are those who entered the United States with immigrant visas or who later normalized undocumented status (through amnesty or marriage, for example) and gained access to formal employment. Many yola migrants today, struggling for income in a weak economy, remit little, and some can barely meet their own living expenses abroad. Sonia’s husband sends $100 or $200 “every once in a while”; Víctor’s wife sends less than $100 “when she can”; and the spouses of many others send nothing. The pattern is similar to the results of a study conducted earlier in a poor Santo Domingo neighborhood where 77 percent of the households had family members who migrated to the United States but only 26 percent of these households received remittances regularly.23 If undocumented migrants’ inability to send remittances persists in the long term and on a grand scale, then the safety valve may gradually close and pressure may increase on Dominican society and government. The pressure is also increased when migrant flow is blocked by U.S. border enforcement. I asked Moreno what happens when unemployment at home cannot be relieved by migrant work abroad. He responded succinctly: “Crime.” Poor Dominicans are caught in the vicious cycle of migration as a symptom of underdevelopment but also as a cause of it, insofar as migration defers or substitutes sustainable development. As Alejandro Portes explains it, “Out-­migration acquires structural importance for sending nations not by developing them, but precisely by consolidating entrenched elites inimical to their development. The ‘safety valve’ function of large outflows and the role of remittances in buttressing public finances play a role in the process: they do not change the institutional underpinnings of economic stagnation and social inequality, but can actually perpetuate them.” A government’s dependence on migration is consequently not conducive to developmental transformation but is rather a temporary expedient or default remedy with long-­term consequences.24 The benefits of migration to the Dominican government are also suggested by the 1994 constitutional reform that provided for dual nationality. Dominicans who were legal residents of the United States gained the opportunity to become U.S. citizens without losing their rights as

12 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Dominican citizens. President Leonel Fernández, himself a legal resident of the United States, encouraged them to naturalize while at once maintaining ties with the Dominican Republic, thereby fostering transnational identity and family-­reunification visas that are conducive to continued migration. In 1997 the right to vote in presidential elections was extended to Dominicans living abroad, and in 2004 and 2008 Dominicans voting from the United States contributed to the reelection of Fernández to the presidency.25 Dominican immigrants in Washington Heights, New York, themselves recognize that remittances can foster a dependence that is detrimental to the recipients’ motivation and to the Dominican Republic’s economic development. “People don’t make efforts to work because we keep sending money,” one said, and consequently remittances “are creating a new social class, la clase de los mantenidos [the class of supported people]” that awaits money from abroad rather than seeking work or self-­ advancement. Remitters are also explicit regarding a displacement of responsibility: “The pressure is on people here, not on the Dominican government.” They recognize that dependence on remittances diminishes the will of the recipients and of the Dominican government to pursue other means of economic security and that their migrant labor both compensates for and contributes to this inertia.26 The inability of the Dominican government to remedy chronic social and economic problems has engendered profound discontent among citizens. In a 1985 survey, for example, 83 and 84 percent of the respondents, respectively, thought that government policy favored only the elite and that the majority of high government officials were uninterested in the problems of the poor. In a 2001 survey, 54 percent of the respondents had no trust in government and an additional 34 percent had little or some trust. In a survey conducted in 2004, similarly, 79 percent reported “mistrust or a lot of mistrust” in their government. Most recently, in 2008, 90 percent of the respondents thought political parties had “no loyalty to the people, to public policy, or to development”; 50 percent thought change was not possible; and 57 percent wanted to leave the country.27 Chronic Poverty I am sitting on a broken chair outside a one-­room shack that has no electricity, no running water, and a rusted corrugated roof. An extended family lives here. A boy in dirty blue underwear is playing roughly with a

Introduction 13

chicken, and an old man—himself once a smuggler of migrants—watches at a cautious distance. His curiosity is in conflict with his instinctive distrust. House walls in the distance, unfinished, await money from abroad. And a mule chews with bemused indifference before bending again to graze on its shadow. I am here to interview a migrant named Jamel. He traveled to Puerto Rico five times by yola, was repatriated on each occasion, and was planning his sixth attempt when we met. Jamel sat on the open end of a bucket and somehow rocked without falling. My butt was stuck in a kicked-­ out seat that I hoped would detach when I stood up. I took out my digital recorder—a cheap piece of junk—and in context its luxuriousness seemed shameful and indecent. Then I warmed toward the question, the ridiculous, necessary question that I had asked countless times before: Why did you migrate to the United States? Jamel seemed stunned. His face expressed disdain, almost pity, for my pathetic command of the obvious. “Don’t you see how we live here?” he asked, leading my eyes around with his hand. People were drawing water from an outdoor spigot, women washed pans, guts boiled in a black pot on logs. “Everyone there has dollars, a car, a house with air. Look at the air we have here,” Jamel said, laughing now, pointing to holes in the walls. The chronic poverty that Jamel and millions of other Dominicans tolerate, even in periods of economic stability or growth, motivates many to take their chances on a yola. Families struggle for generations without ever becoming, as one immigrant put it, “comfortably poor.” Unemployment, underemployment, the insufficiency of infrastructure and social services, the high cost of food in relation to low income, inadequate housing, and social marginalization all contribute to making yola voyages an attractive escape toward a better future. Many cannot find work; others despair from having income insufficient to maintain families; and some complain that undocumented Haitians, who work for less pay, are given the few jobs available and consequently necessitate Dominican migration, particularly after the earthquake in January 2010. “They come here illegally to work,” Saúl said, “the same way that I go to Puerto Rico.” A domino of migration—Haitians to the Dominican Republic, Dominicans to Puerto Rico, and Puerto Ricans (along with Haitians and Dominicans) to the mainland United States—has masses of poor people searching for work in what they view as the next step up.28 Saúl lives with his pregnant wife and two children in a rented shack with walls made of scrap wood and used corrugated roofing. Their poverty

14 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Saúl’s house

is severe even by local standards. The shack has no furnishings except two beds and a countertop stove. When we met to talk we sat on chairs that Saúl borrowed from his grandmother. “I’m not asking for a fortune or to become a millionaire,” Saúl said, expressing the sentiments of many migrants, “just a better way of life. For example I could give my kids a good education. My goal is to get a house in La Vega, where my wife is from, an ordinary house and a little business, maybe a little colmado [neighborhood grocery store], just that, to live.” Many migrants similarly relate a quest for basic economic stability; the “American dream” is hardly on their minds. They are motivated more by a Dominican dream: the alleviation of the struggle for subsistence, acquisition of a decent home (“decent” by poor Dominican standards), improvement of the situation for the next generation (“a future for my children”), and a modest share of disposable income for functional (appliances, motorbikes) and luxury (jewelry, better clothing) consumer goods. With the exception of the fortunate few who have service jobs related to tourism or foreign residents, my informants’ employment was generally informal—in fishing, in construction, as motorbike taxi drivers (known as motoconchos), and in odd jobs. Such employment is irregular, unstable, and barely sufficient to meet the basic expenses of food, utilities, cloth-

Introduction 15

ing, and public transportation. Poor Dominicans regard income on a daily basis rather than the weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis that is customary in formal employment, and the quest, also daily, is to earn enough to feed oneself or one’s family.29 As explained by Moreno, who is a fisherman, it is hard to support children “because our salary isn’t stable.” Someone who has a fixed salary knows how much he will make and can plan accordingly. But “in the ocean, today you make 200 pesos, tomorrow 1,000 pesos, the next day you don’t make anything, and the next nothing again, and the next.” The same is true of construction: one can make $20 or $25 a day during one-­ week jobs but then go for weeks or months without finding employment at another site. A six-­month stretch of unemployment is not uncommon, and for some a period of employment is the exception rather than the rule. Motoconchos can make upwards of $15 a day, but half that is more common and on some days one makes little or nothing. The high price of gas (more than $5 a gallon) erodes earnings, the motorbikes break down and need repairs that are costly even when improvised, and the supply is so disproportionate to the demand—“more motoconchos than people,” as Pedro put it—that the work is hardly profitable for anyone. In view of these bleak options, migration is often a compensatory, transnational means of subsistence: one supports one’s family from abroad because there is no work at home. For others, migration has the more or less defined goal of stabilizing one’s housing situation. Marta and Sergio, for example, have been struggling for years on irregular income to complete and occupy a cinderblock house that Sergio is building for the family. Marta’s failed migration attempt in 2008 was directly motivated by the desire to advance construction that had stalled for lack of money. There is pressure on the couple to complete the house quickly, because the wooden shack in which they are living is leaning visibly toward imminent collapse. Strapped with the burden of construction expenses (and repayment of the money borrowed for the smuggling fee), Marta looks forward to a time when “you only work for food.” While many others complain of working just to eat, with nothing left over, Marta’s goal in migration and in life is to reach that level of stability. When I last saw Marta and Sergio in June 2010, the house construction had advanced but was far from completion. Marta was more optimistic because she had gotten a part-­time job in hotel housekeeping; Sergio was still unemployed.30 Marta and Sergio’s two residences reflect the common options of poor Dominicans: the traditional wooden house with horizontal slat boards,

16 Undocumented Dominican Migration

concrete floor, corrugated metal roof, a kitchen area in a corner, and an outhouse in lieu of an interior bathroom; and the cinderblock house, either with a corrugated metal or flat concrete roof (the latter makes a second story possible) and with an interior bathroom and a separate kitchen. Most properties have electric and water service. The houses are often inherited from or shared with family members, which spares Dominicans with limited income the expenses of rent, construction, and housing-­ related debt. The wooden houses are typically rectangular. In the forward section there is an area for cooking, eating, and sitting; the rear section is for sleeping. The two sections are divided by improvised curtains or, in better homes, partitions or walls. The forward section has modest furniture, a tabletop stove, usually a sink, and sometimes a refrigerator, television, or such luxuries as a blender or fan, all of these in poor condition by American standards. There is little or no interior plumbing. The outhouse often has an adjacent area for bucket baths. In Carlos’s house, for example, curtains open from the forward area to two small rooms separated by a thin partition. Carlos, his wife, and their three children (including an infant) sleep in one of the rooms, on side-­by-­ side mattresses that fill the space completely; Carlos’s father sleeps in the adjacent room. The better wooden houses, such as Chencho’s, are larger and have more clearly defined spaces. Chencho’s home is well furnished, has a separate kitchen, and has two bedrooms with walls and doors. This relative luxury contrasts with the other extreme of houses that are barely four walls and a roof. In El Cedro I saw a shack that had no furnishings except a mattress on the floor beside a pile of feed corn for pigs. The cinderblock houses are highly preferred and, because they are expensive, are generally subsidized by remittances. Arches and pillars contribute to an ornate elegance that appeals to local taste and emits a message of opulence. When construction is completed the interiors are refined and the exterior is pargeted and sometimes painted, but families take residence at various stages of completion. Marta and Sergio, for example, will move into their block house as soon as it habitable and long before it is plumbed and wired and the walls are covered. In some cases, like theirs, construction advances as money becomes available; in other cases income is sufficient to expedite construction and even to expand upward or outward for additional family members or simply for comfort and prestige. Also common, however, is the abandonment of construction projects

Marta in front of the house under construction. The roof of their current residence is visible in the background.

Marta and Sergio’s wooden house is leaning backward and will eventually collapse.

Johnny outside the block house of which he is very proud. A fan and boombox are visible inside, and Johnny’s kitchen also has a blender.

A typical wooden home

(left) A kitchen (below) A wash area and outhouse

20 Undocumented Dominican Migration

A small block house nearing completion

because the provider abroad ceases to remit. The unfinished walls on the skyline of many towns and villages attest to such abandonment. Even when new houses are completed and occupied, the life of luxury that they seemed to promise is sometimes fleeting. An extended family sold beachfront land to foreign developers, and Rolando, with his share of the proceeds, built an enviable cinderblock house. The wealth was soon depleted, however, and Rolando’s living room is now crowded with beds, like a barracks, to accommodate the many family members who live there. Most informants relate that about $14 daily is required to support a family of four, but even earning this subsistence income is a challenge. Remittances from abroad theoretically compensate for the lack of domestic earnings, but in current conditions many undocumented migrants abroad struggle for their own economic survival and can remit little to family members at home. Martina’s consensual partner is in Puerto Rico but unable to send remittances, so she supports herself and their three children as best she can. Her part-­time job in domestic service paid about $57 a month (less than $2 a day), but Martina’s employers returned to Spain. “Now I don’t have anything,” she said, adding that “sometimes the neighbors give the kids something to eat.” Caridad, who is also unemployed, lives with her three children in an apartment improvised in a small building. Her monthly rent is about $29 and it is difficult for her to meet that expense. Her ex-­partner migrated by yola successfully in 2003, but he does not send remittances to support their children. When I asked how she manages to survive economically,

Introduction 21

Caridad started to cry, interrupting the sobs with repetition of “alone, alone.” Sometimes she finds temporary work, sometimes her mother and brother in Santo Domingo help out, but Caridad’s struggle is constant. For many families in rural areas, purchased food is supplemented by household fruit and vegetable gardens known as conucos. Chicho explains: “Here in the country it’s easier. I myself have a garden with yucca, I have plantains that I plant myself, and if I have this food, with a little oil I can eat an egg. If there’s nothing else, we can eat that. It’s easier in the country, but not in town. In town you have to buy everything with money.” Rural and town dwellers alike are nevertheless dependent to varying degrees on purchased food that they can hardly afford. The purchases are generally made at colmados that find ways to accommodate the poverty and irregular incomes of their frequent customers. Limited credit is one way; another is to sell small portions for daily consumption. One may buy, for example, 15 cents’ worth of tomato paste that the colmado owner measures and scoops into a little plastic bag or 50 cents’ worth of oil that he measures in one bottle and then pours through a funnel into another brought by the customer. In addition to food, most other necessities of everyday life (such as clothing and household supplies) must be purchased with cash. Sergio pointed out that in the past—even his past—almost everything was homemade or passed down through generations, but now everything is purchased. Diapers are a good example; they used to be cloth, washed, and reused, and now they are purchased and disposable. Many mothers cannot afford these diapers, Marta said, and even milk—the relatively inexpensive powdered milk they reconstitute—is unaffordable. As Marta and Sergio talked I realized that they were describing the end of traditional agricultural subsistence and the integration of the Dominican Republic into world capitalism, which made millions of people, like them, the consumers of domestic and imported products. I was also reminded of the colonial repartimiento de mercancías through which Spanish colonists forced indigenous populations into wage labor by requiring them to purchase manufactured goods. As my informants related their stories I could hear their entrapment in deprivation but also in the absurdity that results when deprivation becomes routinized. They have grown accustomed to the consequences of the poverty that they share within their communities, which makes objective assessment all the more unlikely. Martina has a job prospect but

22 Undocumented Dominican Migration

no money for the bus fare to the interview; Altagracia got a fish but cannot cook it because the propane tank is empty; Yolanda missed a medical appointment for her infant daughter, who won’t eat, because the consultation is unaffordable; and Johnny got a free consultation but has no money to buy the prescribed medicine. When I asked Francisco what old people do if they have no pension and no one to provide for them, he replied nonchalantly, without irony, “You die sooner.” Marisol, who works as a maid, said her father had twenty children but six of them died as infants. With the same matter-­of-­fact tone as Francisco she added, “It was too many. I don’t think there was enough food.” Such chronic poverty predisposes yola voyages, and economic fluctuations then affect the volume. When economic stability or growth is sufficient for potential migrants to maintain a modest standard of living, migration is deferred; and when stagnation or decline undermines hope for the future and aggravates the daily struggle for subsistence, migration increases. “There is an extremely strong correlation between the performance of the Dominican economy and the rate of migration,” explains the Coast Guard intelligence analyst who monitors migrant flow in the Caribbean. That correlation was clearly illustrated by the economic crises in the 1980s and the 1990s, which caused huge increases in Dominican migration. In 2003 another crisis was accelerated by a $2.2 billion embezzlement, the subsequent collapse of the Banco Intercontinental (known as Baninter), and a Dominican government bailout that depleted an estimated 65 percent of the annual national budget. The consequences for an already impoverished population were devastating. As summarized in a report by the World Bank and Inter-­American Development Bank, “The 2003–2004 economic crisis brought a dramatic deterioration of real incomes and poverty levels. About 16 percent of the Dominican population (1.5 million) became poor and about 7 percent (670 thousand) fell into extreme poverty.” In fiscal year 2002, just prior to the crisis, the Coast Guard estimated a total flow of 2,284 undocumented migrants from the Dominican Republic. In fiscal year 2004, during the crisis, the flow increased to 11,115.31 The severity of poverty varies widely by region, often in relation to the availability of jobs related to tourism. The poor economic conditions in Sánchez, for example, motivate migration, while the growing tourist industry in nearby Las Terrenas provides jobs (in construction and in services to tourists and expatriates) that alleviate the pressure to migrate. People migrate from Sánchez, Milagros relates, because families there

Introduction 23

cannot survive by the three work options—fishing, harvesting coconuts, and taxiing passengers by motorbike—that are already saturated. Moreno added that “we’re 21,000 people who depend on that little piece of ocean, on shrimp and fish, to make a living.” He then explained that the ocean there is overfished and depleted, that the cost of gas undermines the profit, and that they cannot sell the catch when tourism is low. Moreno concluded that people who cannot earn enough are “obligated by poverty to migrate.” When people “can’t take the situation,” Valdesio said, “one of the possibilities they always have are the [yola] trips.” In previous decades, social discontent and government incompetence in Latin America tended to foment political activism and revolution, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. Protests and nationwide strikes continued in the Dominican Republic into the 1990s and to some degree still occur today, but in general the political activism of previous generations no longer predominates as a means to express discontent or implement change. Past experiences (including the 1965–1966 U.S. occupation) have made armed insurrection seem pointless, collective social action has been “effectively demobilized,” and most Dominicans have lost faith in the political system’s capacity to address the needs of an impoverished majority. Rather than protests or revolutions, consequently, the mobilization of poor people takes an alternate form, migration. By “voting with their feet,” Dominicans implicitly register their demoralization and loss of hope in domestic solutions. Poverty is still confronted actively and creatively, but the form now, migration, projects the hope outward.32 The economic situation in the United States, including Puerto Rico, has a direct effect on undocumented migration from the Dominican Republic. When jobs in the United States became scarce beginning in 2008, the bad news was disseminated by media, by return migrants, and by relatives abroad, many of whom sent dwindling remittances. Just as poor economic conditions in the Dominic Republic motivate migration, poor economic conditions in the United States deter it. Hard times also make it difficult for unemployed and underemployed immigrants in the United States to support the yola voyages of their relatives. A slowed U.S. and global economy, however, can also motivate migration rather than deter it. The motivation occurs when repercussions of foreign economic crises are detrimental to the Dominican economy in ways that imbue a sense of urgency among potential migrants. A decrease in tourism, exports, construction, and services results in the loss of jobs that sustain poor Dominican families. Economic well-­being is rela-

24 Undocumented Dominican Migration

tive, and even the recessed United States can seem like paradise if the Dominican situation deteriorates sufficiently. For this reason, together with factors of self-­perpetuation and migrant compulsion, labor migration continues after the supply has been saturated. The deterrent of limited options abroad is neutralized or overwhelmed by the urgency of the domestic situation. There is also frequent recourse to relativity: however bad it is there, it has got to be better than here.33 Even in the best of circumstances, undocumented migration is a precarious means of advancement. The general presumption among migrants, potential migrants, and outside observers is that migration is profitable, but migration often perpetuates and aggravates the very poverty that it endeavors to alleviate. Migrants find themselves caught in the likeness of a moebius strip: poverty is conducive to migration that is conducive to poverty. This occurs for many reasons. The most common is the loss of cash (often borrowed) and possessions when yola voyages fail. Migrants sell or pawn anything that they own—and sometimes, with or without consent, that relatives own—to pay smuggling fees. When cash, motorbikes, appliances, jewelry, electronics, livestock, businesses, land, and houses are lost to failed migration attempts, individuals and families are yet more severely impoverished. The trip fails, the dream crashes, and migrants return to financial situations worse than those they had fled. Christian was convinced that his trip was likely to succeed, because the captain had many previous successes. “And you say, ‘OK, Dad has a cow, I’m going to sell it so I can go on that trip, and then I’ll send my dad the money.’” But the trip failed, and Christian wound up without “the trip or the cow or anything.” Moreno similarly referred to rural Dominicans who sell everything and wind up “without Puerto Rico, without a farm, and without a house.” Many feel compelled to keep trying—Gordito tried five times, Caridad three times, Miguel six times—and with each failed attempt fall deeper into poverty. Rubén, who migrated through Mexico, spent a total of around $12,000, including the $4,000 bail he lost when he absconded from immigration detention. He borrowed the money from his brother and other relatives in New York, and while he was working there, trying to repay the debt, he received a request from a friend. This Dominican migrant had flown to Panama, traveled through Central America, and gotten arrested as he crossed into Mexico while en route to the United States. He needed $1,000 to bail out, so his friends and relatives, themselves poor and in debt, took

Introduction 25

a collection—one gave $100, another $50—to help him continue toward the border. The friend was caught upon entry to the United States and repatriated, so all the money that he invested and that was invested in him saw no return. Rubén was also repatriated and those who lent him money likewise became relatively poorer. Neither of the families of these two migrants received remittances because the earnings never exceeded the expenses and debt, and the families of migrants who lent money to Rubén and the friend received less remittances because the money was diverted to other causes. Failed migration attempts thus adversely affect the migrant but also have ripple effects that further impoverish others.34 I asked Salvador what would happen if all of the money that one loses on failed migration attempts were invested instead in building a life in the Dominican Republic. “One thinks that after one goes and sees the reality.” Morena (a female migrant, not to be confused with Moreno) elaborated: “If back then I would have thought about it, doing business here with what I spent on the trips, I would have had some capital. But I asked and asked and asked [for money], and now I don’t have either the capital or the trip. You think I’ll spend 100 [thousand pesos] here and in a year I’ll recoup it there. You don’t think that you’re going to lose. You think you’re going to earn.” Sonia said migrants could succeed in the Dominican Republic if they applied themselves diligently, but instead they envision easy money abroad. Raising a migration fee and establishing a successful business are two very different tasks. One is short-­term; the other requires perseverance, ingenuity, and diligence, and even with these one can easily fail. When dreams evolve along business lines they tend to gravitate toward the familiar. The independence of self-­employment is highly desirable to poor Dominicans, particularly in a context of limited employment opportunities, but a lack of capital and of business imagination usually results in redundant proliferation. A colmado is the favored choice and, consequently, the least likely to succeed. Orlando was more original—he established a massage business—but the business produces no income for lack of referrals from hotels. Orlando now hopes to buy a van for tourist transportation but has no capital nor a means to raise it, and the idea itself might be unviable. I pointed to a dozen tourist vans empty and parked nearby, with their drivers playing dominos or sleeping in the shade, but Orlando’s conviction was unfazed. Others with greater business sense and relatively more capital, like Raúl, are more astute in their planning. Upon

26 Undocumented Dominican Migration

anticipated retirement to Santo Domingo, Raúl envisions importing and selling auto parts. Chicho hopes to open a pawn shop, and Sonia opened a nail salon in her home.35 Migration also contributes to impoverishment when the anticipated income from abroad does not reach the dependent family. The household earner is gone, ostensibly for the purpose of generating greater income, but instead the absence is doubled: no earner and no income. Altagracia’s husband earned about $12 a day in the Dominican Republic but migrated by yola because that income was insufficient to support his family. At first the husband sent money regularly from Puerto Rico; now he is unemployed and, until that changes, sends nothing. Abandonment is also common, usually by men who migrate with the intention of supporting a family but make new attachments once away from home. Impoverishment also results when the household supporter dies at sea or is imprisoned in the United States. Ramona lost her spouse in April 2009 on a yola that sank en route to Puerto Rico. She could no longer afford the house the couple was renting for $26 a month, and when I met her she was pregnant and living with two children in a room improvised behind the partial walls of a cinderblock house that her sister was gradually constructing. Ramona had to discontinue studies in a language and tourism program because it was unaffordable without her spouse’s support. Sometimes advancement fails and poverty is aggravated for reasons well within the migrant’s control. I asked Chicho why he succeeded as a migrant and many others fail, and he responded, “There are all kinds of people.” Some are devoted to their families, honest and hardworking, and others “drink the money, smoke it in drugs, give it to girls. They make money but leave it there, they waste it, throw it away.” “It wasn’t that I didn’t drink,” Chicho added, but he would leave home with only $10 to avoid spending more in a bar. Delgadino was less self-­controlled. Of male migrants generally he said, “Sometimes we go out drinking, others we go looking for women, once in a while we find work but other times we’re out on the street, and sometimes we come to nothing.” Then he added his personal experience: “The majority of cocky young guys—I’m going to include myself, because I arrived with a goal too but then you don’t want to leave the discotheque, you don’t want to leave a bar. That’s the problem. I made money but spent it in the street.” Morena has a friend who has been in Puerto Rico for twenty years and never got his residency, never returned for a visit, and will probably have to borrow the money to fly home: “He has nothing

Introduction 27

to show for his sacrifice, not even a palm tree to give him some shade.” “They spend and spend,” Altagracia said, “without thinking tomorrow I have to go home.” And when they return, usually because of deportation, people say, “Look at so-­and-­so. He came back and didn’t bring anything. He came back worse than he was here before.” Forced Free Choice In its broadest sense, forced migration results not only from the persecution, political violence, and natural disasters that cause people to flee for their lives but also from social and economic conditions that jeopardize security and well-­being. The tendency in policy, law, media, and public opinion is to sharply distinguish between those who migrate voluntarily (economic migrants, “illegals”) and those who are forced to migrate because their lives are endangered (political migrants, refugees). That distinction, though valid in itself, erroneously implies that economic migrants are not to some degree forced to leave their home countries. They flee not because their lives are in imminent danger of harm but rather because their lives—in the sense of “This is my life, and I want to make something of it”—are foreclosed and jeopardized, and their livelihoods are insecure. They feel compelled to migrate, the compulsion is fostered by forces beyond their control, and they literally risk their lives to escape unbearable situations.36 In this sense their ostensibly voluntary migration is analogous to “voluntary return” after arrest at the border. Migrants choose to leave the United States “voluntarily” after unaffordable and dangerous journeys because their other option, “indefinite” immigration detention, which some believe (and are led to believe) means life imprisonment, seems the greater evil. The choice to return voluntarily, like the choice to leave the Dominican Republic, is a conditioned act of volition. Sonia explained that advancement requires migration and that migrants and their families are obligated mutually. Her husband migrated by yola in 2009, leaving her behind with a baby daughter. “He’ll have to work and stick it out there for a lot of years in order to make something, in order to be able to live a normal life,” she said. The situation stresses the family as a whole, here and there, “but that’s the reality, even though you might not want to believe it, even though you might not want to live it, but that’s the reality and you have to accept it, obligatorily.” Migration is voluntary insofar as one makes the conscious decision to

28 Undocumented Dominican Migration

embark, while others in a similar situation opt to stay home; and it is involuntary insofar as the choice is forced by external aggravating factors. Most poor Dominicans, in fact, choose not to migrate or never consider the choice. Through this default option they acquiesce to poverty. Their forbearance is a tacit submission or resignation, and consequently they habitually, nonconsciously perpetuate the conditions in which they feel trapped. This occurs for multiple reasons such as family ties, responsibilities, inertia, aversion to the journey, relative contentment, and because individual choices are constrained and conditioned by history, belief systems, values, gender, race and ethnicity, media, income, and countless other variables operative in everyday life. “The status quo exerts such a powerful hold on us, whether or not it serves our interests, and whether or not we are aware of its influence.”37 Those who do migrate are also affected by pressures—structural and cultural—of which they are largely unaware. Their choice is free, but their volition is constricted by imposed limitations. This situation was illustrated in the extreme by 9/11 victims jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center. They made this unthinkable choice against their interest and will—one after the other, in a steady stream—not because jumping was appealing but rather because they were caught between fire and the sky and jumping seemed their best option. Their best option: jumping from a building. The choice was forced because their volition was trapped and pressured. There is an obvious difference in severity between jumping to one’s death and boarding a yola, but there is also a more nuanced distinction. The 9/11 choice was sudden and unanticipated, an impulsive response to crisis, an urgency forced by encroaching, unbearable heat. In the Dominican case, conversely, the decisions to migrate by yola—even when they are spontaneous—are slowly induced by conditions that evolve for generations. Freedom to choose is contingent on access to opportunities, and the inadequate access experienced chronically by families and communities makes adverse choices attractive. A complex of deprivations resulting from poverty (inadequate housing, education, and health care; struggle without benefit; a sense of futility and entrapment) fosters the viability and attractiveness of yola migration. However intrinsically undesirable it may be to risk one’s life at sea, this option is sanitized and idealized by conditions (like the fire and smoke) that push one to the edge.38 In its broadest sense, poverty refers not only to limited income but also to limited opportunities that handicap human development, socio-

Introduction 29

economic advancement, and one’s chances of living a fulfilled, productive, and dignified life. Migration should be a free and informed choice rather than a desperate and risky necessity, and states should “guarantee, at least, the right not to emigrate.” Choosing between chronic poverty and a life-­threatening journey that might modestly alleviate that poverty is hardly a freedom of choice. Migrants perceive that they have no choice, many say so explicitly, and their departure in this perspective is a willful confrontation of adverse limitations (structural poverty, the ocean, border enforcement) that restrict their freedom and movement.39

Miguel

For decades the town of Miches was the epicenter of organized yola voyages; now departures are less frequent. I’m heading to Miches with a maid named Alicia who is returning to visit her sister. From Las Galeras we take a guagua (public-­transportation van) to Samaná on the south side of the peninsula, cross the bay by boat to Sábana de la Mar, and then take another guagua. When the boat gets to Sábana it moors offshore because the water is too shallow to approach the pier. A fishing boat is sent out, and everyone—young and old, little kids, pregnant women—climbs out through the windows and over the transom to be ferried ashore in turns. Workers unload the cargo: motorbikes, bags of stuff, suitcases, a chicken. The fishing boat, underpowered and overloaded with passengers, low in the water, reminded me of a yola. I looked to one side so that nothing was in view but ocean and tried to imagine crossing the Mona Passage. When I later told that to Alicia and her family they cracked up uncontrollably. Once ashore we rode motoconchos to the stop where guaguas leave for Miches. The suitcases go between the handlebars. The waiting area was a dirty confine defined by a ramada beside a few stands selling scary food. A couple of guys were playing dominos; three others sat in a row with their shirts rolled up above the gut bulge. We spent about forty-­five minutes there waiting for the guagua, then got on for the last part of the trip, which took an hour and a half. The road is dirt and rocky so the van goes slowly, one rock at a time, hole by hole, and shakes up whatever is left of you. Some people sing along to the music.

32 Undocumented Dominican Migration

I met Miguel through Félix, who was helping me to locate migrants. Miguel is cautious and soft-­ spoken; his narrative had a paradoxical quality—generosity with reserve—that gave the impression of an ineffable word spoken by mistake. After the interview Miguel took me to look for another migrant, Domingo, and we found him at an open-­air pool hall. Domingo pulled me aside, next to a giant speaker blaring merengue, and said, yelling, “OK—let’s do it.” “What?” I answered. He repeated his consent, and I told him we needed someplace quiet to record. Domingo nodded and went to get his motorbike; I got on. With Miguel, Félix, and another migrant, Manny, following behind us, we rode in caravan to the beach. Once you scratch the surface in Miches, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t migrated. On the beach I interviewed Domingo (who was arrested in Lynn and again in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for selling heroin, then deported after a prison sentence: “It didn’t go well. I mean, it went well because I returned to my country alive”); Félix (who while others ran upon arrival to Puerto Rico went back into the surf to help a drowning woman, which gave Border Patrol time to arrest him); and Manny (who migrated as a crew member in exchange for the smuggling fee when he was sixteen; he told Border Patrol agents he was nineteen because otherwise they hassle you with complications as a “life in danger”). Everyone was crowded in to listen to the interviews except Miguel, who stood at a distance, on the fringes, as though he were ready to bolt if it turned out to be a trap. He was similarly cautious when I asked to take photographs; first he declined and stood out of range, but when he saw the others fearlessly posing he dropped his guard and agreed. (Months later I located Miguel by showing one of these photographs to a Haitian construction worker, who happened to know him.) After five failed attempts, Miguel’s successful voyage left Miches in 2006. He spent two nights in the monte (the densely vegetated hills above the beach) with about a hundred passengers, then departed on a yola powered by two outboard engines. One engine broke down shortly after departure; the other broke down later. The yola began to drift and the passengers were frantic. The captain said there was nothing to be done except hope for rescue, but one of the passengers, who had mechanical experience, thought he could fix the engine. He worked until eventually “the engine started—it was misfiring but it started.” The captain asked the group if they wanted to turn back to the Dominican Republic or continue, “and

Miguel 33

in excitement everyone said, ‘To Puerto Rico!’” That collective choice of the goal over caution is a paradigm of migrant decision making. The engine continued to fail, but eventually the migrants arrived safely to a beach in Puerto Rico. Miguel’s entry was facilitated by locals who charged $300 to feed and lodge him; by the next night he was at his aunt and uncle’s residence in San Juan. The uncle got him an off-­the-­books job in construction, and after two weeks Miguel moved out on his own. He worked that job for almost two years. Miguel grew accustomed to Puerto Rico and was loving the new life he had acquired through his initiative and perseverance. He had friends and a girlfriend, he bought a car, a television, a radio, and some clothes, and he had the luxury of an apartment—however humble—to himself. “I was kind of comfortable,” he said with pride. Miguel’s success and relative economic stability also inspired confidence to continue on to the mainland, where he had family in Florida. Through a friend he found a document forger and for $1,000 bought a Puerto Rican birth certificate and driver’s license. The license had his photograph and someone else’s name; he bought a plane ticket in the name on the license. At the airport Miguel showed his license and passed with no problem, using the Puerto Rican accent he had acquired during his residency. An uncle who had migrated by yola but later became a citizen through marriage picked him up at the airport in Miami. Less than two weeks later, while Miguel was walking around the neighborhood looking for work, he was stopped by federal agents. They asked for identification but Miguel had none; he had followed the forger’s advice and disposed of the documents on arrival to avoid criminal charges if he were later arrested. After denial of bail and fifteen days in immigration detention, Miguel chose voluntary departure and was escorted in handcuffs to a commercial flight back to the Dominican Republic. The adjustment was difficult; he was living again in his parents’ two-­ room shack in the impoverished Los Franceses neighborhood. At first he fell into depression and cursed his fate and chastised himself for having traveled to the mainland. He had attempted the move because he had more family in Florida, because he heard encouraging reports from friends, and because salaries were higher, but his ambition—his motivating urge to realize the dream—resulted in the loss of everything. One gets accustomed to the luxuries, Miguel explained, even everyday things like hot water and power without frequent blackouts. Food is cheaper, too, and

34 Undocumented Dominican Migration

in more favorable relation to income. Working in Miches for his father, Miguel had made about $9 a day; in San Juan he made $60. “You can eat three times a day and have a lot of money left over, so you can save to buy a change of clothes.” Félix, who was sitting in for this part of the conversation, disappeared inward and left behind a ponderous expression before resurfacing with his assessment: “It’s better there.” When I met Miguel in May 2008, he had been back in Miches for a few months and was actively rebuilding his life. His mother had lent him about $900 to open a colmado, which his new girlfriend was running, and he was working as a motoconcho. Yola travel was not on his mind. “I’m trying to establish myself here,” he said. “You’re better off in your own country because you have all of your rights. You have to try to get ahead in your own country. You work hard, save, and don’t waste money.” Several months later, in December 2008, I saw Miguel again. The colmado had failed; the girlfriend, with whom he was now living in a rented house, was pregnant; and Miguel was trying with his meager motoconcho income to support his new family and to repay the loan to his mother. He used the phrase “It’s hard here” as a kind of punctuation throughout our conversation. Yola travel was looking more attractive. His cousin had recently drowned during a failed voyage, and from his own experiences Miguel knew the dangers at sea and the challenges on land, but he was running out of options. He could probably save the smuggling fee in six months. Maybe the law would change, he could become a U.S. resident, he could call for his family. I listened to Miguel with a deep sense of sadness, of helplessness, knowing that these unrealizable dreams could easily end in drowning or in prison. After the first visit with Miguel I returned to Las Galeras on my own; Alicia was going to spend the week with her sister. I took the guagua back to Sábana de la Mar and waited for the boat, which was late, for about an hour. To kill time I went to a market. A cat was torturing a mouse, and another cat, looking on, seemed bored. That was next to the potatoes. Eventually the boat arrived, and the fishing boat went back and forth to unload the passengers, a motorbike, two mattresses, and several boxes and bags, then to load the outbound passengers. All of that took another hour. I was tired, hot, hungry, and longing for the relative calm and comfort of the hotel. Those feelings, in turn, generated guilt. Miguel’s misfortune, the disadvantage of the Dominicans crowded around me, the twenty-­four hours on a yola that carries most migrants only to more hopeless struggle all made me ashamed of my petty fatigue, my gluttony-­induced hunger,

Miguel 35

and my repair to accommodations that my informants would experience only as gardeners, maids, and kitchen help, with the lucky ones maybe promoted to waiters. After the crossing I waited about an hour in Samaná for the guagua back to Las Galeras. It had gotten really hot. Usually the guaguas are vans, but some—like the one approaching—are small pickup trucks. The seat in the front was full, and the bed was overcrowded with about ten people, along with a new stove in a box and several bags of stuff. The driver told me to get on the back, I said there didn’t seem to be room, and a Dominican man stood up to give me his place on the wooden bench around the edges of the truck bed. I tried to decline, unsuccessfully, and felt an emotional cocktail of guilt for his deference combined with intense affection for generosity that somehow survives hardship and poverty. As I got on the truck an older woman said in excitement, “Vamos juntos negros y blancos” (Black people and white people are going together), to which I replied, “todo mezclado” (everything mixed together), and she came back with, “la nueva raza mestiza” (the new mixed race).

Across the Mona Passage

Many people say, “I’m going to Puerto Rico,” but I say, “Let’s see if you get there.” Moreno

Types of Maritime Migration There are four basic types of undocumented maritime migration from the Dominican Republic. The first and most common until recent years is travel on the traditional yola, a large wooden boat (thirty to forty feet long, eight to twelve feet wide, and five to eight feet high at the bow) built clandestinely for the purpose of transporting migrants. Yolas commonly carry between 40 and well over 100 passengers, and the larger ones, referred to as “super yolas,” can carry 200 or more. Traditional yola voyages are organized by professional smugglers who operate with collaborators in Puerto Rico and—until recent changes in command—in the Dominican navy. The organizer hires a captain and a small crew of ayudantes to assist the captain, relieve him at the helm, and maintain order. One or more recruiters (known as buscones) find passengers and sometimes facilitate loans or other arrangements to help migrants manage the smuggling fee. The identity of the trip organizer is usually protected behind this barrier of personnel, and the migrants often do not know the true identity of the captain. Traditional yola voyages were common until 2006 and are still seen occasionally, but smaller boats with fewer passengers are now more prevalent.1 There are several disadvantages to these organized smuggling trips. The yolas are large, overloaded, underpowered, and slow (the crossing can take days), which makes them vulnerable to detection by border-­enforcement

Across the Mona Passage 37

Yolas, like this one, are often newly constructed for the voyage. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

patrols. The overcrowding is uncomfortable—to the degree that passengers sit on the sideboards or one another’s lap—but is also conducive to hostility and violence. Migrants are recruited from various towns or regions, the great majority are unknown to a given passenger, and principled mothers or adventurous young men can easily find themselves at the mercy of others’ violence or aggression. Passengers on these large trips are also highly vulnerable to swindle and abuse because the smuggling fee must be paid in advance to anonymous operators who overbook and are prone to flight. There are also life-­threatening dangers: the yolas are poorly made and often leak severely or break apart in bad weather; upon arrival passengers are sometimes forced to swim through the breaking surf to shore; and captains on these transports are less likely to pause to rescue overboard passengers. The second type, which has become more prominent, eliminates the professional smuggler. In these cases a self-­employed captain, often a local fisherman known to the passengers or else an anonymous captain from another community, organizes trips on his own. Recruitment is more informal, the type of vessels varies, the loads are usually smaller,

38 Undocumented Dominican Migration

the fee is generally lower, the risk of being swindled is reduced (when the captain is local), and the voyages often leave secretly, without a pay-­off to the navy. The organization of the trips is limited to loosely affiliated people, typically a couple of friends who may involve others as necessary. Saúl explains that “the idea of captain has several levels, because when a fisherman goes out to fish there is a captain and crew. He can do illegal trips in the same boat.”2 There are many freelance captains in coastal towns of the Dominican northeast, even to the degree that captains sometimes compete for the same pool of potential migrants. Over the course of a career these small-­ scale operators make some four to ten trips to Puerto Rico to supplement income from other (under)employment. They often work on demand, after successful voyages create a reputation of reliability. Dominicans in the United States, for example, contact trusted captains to transport family members, sometimes advancing the money for trip-­related expenses. The increased deportation of Dominicans from the United States has also created a demand for small trips of deportees trying to return. Delgadino is a good example of a captain who transports migrants by referral. He learned to navigate as a passenger on his first voyage in 1998 and in 2000 captained a successful trip with seven migrants. Delgadino remained in Puerto Rico for about three years, then got a call from acquaintances who, aware of his success, asked him to return to the Dominican Republic and organize a trip for eight people. He returned by air with a carta de ruta (a transportation letter issued by Dominican consulates for legal return to the Dominican Republic without a passport) and was advanced $4,000 by the group for a boat, engines, and other expenses. Delgadino recruited four more passengers—he did this, he said, to acquire reserve cash in the event the first attempt failed—and arrived successfully. One of the passengers was a pregnant woman reuniting with her husband in San Juan. The husband was a legal resident, but he brought the wife by yola to avoid long visa delays. (The current delay for requests by lawful permanent residents is seven to ten years.)3 The smaller trips illustrate how migrant smugglers are distributed on a continuum between local fishermen and organized crime. At one end of the continuum are family members, friends, and acquaintances with navigational skills and an empathetic understanding of the migrants’ need to leave, and at the other are large-­scale smuggling operations that are profit-­oriented and can be indifferent to migrant safety. In stark opposition to the common representation of all smugglers as ruthless crimi-

Across the Mona Passage 39

nals, migrants themselves consider local captains to be ordinary members of the community who use a skill to make extra money. Unless they swindle the migrants or are otherwise abusive, they are viewed as service providers rather than as profiteers.4 The known, local captains are regarded as more trustworthy than large operators and are the preference of most migrants who travel on paid voyages. They are usually located through networks—the interpersonal connections of family, friends, and neighbors—that convey recommendations based on positive experiences. A “good captain,” as migrants see it, is one who does not defraud passengers, who does not hold them outdoors for extended periods while awaiting departure, who has navigational skills and a high rate of success, and who protects the safety of people trusted to his care. Good captains develop reputations that assure them a stream of new clients. The third type of voyage, which is the strong preference among migrants in some coastal communities, is one improvised by groups of family and friends. These viajes de familia (family trips), as they are called, generally involve six to twelve migrants who pool their funds and property—one provides the engine, another the boat—and organize the voyages themselves. At least one migrant in the group has navigational skills; if not, a captain is invited or hired. Migrant-­organized voyages are also used by deportees attempting to return to the United States. Fishing boats, such as fifteen- to twenty-­five-­foot wooden or fiberglass vessels, are commonly used.5 Migrant-­organized voyages are increasingly prevalent due to their many advantages. They eliminate the middlemen, including bribed officials, and are less expensive than smuggler- or captain-­organized voyages. The possibility of being swindled is also eliminated, and the group makes its own decisions—in inclement weather, for example—rather than being at the mercy of other interests. The smaller fishing boats are faster, less crowded, more comfortable, and regarded as safer than overloaded yolas, although their tiny size makes them highly vulnerable to capsize. Do-­it-­yourself voyages open migration to a population that was formerly excluded by poverty. Theft sometimes contributes to meeting the expenses. Alberto’s group stole a boat and bought an engine; Johnny’s group stole both boat and engine, and the migrants shared the cost of gas. Carlos’s group did not steal anything. In 1996, when he was twenty-­two, Carlos and eleven friends and family members organized a voyage that cost a total of about $1,500, rather than pay the $400 or $500 each charged

40 Undocumented Dominican Migration

When migrants organize their own voyages, they often cross the Mona Passage on small fishing boats like this one.

then by smugglers. They had the yola built and bought the gas and two motors (one fifteen and the other twenty-­five horsepower); one migrant had a compass, and another served as captain. Border Patrol agents interview passengers in an attempt to identify captains of migrant vessels and to prosecute them for smuggling. In migrant-­organized voyages, however, there is no captain who is prosecutable because the migrants have embarked on a joint effort of illegal entry alone and not for profit. The person who navigates is a migrant who contributes a skill rather than, for example, a boat or engine. Even when someone with navigational skills is hired to assist in the crossing, he is not a smuggler, leader, or master of the vessel. Migrant-­organized trips thus evidence a degree of agency well beyond the norm: rather than being the recipients or clients of an illegal action (they are smuggled), they are independently proactive (they migrate). Valdesio distinguishes between “trips for money,” by which someone profits, and “trips to arrive,” which are motivated only by the goal to reach Puerto Rico.6 When self-­organized groups of migrants are interdicted at sea or arrested upon arrival, they lose their investment. If the crossing fails en route, however, and the group is able to return to the Dominican Republic, then the migrants’ investment is safeguarded. As Valdesio put it, “The guy with the boat keeps the boat, the guy with the motor keeps the

Across the Mona Passage 41

motor,” and so on, and they can try again later with no additional cost except the replacement of expended gasoline. This recuperation of investment is a significant advantage of migrant-­organized journeys, because migrants on smuggler-­organized trips generally lose their smuggling fees if the attempts fail for any reason. The faster travel time, lower profile, smaller engine, and fewer passengers of migrant-­organized voyages also facilitate evasion of border-­ enforcement patrols. The white wake that trails behind large yolas is usually what is first detected by surveillance aircraft, and the low-­ horsepower motors on smaller boats leave little or no wake and thus are more difficult to detect. Upon arrival, too, a boat with five or six men offers opportunities for clandestine entry that are not available to larger yolas. Moreno arrives to the Puerto Rican coast at night, waits until daybreak when the boats of local fishermen arrive, and then makes a deal with the fishermen (who generally get the boat and engine) to travel among them when they return to shore. Another captain, Amado, mentioned the same plan—the authorities “don’t realize because we are fishermen too”—and how the tactic is used on departure as well to evade Dominican authorities.7 The fourth type of undocumented maritime migration from the Dominican Republic is the least common and most expensive. It entails the transport of relatively few passengers on sailboats, pleasure craft, tourist boats, and speedboats. These specialty services are convenient for wealthier Dominicans and for foreign nationals who migrate through the Dominican Republic, but they are generally unaffordable to yola migrants. Smuggling vessels of this type are difficult to distinguish from legal pleasure craft in the Caribbean. The Coast Guard must have reason to board vessels in international waters, and probable cause is unlikely if there are only a few passengers on board. In January 2009 Dominican authorities disrupted a sophisticated smuggling operation in which seven Dominican naval officers collaborated with Puerto Ricans and mainland Americans to transport undocumented Dominicans and Cubans by sailboat to private beaches and nautical clubs in Puerto Rico and Miami. The boats departed under the pretense of participating in international sailing competitions, and they landed at exclusive sites where there was little or no border security.8 In other cases, including two in October 2008, the loads are larger. A rented sailboat carrying thirty-­nine undocumented Dominicans to Salinas Bay on the southern coast of Puerto Rico was interdicted at sea; a day

42 Undocumented Dominican Migration

earlier a similar voyage arrived successfully and docked at a restaurant, but the forty-­one migrants were detained in vehicles heading toward San Juan. Another smuggling ring organized trips from various points in the Dominican Republic on sailboats, speedboats, yachts, and catamarans as well as outboard-­powered yolas. The organizer was arrested in February 2010 and faced an open U.S. extradition request for prosecution in Puerto Rico. In addition to these specialty services, other alternatives to yola migration include various maritime or air routes, stowaway travel, migration through Mexico, and the use of fraudulent documents for air migration.9

The Voyage Predeparture Passengers gather for yola trips in the hills above the beach known as el monte, at one or more isolated locations. In more urban areas or with more sophisticated operators the gathering point might be a hotel or safe house, with transportation to the yola by trucks or vans. The monte is an entanglement of palms, low trees, and dense, viney underbrush full of mosquitoes. In theory passengers gather there for a few hours before descending to the beach for departure, but in practice many migrants spend days in waiting. Amado spent five days; his group built shelters out of palm fronds to protect themselves from the rain. The yola, engine, and gas were on site, but the captain had not yet arrived. Roberto waited nine days for the captain, and others wait for the passengers to congregate or the weather to clear, however long it takes. Payment of the smuggling fee is usually collected during or before passengers gather in the monte, so they are at the mercy of whatever discomfort the organizers impose. A one- or two-­day wait is not unusual. The isolation of gathering points makes food and water a logistical problem. Some organizers provide board during delays; others do not. Passengers improvise as best they can, sometimes by consuming reserves purchased for the voyage or, when it is permitted, wandering off in search of food. Delays in the monte can result in theft and, less commonly, rape, particularly in large groups of strangers. Yolas are constructed clandestinely and then transported to the beaches by flatbed (usually covered with a tarp) or covered truck. Amado explained that poles are worked under the hull and men on each side lift

Across the Mona Passage 43

the yola to the truck. In some cases the boat, engines, gas, and migrants are all transported together to the beach. On one of Miguel’s trips, the yola went on one truck and the passengers on another, with the exception that some passengers sat on the bow of the boat to weigh it down because the stern was tilting off the back. On other occasions the yolas are piloted or towed down a river to the ocean. When the groups are smaller, migrants also use fishing boats and moored boats stolen from hotels and diving schools. When departure is imminent, migrants make their way from the monte to the beach. They often discover then that the size of the yola is insufficient for the group—or groups, when passengers from other holding areas converge for the same departure. A common belief among border-­ enforcement authorities is that organizers cram passengers onto boats to maximize profits, and this is often true, but there are other reasons for overloading. Yolas are oversold because many recruiters feed into a single voyage without central coordination to close recruitment once the yola is full. When an excess number shows up on the beach, passengers are reluctant not to board for fear of losing their smuggling fees. Captains try to enforce a reasonable limit—reasonable in the sense that the yola is overloaded but still navigable—but migrants insist and sometimes forcibly or surreptitiously board.10 Those who cannot board demand the return of their money, which is not on site; the captain, who is sometimes armed, has the final say. Captains often promise the stranded passengers a place on a later trip that may or may not occur. If it does occur and they show up, these excess passengers compound the overloading of other yolas, which in turn displaces more passengers, and thus the overdemand is perpetuated. Christian’s trip was on a yola suitable for 80 or 90 people, but 140 gathered for departure. The yola was stationed offshore, and the passengers were ferried out by a smaller boat. Some passengers, fearing they would be left behind, jumped the line by swimming to the yola, so the captain moved it further offshore. In the end about 105 passengers were boarded, and during the three days at sea they took turns sitting and standing.11 Moreno related a strategy used by some organizers to defuse hostility when yolas are oversold. The trip organizer gives the captain an order— “Board them all”—and, hesitant to risk the trip in such unsafe conditions, “the passengers themselves say, ‘No, I’m not going—it’s too crowded.’”

44 Undocumented Dominican Migration

The captain concedes to their wish and promises another trip, provided there are enough passengers. “And those very people who got left behind go looking for more, so their trip can go.” Passengers who fear losing their smuggling fees thus become informal recruiters. Overcrowding is also relative to expectation. Someone who is accustomed to a sparsely filled train might feel disturbed when the adjacent seat is occupied, while a weary commuter in a packed subway might be delighted if any seat opens. In the perspective of poor Dominicans, the overloading of yolas is not an anomaly but rather the norm of collective transportation. It is common for motorbikes to transport three passengers or even a whole family, and the passenger vans used for public transportation are notoriously overcrowded. People learn from routine travel on guaguas that you pack yourself in or get left behind. Comfort is subordinate to getting where you are going. On yolas, the motivation to get where you are going is compounded by the fear of losing your money. The same precedents obtain regarding safety. Tolerance of the danger of yola travel is predisposed, for example, by riding in chaotic traffic on a motorbike with bad brakes and bald tires, even with a child on one’s thigh. Would anyone hesitate to get on a guagua because it is falling apart and unequipped to negotiate narrow mountain roads that have precipitous drops, potholes, and oncoming traffic with no headlights? Yola migration makes sense in its cultural context, and what seems like oblivious disregard for safety from a privileged, external perspective is perceived quite differently from inside. From within: routine; from without: the insane recklessness of “boat people.” Perceptions and thresholds of danger are culturally relative, and poor Dominicans live by necessity with higher tolerance.12 The Crossing Yolas depart at night and arrive at night; if all goes well the trip takes about twenty-­four hours. Captains who arrive before nightfall usually wait for darkness to enter. Smaller migrant boats can make the trip in as little as sixteen hours, well-­powered fiberglass vessels can arrive in twelve, and many yolas are at sea for two or three days because of bad weather, motor trouble, evasion of border enforcement, getting lost, or the slow slog of a heavy, underpowered load. Yolas have no marine safety equipment or navigational lights; on occasion a few passengers bring their own life vests. Most captains navigate with a compass, sometimes set in

Across the Mona Passage 45

sand inside a can for protection; some use a GPS; and others follow their instincts, for better or worse. Orlando, a do-­it-­yourselfer, navigated “by the sun and moon.” When I asked him what he did if the sky was cloudy, he responded, “I know how to get there.” He must have been right (or lucky) because he arrived successfully, twice. When the sea is calm the trip is monotonous, a slow, rhythmic push against the backdrop of sea and sky, hour after hour, nothing but sea and sky and an unrelenting sun and the numbing dull hum of the engine. One succumbs to an over-­illuminated sensory deprivation or endless eerie fog or darkness so absolute that passengers cannot see the faces beside them. One body presses against another, leaning in obedient movement with the heave, shoulder to shoulder, melded to the wood of seats and sideboards in a lull that sedates and exhausts. A slosh of urine, excrement, vomit, sweat, and trash, all diluted by saltwater leaking through the seams, is bailed constantly by whoever rises to the occasion. Some passengers are alert and engaged; some are stressed into defensive withdrawal with their heads down, lethargic, sometimes seasick or sedated; and some are easily agitated and conflictive. When the voyage is prolonged and food and water are depleted, some passengers get delirious. In this condition, particularly when hallucinations support the deliria, they are prone to jumping overboard. Many announce that they are going home or to buy food. A woman seated beside Morena suddenly pointed and said, “Look, there’s a colmado, look, tell the captain to stop, love, tell the captain to stop, I want to buy something.” Another man said to the captain, “If you don’t stop there so I can get a motoconcho, we’re all going to die here.” Panic is the rule when migrant boats encounter rough seas. Even in the absence of storms there is an area west of Desecheo Island, near the Puerto Rican coast, where Atlantic and Caribbean currents converge and are lifted by winds, creating unpredictable conditions. Rolling seas yield to chaotic whitecaps; migrants use the word remolino (whirlpool) to describe the area. Olivario called it “where the four winds come together,” and a Coast Guard cutter captain described it as “the washing-­machine effect.” Under some conditions the water is so turbulent that migrants abort the voyage and return to the Dominican Republic, even though they are within miles of Puerto Rico. Migrant boats that get caught in storms are in danger of capsizing. Waves crash in from all angles, breaching sideboards that sometimes are barely a foot above the water. The boat is bobbed and joggled violently,

46 Undocumented Dominican Migration

often in the total darkness of night, so that passengers drenched and shocked from one hit hardly recover before another wave breaks against the hull. The yola rises on swells that easily reach ten feet and then drops with a slam or else surfs down the wave into the trough, again and again, sometimes for hours, rise and slam, rise and plunge, while the passengers scream, vomit, pray, bail, and struggle to hold onto something more stable than the panicked person beside them.13 Arrival Many passengers nevertheless arrive, primarily to beaches on the west coast of Puerto Rico. Departures from the northern Dominican Republic arrive commonly to Aguadilla, Aguada (a large antenna there is used as a reference point for navigation), Añasco, Rincón, and the northwestern area around Isabela; and southern departures arrive around and south of Cabo Rojo. Intensive border enforcement in all of these regions has displaced some landings farther eastward, sometimes—on the north coast— almost as far as San Juan. When arrival occurs without incident, the yola lands and the passengers jump off and run. Some captains sink the boat upon arrival or push it back out to sea to disorient Border Patrol searches that begin where a landing is discovered. Otherwise yolas are abandoned on the beach; the motors and gas tanks are taken by local Puerto Ricans. In some cases the passengers are dropped off and the captain and crew return to the Dominican Republic. This generally occurs for two reasons: the boat and motor are of sufficient value to warrant return, or the captain has one or more additional loads awaiting transport. Delgadino gave a third reason: a Dominican abroad, sometimes a drug dealer, pays well for the transport of a particular person or persons, and the captain “is like a taxi driver” who makes the drop-­off and returns home. Border-­ enforcement personnel say that drop-­off and return is infrequent because gas is expensive and the eighteen-­gallon plastic gas tanks used in migrant boats occupy space that could be used for paying passengers. My informants, particularly those in Sánchez, gave the contrary impression, that drop-­offs occur more regularly. The smugglers on more organized voyages have ground transportation awaiting arrivals. “Sometimes we get to the scene,” said an intelligence agent at Border Patrol, “and you see the boat, you see all the trash, you see all the wet clothes, and you see tire marks.” More common is for mi-

(above) These arriving migrants surprised surfers on the beach. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

(right) A yola abandoned on a Puerto Rican beach after arrival. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

48 Undocumented Dominican Migration

grants to scramble on foot—“each to his fate,” as Víctor put it—while the captain separates from the group for prearranged pick-­up. If Border Patrol agents arrive without sufficient presence to contain flight (local police are used as force multipliers, and there is often air support), then some fast runners can evade capture, at least provisionally, while other migrants are detained. In one unusual case in 2004, arriving migrants hid underwater among mangrove roots, breathing through the hollow stems of plants. Carlos climbed a tree, but an agent in the canine unit located and detained him. Most typical of entries on the northeast coast is for passengers to hide in the monte, change into dry clothes (if they managed to keep them, and keep them dry), and then find their way to San Juan. Migrants generally have no idea where they are or what to do, but most come with the telephone number of a friend or relative who can assist with logistics and transport. Calling is difficult for multiple reasons. Cell phones are not permitted on migrant boats, because of the (unlikely) possibility of informants and because some captains believe that yolas are detected by surveillance that tracks cell phones. Passengers who manage to smuggle phones onto yolas—Marta hid one in her bra—discover on arrival that their Dominican service has no signal in Puerto Rico. Captains carry phones that do work, however, and some communicate en route with collaborators in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Unless they have pick-­up plans, arriving migrants wander through the monte, often for days, until someone local offers assistance. As Gordito put it, “You find someone and say Soy mojadito [I’m a wetback, with the diminutive conveying a sense of humility and need] and ask for help.” The help of some locals is motivated by sympathy and kindness: they provide food, a phone call to one’s contact, and sometimes a shower, clothing, and—on rare occasions—a ride to San Juan. A woman took pity on Julio, feeding him and transporting him to San Juan after he spent fifteen days in the monte. Valdesio and a friend improvised a cardboard bed inside a sewer until a kind man offered food and a phone call. Christian’s story illustrates how a migrant’s destiny can be determined by chance encounters upon arrival. After a three-­day journey at sea, Christian changed from wet shorts into dry pants and spent five days in the monte “eating guayaba, coconut.” He was nineteen at the time, in 1997, and had no plan or contact. Christian wandered onto a farm and was met by the owner, who was pointing a shotgun and asking questions. Christian explained, the farmer lowered the gun, and after a meal (“He

Across the Mona Passage 49 Christian made $25 a week milking cows and doing odd jobs.

gave me two sandwiches and a glass of juice”) Christian accepted an offer to sleep in the barn. The following morning the farmer gave Christian work, paying $25 a week for doing odd jobs and milking cows. Christian worked for three months without leaving the farm, and the first time that he did—invited by the farmer’s son to have a beer in town—he was detained and repatriated. Other locals make a business of helping migrants and overcharging for the service, usually between $200 and $500. Migrants refer to this as a secuestro (kidnapping) because they are taken in, assisted, and sometimes transported to San Juan but held until a friend or relative pays the fee. As Gordito put it, “It’s called ‘kidnapping’ because you have to pay, but they help you.” Transport to San Juan is particularly convenient because undocumented friends and family members—and even legal residents and citizens—put themselves at risk when they pick up migrants on the heavily patrolled west coast. Most migrant-­harboring services are cottage industries, but a few are more organized and have higher volume. Manny was “kidnapped” upon arrival in 2004 and spent a week in a house where forty other Dominicans were detained. An intelligence agent at Border Patrol told a similar story of twenty-­two migrants stashed in a rented beach house in Aguada.14 When new arrivals reach their destination, usually the Santurce or Río Piedras neighborhoods of San Juan, they are heavily dependent on the solidarity and support of relatives, friends, and acquaintances. The support often includes pick-­up at arrival areas or in San Juan; temporary

50 Undocumented Dominican Migration

residence as a house guest; information critical to integration and to evasion of migration authorities; help in finding employment; help in finding housing and sometimes payment of the first rent as a gift or loan; social contacts; and, when applicable, payment of the fee to Puerto Ricans who facilitated entry. When the relation is close—husband and wife, son and daughter, mother and father—the relative may have also paid all or part of the smuggling fee; others may lend money for this purpose.15 Network connections are critical to legal migration, but among undocumented Dominicans the bonds tend to be looser. Migrants regard family abroad as an asset, but the concept of family is ambiguous and easily exploited by moneyless new arrivals who are dependent on assistance. Even the relations of brother and sister can be distant, particularly among half-­brothers and half-­sisters with whom one has had little or no contact. If one’s father abandons the family and moves to another town, for example, one may never meet the siblings resulting from the father’s new relations. Similarly, migrants speak of cousins (primos) abroad, but the term “cousin” refers to extended kinship relations far beyond first cousins. Even first cousins (primos hermanos) can be distant and unknown when one’s parents have several siblings who, in turn, have several children, perhaps with more than one partner and in more than one place. In a network of loose connections, the reception upon arrival depends on the affective bond between the migrant and the contact; on the contact’s housing and financial situation; on the contact’s immigration status; on others in the household (especially a husband or wife) who might resent the imposition; on the migrant’s behavior as a houseguest; and on whether the migrant received an invitation in advance. “I have a cousin in San Juan” sounds promising to a departing migrant, but the surprised cousin—possibly undocumented and probably poor—may be less enthusiastic. Kinship and friendship obligations have their limits, especially when the migrant is little known or disliked and when there are practical concerns such as family and space that make accommodation difficult. Some new arrivals are graciously welcomed; others are simply turned away.16 When migrants are accommodated, their attitudes toward hospitality vary. Some are gracious, grateful, helpful, sensitive to their impact on the household, and highly aware that the solidarity of friends or relatives is critical to successful integration. They also recognize that they are placing their hosts in jeopardy of criminal charges and of deportation if the hosts

Across the Mona Passage 51

are undocumented. Víctor stayed with a friend in San Juan for six weeks: “To protect him, because he was illegal too, I slept somewhere else. So I wouldn’t cause him problems.” The somewhere else was in an abandoned car.17 Other migrants exploit friendship or kinship and with a sense of entitlement presume indefinite accommodation. They often make demands, cause conflict, upset the household order, and then disappear—without expressing gratitude—to pursue better opportunities, so that those who helped them feel used and resentful.18 The implicit limits of generosity are common knowledge, but arriving migrants can nevertheless get offended when they are denied long-­ term hospitality. Domingo was welcomed into his brother’s home in Río Piedras, but the brother’s wife, a Puerto Rican woman, wanted him out. “If you stay in a house that’s not yours for more than a week, two weeks, you’re one too many,” he said. Domingo was resentful that suddenly and without sufficient money (although he was working with the brother in construction) he had to rent a room on his own. Rubén had a similar experience upon arrival to Washington Heights, where he stayed with a first cousin. The accommodations were in “an apartment with only one bedroom and six people lived there, and it had some beds in the living room.” Rubén’s brother was one of the six. At first the reception was warm and generous—“They give me beers, ‘Take these six dollars and buy yourself something, take these five and buy something sweet, here, buy a pair of pants’”—but soon they told him, “‘Look Rubén, who migrated through Mexico, now works as a guagua driver.

52 Undocumented Dominican Migration

for work. We’ll take care of you for a week, but after that you’re on your own.’” “It’s an expensive country,” Rubén added, and “no one gives anything to anyone.” After his week ran out, Rubén moved: “I had to spend a month in an apartment where they sold drugs.” The cocaine was hidden inside the oven door. Rubén paid $75 a week for this experience and asked himself, “What have I gotten myself into?”19 Payment The smuggling fee varies depending on the passenger and the type of voyage. During the decades of high-­volume yola transport—when there were more large operators, more migrants, and less border enforcement— smuggling fees were lower. A typical fee for yola travel was around $400– $500 for Dominicans and at least double that for foreigners. Sometimes the fee was taken in trade for anything of value. Gladys gave a pig. The fees most reported by my informants today are between $600 and $1,000, and this conforms with reports from Coast Guard and Border Patrol intelligence. Newspaper accounts tend to report higher fees, and a few of my informants and other sources mention fees of up to $1,500 for both past and present voyages. The recent increase in fees, which is modest in comparison to their tripling on the Mexican border, is likely the result of inflation, a greater chance of failure due to enhanced border enforcement, the use of smaller vessels (which is also partially in response to border enforcement), and smaller loads resulting from decreased migrant demand.20 Many migrants pay well above and below these common fee ranges depending on where they are from, their personal acquaintances with smugglers, their access to options, their capacity to pay as perceived by the smugglers, and their ability to negotiate. When I asked Saúl how much migrants were charged, he responded, “It depends on where the person is from and what type of person.” The fees are generally lower for trips led by a captain who is a member of the same community as the migrants. Amado gave a descending scale between $850 and $425, then added “even whatever the passenger has, because a lot of the passengers are poor. You have to help them.” If there is space on the boat and someone is in need, Delgadino said, “maybe they give you what they have,” even if only $50. Many passengers get such discounts or travel without paying (a free trip is known as a bola) because they are friends or relatives of the captains, because they recruit other passengers, because they work in lieu of pay-

Across the Mona Passage 53

ment (guarding predeparture yolas, running errands, working as crew), or because they paid for previous failed attempts and are given a second chance. A captain told Christian, “Find me four people and I’ll take you for free.” Santiago contacted a friend in Higüey who organized trips. “I earned the trip working,” Santiago said, “because I didn’t even have money to pay for the trip.” Specialty services, such as the smuggling trips by sailboat described earlier, cost $5,000 to $7,000 (although much higher fees are also reported) and serve a more affluent and sometimes foreign clientele. The smuggling of Cubans from the Dominican Republic to Mona and Monito Islands also costs thousands of dollars, sometimes with accommodations to facilitate payment. In 2006 a Cuban couple, their twelve-­year-­old son, and an uncle paid $2,500 each for the service: “I gave the smugglers a car and some money, but it still wasn’t enough. I gave them the refrigerator, the stove, a microwave oven, a DVD recorder, and a television. I even gave them a hair dryer. In the end I had nothing left to offer.”21 Dominicans raise money to pay the smuggling fees in various manners. Some work and save—Trinidad got a job in a free trade zone for this purpose—and say they can accumulate enough for the trip in six months or a year. Others sell or pawn possessions, borrow, steal, or are subsidized by parents or by relatives abroad. Borrowing against houses is often mentioned, but the word “mortgage” is misleading because many wooden Dominican houses are not worth enough to cover the smuggling fee. Loans against better wooden houses might cover transport for one or two people, and good cinderblock houses could bring more. Sammy raised the money as a con man; Ramón stole a calf from his father and sold it with the intention of repayment had the trip not failed; and Jamel sold everything he had. “I sold my motorbike, stove, refrigerator, even the house,” said Jamel, who made several attempts to reach Puerto Rico. “I didn’t sell my head because . . . ,” and when he paused I finished the sentence: “you still need it.”22 The smuggling fee is paid prior to departure. A deposit is sometimes given in advance—the organizer ostensibly uses this for trip-­related expenses—and the remainder is paid when departure is imminent. With few exceptions, the smuggling fee is lost when a voyage fails for any reason. Migrants consequently suffer huge losses—of homes, of cash reserves, of borrowed money that they cannot repay, and of their few possessions of value. More scrupulous captains, notably those within the migrants’ communities, make efforts to accommodate passengers who traveled on

54 Undocumented Dominican Migration

failed journeys. This is commonly done by offering free passage when there is room on subsequent trips, by giving discounts, and by accepting trip-­related work as payment. If the captain disappears, then the money is lost, and the migrant must pay again for an attempt with another captain. Migrants have become reluctant to pay the full fee in advance due to a long history of swindles (known as tumbes) and a higher percentage of failed voyages. A few captains are willing to take partial payment (generally half) with the remainder paid by a family member in the Dominican Republic upon confirmation of safe arrival. According to a newspaper article in 2008, some passengers paid 10 percent in advance, with the rest due upon arrival. Most organizers are reluctant to agree to such terms, however, because it puts their interests at a disadvantage and exposes them to default. Tito gained a reputation in his community for allowing migrants to defer payment, under the promise of payment from earnings in the United States, but he discontinued the practice because the promise was usually broken. (“You do a favor ten times, and when you say no the eleventh time you’re a bad person.”) Franklin had a similar experience; he accepted 25 percent in advance but was never paid the balance after migrants’ arrivals.23 In comparison with payment arrangements in other regions, the situation in the Dominican Republic is highly prejudicial to migrant interests. When migrants are smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan to England, “payments in advance were always made to a third party, rather than directly to the smuggler himself,” and “the third party would issue a formal receipt to the potential migrant, his or her family, and the smuggler.” The payment is released to the smuggler only after the migrant arrives in the destination country safely. The same practice obtains for migrant smuggling from Turkey. In Haiti during the 1980s, smugglers were charged with an offense similar to fraud or breach of contract if they did not refund payment after failed voyages.24 Passengers A 1979 article states that “migration from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. appears to be predominantly an urban and middle class phenomenon” not comprised of unskilled and uneducated migrants. A 1984 article similarly stated, “The migratory flow has consistently drawn predominantly upon the urban middle class rather than the rural poor” as the result of the failure of industrialization to generate jobs. By the end of the

Across the Mona Passage 55

twentieth century, “the social stratification of migrants diversified, including working class, rural-­urban migrants, and people with lower levels of education.” And finally, today, “the new actors in this migration process are the poor working class and uneducated.”25 It is often stated that the “poorest of the poor” do not migrate, largely because they cannot afford it, but in the Dominican Republic (as in Haiti) people who are motivated find a way. These ways include free transport, working for a smuggler in exchange for transport, migrant-­organized voyages, and crime to raise the smuggling fee. Nevertheless, as Morena put it, “there are really a lot of people who would like to [migrate] but can’t get the money.” Delgadino also specified “lack of money” as a reason for fewer voyages. Moreno’s explanation approached the same decline more pragmatically: if people have to pay 30,000 pesos (around $875), they might as well stay home and work. The great majority of yola migrants—about 70 percent, according to the chief of intelligence at Border Patrol in Puerto Rico—are Dominican males between eighteen and forty years of age. Scholars often speak of the “feminization” of Dominican migration, but my informants and those in other ethnographic studies concur with Border Patrol’s assessment that undocumented maritime migrants are mostly men. Female migration does predominate, however, in other areas of Dominican migration, particularly by air to Spain and the Netherlands. There are occasionally pregnant women on yolas, but none of my informants mentioned this as a means to citizenship by birthright.26 Foreign nationals from several countries use the Dominican Republic as a transit country in an attempt to reach the mainland United States through Puerto Rico. The majority are Cuban and Haitian, but yola migrants have included Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Colombian, Brazilian, Chinese, and Sri Lankan nationals, among others on rare occasions. In November 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested twelve smugglers, all of Chinese nationality or heritage, who transported migrants from China through the Dominican Republic and into Puerto Rico. Chinese smuggling across the Mona Passage was more prevalent in 1993 and 1994, when small boats were used to make the crossing at night. A 2004 case documented the smuggling of Ukrainian migrants through Luperón in the Dominican Republic. The most prevalent Dominican smuggling of foreign nationals entails the transport of Cubans to Mona and Monito Islands, which are about halfway between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.27

56 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Dangers The Mona Passage is one of the most turbulent bodies of water in the world, and migrants in yolas and small fishing boats are at high risk of drowning. Migrants are aware of the dangers and face them variously with dread, fatalistic resignation, and a sense of invulnerability. Many young men and some captains repeat their belief that the crossing “is only dangerous in bad weather,” but—as summarized in the following sections— there are countless dangers that an illusion of control can dismiss but not eliminate. Unseaworthiness of Yolas Many yolas are poorly made and highly susceptible to sinking or breaking apart in rough seas. On occasion passengers opt out of a voyage, despite the loss of their smuggling fees, because they realize that a yola is unseaworthy. Yolanda was on a wobbly yola that was making cracking sounds, so she jumped out a few minutes after embarking. Amado did the same on a different trip; he jumped out farther offshore because the yola was taking on water. And Francisco twice walked away from yolas he regarded as too flimsy to carry the crowd loaded on at the beach. The movement of yolas at sea tends to loosen boards and cause leaks that can result in sinking. The captain of a Coast Guard cutter said a foot of bilge water in a yola is not uncommon. On Dolores’s trip, the yola was leaking so badly that a plastic gasoline tank was emptied overboard, cut in half, and used as a bailing receptacle. Passengers often bail constantly and sometimes futilely, then improvise other remedies. “We made it to Puerto Rico,” Rafael related, but the passengers “were almost naked because we used the clothes to stop all the leaks.” On another trip Raúl did the same—stuffed clothes into the seams—when his voyage paused on Desecheo Island. The hulls of some yolas are wrapped in fiberglass cloth to prevent leaking, but this laminate often detaches at sea and tatters. Some predeparture yolas are hidden from authorities by storage underwater and then are resurfaced for voyages (although this is more common with fiberglass boats), and on occasion yolas are camouflaged by submersion and tugged downriver to the ocean. Both of these tactics are detrimental to seaworthiness.28 In addition to sinking, overloaded yolas sometimes simply break apart under stress. On Morena’s fourth tip, organized by the notorious Núñez

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smugglers, the boat began to split in half along its length. The captain dove in the water with a rope to tie the hull together, and this group of twenty-­six migrants was rescued shortly afterward by the Coast Guard. On another voyage, Franklin likewise secured a wobbly hull with a rope to prevent the yola from splitting. In February 2012 an overstressed yola broke apart shortly after departure under the weight of the passengers and from the force of the waves. At least fifty-­six passengers drowned.29 In rough seas yolas are highly prone to capsize, and the small fishing boats used by migrants flip all the more easily. Many Dominicans, particularly those from rural inland regions, cannot swim. Some have never been on a boat or seen the ocean. The predictable results, even among strong swimmers, are illustrated by a January 2008 event: three men and one woman were rescued and two corpses recovered by the Coast Guard after a migrant boat capsized near Cabo Engaño. The other eleven passengers were never found. In this case the survivors stayed afloat by holding five-­gallon water containers; empty plastic gas tanks are more frequently used for flotation. Ten-­foot seas are common in the Mona Passage, and in storm conditions waves can rise to sixteen feet. Unless their bows are high enough to sustain this sea state, overloaded migrant boats ride low and heavy in the water, cutting into waves rather than gliding over them. Their lack of stability and maneuverability (worsened by the flat-­bottomed hulls typical of yolas from La Romana) makes them prone to a form of capsize known as pitch poling. After a yola peaks on a crest it is forced down the face of the wave and then rises too slowly so that the bow plows into the trough. The next wave then catches the stern and throws the boat end over end. More common is broaching: the seas push the boat sideways on the slope of a wave, causing the boat to roll over. Yolas frequently capsize as they approach beaches on arrival because they get caught broadside to a breaking wave. Most migrants lack a sense of balancing the boat and thereby contribute to capsize. “The worst cargo is human cargo,” Olivario observed, because when a yola is heaving on the swells and tilts to one side the passengers tend to lean with it. Migrant boats also capsize when passengers rush suddenly and clumsily to one side. This occurs, for example, when too many people get involved in the rescue of an overboard passenger and on occasion when the Coast Guard approaches with a small boat to distribute life vests to panicked migrants.30

58 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Captain Error The dangers inherent to travel on poorly constructed yolas are redoubled by incompetent captains and those with callous disregard for passenger safety. Sometimes even judicious preparation and execution results in tragedy due to factors more or less out of a captain’s control (such as a broken compass or a broken flashlight that makes it impossible to see the compass) but nevertheless within his responsibility. Much of the tragedy resulting from captain error is a consequence of inexperience, and inexperience, paradoxically, is often the basis of overconfidence. Incompetents do not know enough to understand what competence is needed, and consequently they “dramatically overestimate their ability and performance.” The spirit is well captured in Jamel’s bravado: “I’m from Miches— I know the ocean.”31 Experienced captains like Rafael, Tito, and Moreno are skilled at navigation and better prepared to defend themselves in storms. They are competent at heading into waves to avoid broaching, slowing the boat when forced down a wave, avoiding a slam in the trough, looking for gaps between breaking crests to steer the smoothest course, and recuperating their bearings after storms. All of these feats are challenging in a seaworthy vessel; one can imagine the limitations of an overloaded and underpowered yola. Captains who lack navigational skills tend to keep their course despite rough seas or to increase speed to escape danger. One result of speed is the mentioned plowing into troughs because the bow does not have time to rise and meet the waves. Excessive speed also causes the boat to launch off waves and slam down between them, over and over, until the impact cracks the hull. This occurs especially when opposing wind and current create what are known as square waves, which have a short length before the fall into the trough. In one particularly dramatic case, a captain’s wife went into labor aboard a yola caught in rough seas off the coast of Puerto Rico. The captain panicked and accelerated to get to shore quickly, so rather than riding the waves the yola launched off and crashed down between them until finally it broke apart. Most of the passengers, along with the captain and his wife, died at sea. The story was told to an intelligence agent at Border Patrol by a rescued passenger who survived by using a gas tank for flotation. Other inexperienced captains lose their bearings in storms and— because they have no compass or because it is broken—get lost at sea.

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Olivario was heading toward Rincón on the western coast of Puerto Rico when a storm blew him off course. After six days at sea, the passengers arrived at Culebra, an island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. On other trips the outcome is less fortunate. In November 2008, a yola with fifty-­ one passengers departed from La Romana. The yola got lost, ran out of gas, and drifted. About three weeks later, fishermen off the southern coast of Haiti found two men, naked and badly burned, lying on the floor of the yola. The other forty-­nine passengers had already died and were thrown overboard. Similar tragedies occur when captains make wide diversionary maneuvers to evade Coast Guard cutters and then get lost or run out of gas. In recent years there seem to be more yola fatalities than in the past, perhaps as a consequence of the transition from large, smuggler-­organized trips led by experienced captains to smaller trips captained by amateurs or by the migrants themselves. “A lot of these guys are not prepared,” said an intelligence agent at Border Patrol. “When people get lost at sea it’s captain error.” Amado had the same opinion in regard to migrant-­ organized voyages: “The majority of trips that people do on their own . . . get lost because they don’t know about the weather; they don’t know anything.” Many trips are fatally bungled simply because the captains lack the most basic equipment. Diligent, experienced captains like Tito bring a spare compass and extra gas (“because it’s not sold on the way”), not to mention two reliable engines. Others depart with whatever they can put together, setting out even with tired fifteen-­horsepower engines and no backup. Collision Low to the water, hidden in swells, and with no navigation lights, yolas are in danger of being rammed by passing boats or freighters. This is particularly true at night, in fog, and in traffic lanes through the Mona Passage. The captain of a Coast Guard cutter mentioned his fear that he might collide with an unseen yola, and such a collision nearly occurred on one of Delgadino’s voyages. The yola had a single motor that stalled repeatedly, and Delgadino was trying to restart it when a cutter, unaware of the migrants’ presence, headed directly toward them. The migrants were about to jump overboard and swim out of harm’s way, but the engine started in time, and Delgadino managed to evade a collision. The disabled yola on one of Morena’s trips was almost plowed into by

60 Undocumented Dominican Migration After capsize, Johnny swam for hours and then collapsed on the beach.

a freighter. The chances of such collisions are enhanced by a camouflage tactic used by some yola captains: the engine is stopped, the passengers crouch, and sometimes the (blue) yola is covered with a blue tarp. This is done to avoid sightings by border-­enforcement patrols but also by passing boats that might report the migrants to the Coast Guard. Yolas also collide with debris that damages hulls and propeller blades. Damage occurs most often, however, when yolas crash into rocks or underwater coral reefs. In December 2011 a yola departing from Matancitas beach, near Nagua, was damaged and sank after colliding with a reef; at least three migrants died. Many captains cross the Mona Passage successfully but then get hung up on reefs upon arrival. Waves break over the disabled yolas, and panicked passengers often attempt to swim ashore, sometimes drowning en route. In 2004, Johnny, his brother, his sister, and his father were among thirty-­seven passengers on a failed voyage that was returning to Miches due to bad weather. On approach, at night, the boat was damaged on a reef. Many passengers waited on the reef in shallow water, hoping for rescue, and some were washed into the darkness by breaking waves. Others, including Johnny, decided to take their chances by swimming. Johnny tied together two empty gas tanks, situated his sister in the middle, and with

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his brother and another passenger made it to shore after several hours. Eleven people survived the wreck, among them five (including the father) rescued from the reef by the Dominican navy. Engine Failure Yolas are powered by outboard engines of varying quality, some newly purchased for voyages and others dangerously old. For thirty- to forty-­foot yolas the engines are generally 40 or 60 horsepower, but 25-­horsepower engines are sometimes used, and fishing boats have made the crossing with smaller engines. Alejandro’s trip, with fifteen passengers, was underpowered by a single 9-­horsepower engine. By contrast, twenty-­foot pleasure and fishing boats in the United States are commonly powered by 130- to 250-­horsepower outboard engines. The Coast Guard’s twenty-­five-­ foot Defender class boats have twin 225-­horsepower outboard engines, and Customs and Border Protection’s thirty-­nine-­foot Interceptor has four 300-­horsepower engines. Any sensible yola captain departs with two engines, shifting from one to the other to prevent overheating, using one as a reserve in case of mechanical problems, and on occasion running both at once. The smaller second engine is sometimes used for quieter departure and arrival. Acquiring two engines is not always possible, however, mainly for lack of resources. (The same is true of gas: there are rarely reserves for contingencies.) Outboard engines often get soaked by waves and are disabled; some restart, others do not. When an engine malfunctions (or falls overboard, as was reported in one case), the migrants are at the mercy of fate. The tragedies caused by engine failure or gas depletion are the most disturbing, perhaps because the suffering is prolonged. Some migrants on disabled vessels are seen quickly and rescued; others are found late in the ordeal or not at all. The passengers die one by one of dehydration and exposure. The corpses are generally thrown overboard; on rare occasions body flesh is eaten by starving survivors. Some passengers attempt to swim ashore although no land is in sight; others, delirious, jump overboard with the intention of walking home. The migrants who survive are hospitalized for severe dehydration and sunburn. Some die after rescue, usually from kidney failure. The engine on Alejandro’s trip broke down near Mona Island, and the passengers spent seven days adrift. Food and water ran out on the fifth day. The captain had the idea to make a sail with shirts fastened to crossed

62 Undocumented Dominican Migration Alejandro

lengths of bamboo, although no one knew where the wind would blow them. It seemed better than doing nothing. An airplane on patrol eventually spotted the yola, and the passengers were rescued by the Coast Guard. Other passengers are not as fortunate. In October 2008 a yola en route to Puerto Rico ran out of gas, drifted northwest, and sank off the coast of Great Inagua in the Bahamas. Thirty-­two passengers died, and four were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. In late July 2004, a thirty-­foot yola with about eighty-­six passengers departed from El Limón on the north coast. The engine failed, and the captain boarded a passing migrant boat promising to return with help. He never returned. The migrants drifted at sea for thirteen days. Food and water ran out on the third day; one survivor said, “I was fortunate because I had a tube of Colgate to eat.” Older passengers began dying on the fifth day; others became delirious and jumped overboard. A total of fifty-­five died, including eight who died after rescue. The lack of food and water and the deaths in rapid succession motivated some men on this trip to demand breast milk from female passengers. Two young women conceded and breast-­fed several men; one of the women survived and the

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other did not. The reports are conflicting, but it appears that a third lactating woman was thrown overboard when she refused the demand. There are also unconfirmed reports of cannibalism. On another disabled yola, in 2005, passengers familiar with this story demanded breast milk from a young woman, threatening her with a machete. The woman in fact was not lactating; she had lied, saying she had given birth recently in order to get a better place on the yola.32 Passenger Violence and Captain Malfeasance A yola carries an accidental, floating, inescapable community that could shift in an instant from solidarity in common crisis to violent defense of self-­interest. In the classic fight or flight scenario, only one of the options is available. Shared ethical norms are suspended when panic induces a situational ethics committed first to self-­preservation. “There are few friends on yolas,” Víctor said glumly, “because everyone wants to survive however they can.”33 There are three common conflict scenarios that endanger yola passengers. In the first, fights break out among a few passengers and uninvolved others suffer collateral damage either because they are wounded by fists, knives, guns, or onboard objects used as weapons or because the fight causes the boat to capsize. Some passengers drink on yolas to calm their fears or pass the time, and the participants in fights are often drunk. Panic and desperation also generate conflict. Sometimes the captain and crew or other passengers tie up fighting passengers or throw them overboard (either permanently or to cool them off) so the voyage is not further endangered.34 The second scenario occurs when a violent and sometimes desperate minority—often one person—forces the captain forward despite dangerous weather, vessel, or engine conditions. Such mutinous action often occurs when passengers believe they are being swindled. On Félix’s trip, a captain wanted to turn back because the yola was taking on water, but a passenger with a pistol forced him forward. Catalina’s yola made it to Puerto Rico safely, but early in the crossing the captain was murdered. The captain wanted to turn back because, he said, there was bad weather ahead, but one of the passengers thought this was a ploy. A fight ensued and the passenger killed the captain, threw him overboard, and took his place at the tiller. Captains no longer permit passengers to carry weapons,

64 Undocumented Dominican Migration

and many captains are themselves armed to maintain order and control. Pistols and knives are smuggled aboard, however, unless diligent body and bag searches are done during boarding.35 In the third scenario, unconscious people are thrown overboard. Many migrants describe passengers who become limp and nonresponsive as the result of prolonged and severe seasickness. “You can’t tell if they are dead or alive” is a common comment, and some of these quasi-­comatose passengers are not given the benefit of the doubt. For this reason, Christian explained, you have to travel by yola with a friend who will protect you if you cannot protect yourself. You need someone to say, “No, that person is with me,” Christian related, because “if you don’t have anyone they’ll throw you overboard.” Some captains protect unconscious passengers— “You have to carry them off the boat upon arrival,” Franklin said—but informants regard others as complicit through negligence in the abuse (and murder) of helpless passengers. Morena disagreed with other informants regarding passengers thrown overboard: “Some go crazy and jump,” and the captains rescue them, but “no one throws anyone overboard. That’s a lie.” It is more common for captains to force the entire load of passengers into the water upon arrival, although some, often young men, jump out of their own volition to reach shore quickly and separate from the group. Passengers are forced into the water when a yola on a turn-­and-­return voyage is too large to approach the beach or when a captain, fearing imminent interdiction, is anxious to unload passengers and escape. This is done, sometimes at gunpoint, despite passenger protests that they cannot swim. The predictable results include drownings; even good swimmers are endangered by exhaustion, especially in breaking surf. Passengers are also endangered by rocks and reefs and by propeller strikes as the boat pivots quickly to depart.36 Malfeasance is difficult to judge out of context because decisions are made under the duress of circumstances that most people never have to suffer. En route to Puerto Rico, for example, Franklin encountered an overturned yola with some twenty people in the water. He was the captain on a small fishing boat already overloaded with migrants and knew that a rescue attempt would result in capsize or—if he took on the extra weight—sinking. One capsized passenger was separated from the group in the water, however, so Franklin rescued him and continued onward. “They were screaming, ‘Come back, come back,’” Franklin said, agitated, twitching, squirming around himself with teared-­up eyes, “but how could

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I go back?” Does this decision render Franklin a heartless criminal with no regard for human life, or is he a decent person, no better or worse than anyone else, who under pressure made a sound, horrible choice? Weather The weather is a significant danger to yola migrants because it changes unpredictably but also because many captains barely check a forecast before departing. Those who are most competent watch television forecasts and check weather reports online for both sides of the Mona Passage, others call their families or contacts in Puerto Rico for reports, and the least diligent rely on instincts and impressions. Some captains prefer to travel in bad weather because they believe there will be little or no border enforcement. This was the case with a well-­loved and now well-­mourned captain called Caquito, who in April 2009 died at sea with eighteen passengers while trying to reach Puerto Rico in a storm. His wife, Milagros, said he had previously survived a capsize in a storm. Trips also depart in bad weather when captains capitulate against their better judgment to the insistence of anxious migrants. Once their smuggling fees are paid, the migrants are so afraid of being swindled that they interpret weather delays as deceptions and pressure captains to depart. Sharks Public relations campaigns and press accounts sensationalize sharks as a principle danger of boat migration; there is hardly a news article that is not embellished with the phrase “shark-­infested” (along with “treacherous”) to describe the Mona Passage. But sharks, in fact, do not substantially increase the danger of the crossing. One has to be in the water (after capsize, for example) to be attacked by a shark, and at that point, with few exceptions, death is inevitable. Whether the death is by drowning or shark attack has emotional value but does not significantly alter the risk of the voyage. Passengers frequently mistake dolphins for sharks, and the danger of potential attacks is likewise exaggerated in that manner. Yola legend is replete with stories of sharks attracted by menstruation (there may be a measure of truth to this when blood is in bailed water) and of menstruating women thrown overboard by passengers who fear shark attacks. After a tragic voyage in 2004, a survivor reported that a woman

66 Undocumented Dominican Migration

died onboard of a miscarriage and that her body “was dumped into the sea because passengers were afraid her blood would draw sharks to the boat.”37 Captains offer contradictory reports regarding sharks. Moreno learned about them on the Discovery Channel but exaggerated his findings, saying sharks can detect blood from hundreds of kilometers away. (Online sources suggest a quarter-­mile distance.) A few captains, including two with significant experience, said they never saw sharks, but others reported variously that sharks are attracted to yolas by the bailed water (with urine, feces, and vomit) and food thrown overboard, by the sound of the motor, or by the shade beneath the boat. I had more or less dismissed these ideas as folklore until the pilot of a surveillance aircraft showed me a photograph that his crew had taken of a fifteen-­foot tiger shark following behind a yola in the distance. “I always said that if we put GPS trackers on the tiger sharks, we’d find the yolas.”38 Scams Dominicans are sometimes said to have a complejo del gancho, meaning a suspicion that others are trying to cheat or deceive them. Insofar as yola voyages are concerned, there is good reason for suspicion. Migrants who have access to a known and trusted captain—perhaps one from their community—are less vulnerable to scams; others must take their chances and are frequently swindled. The fear of falling victim to the scams of con men and dishonest captains is critical to migrant decision making. A bad choice results in loss of the smuggling fee, and a history of scams deters prospective migrants.39 The scams that separate migrants from their money vary in sophistication. In the simpler schemes a smuggler or con man collects all or part of the fees in advance to build the yola, buy the engines, pay off the navy, or meet other expenses and then disappears; or he gathers passengers at a point of departure, gets paid, and then leaves under some pretext—to get more gas, pick up the engines, get a compass—and never returns. In some cases con men claim ownership of borrowed boats or simply boats beached or moored somewhere so that their pitch to potential migrants is more convincing. Emilio proudly reported that he specialized in such deceptions in his youth: he would recruit twenty or thirty people, load them on a boat that was not his, and disappear with their money.40 Another con man, Sammy, was more elaborate in his schemes. He

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would announce an imminent departure and show potential migrants a new engine and a beached boat—neither of which were his—that would be used for the voyage. Sammy has no idea how to get to Puerto Rico and he probably has never piloted a boat, but he has a talent for inspiring and betraying trust. “Wear something waterproof,” he tells the group of prospects gathered beside the boat, “and bring some crackers and salami.” Then one man in the group, a shill who partners with Sammy on the con, steps forward with great determination to pay for himself and his two sons. Others gradually step forward to reserve their places before it is too late. On the night of departure a third partner leads the passengers to a remote locale above a beach to await arrival of the yola, then disappears under some pretext. Hours pass; the group becomes impatient. And when the mood seems right the shill in the group, with his two sons beside him, begins the cathartic dialogue: “He’s going to pay for this—I’m going to kill that bastard.” The threatened revenge in this case is theatrical, but in other cases captains who defraud passengers, and even captains who survive disasters in which passengers die, are sometimes murdered or suffer other reprisals such as assault and arson. Milagros related that months after Caquito disappeared at sea, relatives of dead passengers were still stalking and surveilling her house, believing Caquito was alive and hoping for revenge. (On a previous voyage he was the only survivor.) Another common scam is to feign engine trouble some hours after departure or to overload boats so they ride dangerously low in the water, in both cases necessitating return. The passengers are usually relieved to escape unharmed, and they leave with the promise of another voyage that in fact will never occur. Rafael worked for about ten years as a yola captain hired by organized smugglers. On occasion the organizers had two groups of passengers stationed at distant places on the beach, so that each group was unaware of the other. Rafael would load one group for departure and the organizer would instruct him: Mójalos (Get them wet). This meant to take them out for a spin, feign engine trouble, and return with the back-­up engine. These passengers would lose their smuggling fees. Rafael would then pick up the other group and travel to Puerto Rico as planned. The trip organizer thus doubled his income, although some of the passengers who were deceived—those who were local, informed, and persistent—might be integrated into later voyages. Another common scam is to take passengers, particularly those who

68 Undocumented Dominican Migration

are from the interior and unfamiliar with the coast, to sites within the Dominican Republic. In these cases a roundabout tour ends, for example, at the tourist resort of Cayo Levantado, and the excited passengers disembark and scramble for cover thinking they have made it to Puerto Rico. Some scams are organized in collaboration with Dominican navy officers. The officers are told the time and place of departure by the trip organizers, and just as the yola is about to depart the authorities show up on the beach and forbid departure. The passengers lose their money, which is then divided between the trip organizers and naval officers. A news article follows to report how the efficacious navy prevented another illegal and dangerous voyage. Migrants who have made it to the United States are victims of scams as well. In 2009 a Dominican man from the Bronx was arrested for posing as a lawyer and charging immigrants thousands of dollars for green cards, visas, and work permits that he would never deliver. In 2010 a woman in Puerto Rico was arrested for impersonating a federal officer. She had charged at least one Dominican $12,000 and another $19,000 for fraudulent services likewise pertaining to immigration documents. Leaving Puerto Rico for the Mainland Puerto Rico has been both a transit point and a final destination for Dominican migrants. A common itinerary entails travel by yola to Puerto Rico and then by air to the mainland. There is generally an interlude of some months or years between legs of the journey, during which migrants acclimate and save money for airfare and documents. Personal and employment attachments can form during this interim, however, and some migrants originally en route to the mainland ultimately decide to settle in Puerto Rico. Others choose Puerto Rico as their destination from the start. There are several reasons for this choice: reunification with relatives settled there; a desire to be closer to home (which can make periodic visits more feasible); preference for a familiar Caribbean cultural and linguistic ambience; and aversion to the expense, risk, stress, and dislocation of moving to the unfamiliar mainland. For migrants today, Puerto Rico has become more of a final destination than a stopover. Enhanced border enforcement contributes to this change, but a weak U.S. economy and a change of attitude among migrants are also significant factors. My informants were entirely unaware

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of the security level at Puerto Rican airports, but nevertheless few had aspirations to continue to the mainland. They face seemingly insurmountable obstacles even to cross the Mona Passage, so the goal threshold lowers and the mainland becomes a distant, abstract ideal. The excitement of migration to “Nueba Yol” (the mainland) in the 1980s and 1990s has yielded to a slower, more measured pace of advancement.41 A passport is not required when U.S. citizens travel directly within the United States and its possessions and territories. If Dominicans can successfully pose as Puerto Ricans, as Americans from any region, or as Dominican Americans living legally in the United States, then they can fly from Puerto Rico to mainland cities without passports or visas. In the past, when airports were less secure, it was relatively easy for Dominicans to pass inspection with fraudulent birth certificates, Social Security cards, and drivers’ licenses that were readily available for purchase in Puerto Rico. “We used to do preflight inspection right where the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] is now,” explained the Customs and Border Protection chief in San Juan. The immigration officers were on the far side of the metal detector; Dominican migrants with domestic destinations would present their fraudulent documents and hope for the best. Success depended on the quality of the documents but also on an individual’s capacity to maintain composure under pressure. If passengers were departing from Puerto Rico on international flights, the inspection agents let them pass. Migrants exploited that loophole with the simple tactic of purchasing two tickets, one domestic and the other international. At the immigration check the migrant would present as a Dominican citizen with a boarding pass for Santo Domingo and state that he or she was going home. Once through the inspection, the migrant then used the domestic boarding pass for a flight to a mainland city. Boarding passes were also delivered or switched inside the secure area of the airport. Domingo, for example, bought tickets to Santo Domingo and New York. Once through security he waited for the Dominican flight, hid in the men’s room while it boarded, and then went to the departure gate for New York. Franklin also bought two tickets and at security availed himself of a prop by offering to carry another passenger’s baby.42 The two-­ticket scheme is no longer viable because CBP officers now do preflight inspections at the gates of individual flights, not at the security area, and have authority to do interviews in any area of the airport. (CBP cannot ask for air tickets; if someone says he or she is leaving the coun-

70 Undocumented Dominican Migration

try, officers make sure the person boards the plane.) The gate inspections are done for both domestic and international departures. In the domestic inspection, which is done to enforce immigration law, passengers are asked a simple question: “Are you a U.S. citizen?” Other questions might be asked based on the response, and if suspicions are raised the passenger is referred to secondary inspection for more thorough interview and database checks. On outbound international flights, the preboarding inspection is technically done for customs purposes, specifically to check for monetary instruments in excess of $10,000, but CBP is authorized to enforce other federal laws—including immigration laws—if officers detect violations. Passengers are asked, “How much money are you carrying?” and, again, there may be follow-­up and secondary inspections based on the responses.43 The customs inspection thus can lead to the discovery of immigration violations and to biometric registry of outbound offenders so they will be identified upon any future return. On two separate occasions in October 2009, for example, Dominican men were arrested while attempting to board flights from San Juan to Santo Domingo. Both men had as identification only cartas de ruta, which informally suggest illegal presence in the United States. The men were referred to secondary inspection, where biometric database checks revealed that both had been deported previously. They were charged with reentry after deportation (violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326), which is a felony.44 The use of fraudulent documents to board flights from Puerto Rico to the mainland is less feasible now due to these new procedures but also for several other reasons. Airport immigration officers from CBP’s Office of Field Operations are highly trained in fraudulent-­document detection. They train others too, including airline personnel, TSA security inspectors, and foreign immigration officials. In the past a migrant could bluff through a single check; today a layered security approach provides multiple filters. In addition, the documents themselves have changed dramatically. The old Puerto Rican driver’s licenses (some of which are still in circulation) were simple cards with attached photos and laminate covers. Forgers could easily substitute the photographs or alter the content. The new licenses have digital imagery and several security features such as watermarks and holograms that make forgery and alteration more difficult to achieve and easier to detect.45 A similar change was the invalidation of old Puerto Rican birth certifi-

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cates and the requirement that the new security-­enhanced certificates be used after July 2010. Birth certificates are required in Puerto Rico for various social and institutional transactions, such as enrolling children in school, and as a consequence countless certificates were stored in unsecured files across the island. Thousands of these were stolen and sold for identity purposes; one identity-­theft ring alone broke into about fifty Puerto Rican public schools and stole the birth certificates and Social Security numbers of 7,000 children. Yola migrants buy such documents for work and travel and to use as the foundational documents in applications for driver’s licenses and passports. The obsolescence of the old and requirement of the new birth certificates as evidence of U.S. citizenship has minimized these types of fraud. Despite the tighter security, migrants still attempt to travel to the mainland using a variety of false documents: green cards, Social Security cards, birth certificates, and driver’s licenses from many states. Their best hope for success is on flights that are not inspected. CBP does not have the resources for preflight inspection of all flights—which depart from Aguadilla, Ponce, Fajardo, and other cities in addition to San Juan—so selections are made on the basis of risk assessment, destination, intelligence, and availability of agents. An incident at San Juan airport in November 2010 illustrates the common scenario when fraudulent documents are detected. A Dominican woman who had traveled by yola to Puerto Rico five years earlier attempted to board a flight to Boston. She presented a Puerto Rican driver’s license, was referred to secondary inspection, and after interview and database checks eventually confessed that she purchased the license and was not a U.S. citizen. The woman was prosecuted for document fraud and deported. Marriage Fraud A prominent goal among yola migrants is to marry a U.S. citizen in order to normalize immigration status. In this context Dominicans refer to two ambiguously interrelated types of marriage: matrimonio por amor (marriage resulting from love) and matrimonio por negocio (marriage as a business arrangement). The latter, also known as marriage blanc, marriage of convenience, sham marriage, or, when it is done without charge as a favor, matrimonio de favor, occurs when “a citizen marries an alien in a collusive contract usually involving a fee with the understanding that

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the marriage will be dissolved after the alien becomes a legal permanent resident.”46 Dominican migrants described these arranged marriages as an expeditious means to legalization—“I’ll get married and get my papers”—but in fact the process is long, difficult, and sometimes impossible, particularly if the migrant has been in the United States illegally for more than six months. In order to normalize the status of an undocumented wife or husband, the noncitizen must return to, in this case, the Dominican Republic and with the citizen spouse apply for a visa at the U.S. consulate. At that point the couple is shocked to discover that the noncitizen spouse is barred from reentry into the United States for three or ten years, depending on the term of illegal presence before departure. The only remedy is the filing of an Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility (I-­601), in which the citizen petitions the return of the noncitizen on the grounds that the citizen would otherwise suffer extreme hardship. The success rate of such petitions is low and the expenses (because a lawyer is required) are high.47 The Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments enacted in 1986 impose a two-­year conditional residency on noncitizen spouses before they can request permanent residence by virtue of marriage. If a spouse petitioning in the Dominican Republic is permitted to return, this de facto two-­year probation begins. An investigation determines if the marriage is bona fide, meaning not contracted to adjust a noncitizen’s immigration status. Inspectors make determinations partially on the basis of a documental record attesting to combined assets and liabilities, such as joint bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and property leases. Spouses are interviewed separately and asked identical and very specific questions regarding courtship, family, home, the wedding, and everyday life. The responses are then compared. The questions include, for example, “How long was it before you decided to get married?” “Do you buy gifts for your in-­laws on important holidays?” “Who cleans the house?” “What do each of you eat for breakfast?” “Who sleeps on which side of the bed?” and “Where is the garbage kept in the kitchen?” If all goes well, the couple must jointly petition for the foreign spouse to become a permanent resident within ninety days of the conditional residency’s conclusion.48 Despite the illegality of marriages arranged for immigration purposes, their online solicitation is remarkably open. A man from Orlando, Florida, ran an announcement that read, “Hi my name is Mario, I’m 33 and an american citizen, I’m looking for a girl who is responsible and

Across the Mona Passage 73

serious, who is interested in solving her problems of residence in the usa, through matrimonio por negocio.” A Dominican woman headed her announcement with “I’m looking for an american boy for matrimonio por negocio,” followed by: “hi I’m a girl and I am looking for an american citizen to get married por negocio, I’m offering $8,000 to the interested person, it’s only por negocio.” Rather than viewing the marriages as crimes, migrants regard them as a practical and critical step toward economic advancement, family reunion by visa sponsorship, and freedom to visit the Dominican Republic.49 Despite the openness and frequency of marriage fraud, it is difficult to prosecute because the evidence is circumstantial or hearsay. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Juan does not accept individual marriage fraud cases; it prosecutes only those in which conspiracy is involved, meaning multiple fraudulent marriages arranged by a criminal organization. Other violations are sanctioned administratively, by deportation.50 Prior to the tighter controls pursuant to the 1986 amendments, a Dominican would travel by yola to Puerto Rico, pay someone to marry him or her, never live with the person, and gain residency. The more rigorous requirements and investigation have made such arrangements impossible and have prolonged the process for a period of years, so both spouses in marriage fraud—migrant and citizen—must now commit for the long term. The effort to deceive federal authorities becomes theatrical, with love letters, displays of affection, elaborate weddings, and photo albums. “I had a wedding dress, a wedding cake, and lots of photographs. There were toasts and everything,” explained the bride in one of these marriages. The couple must also live together—there are random inspection visits—and the intimacy of that arrangement can evolve into unanticipated affections, sometimes initiated or strengthened by sexual relations. “You do it por negocio and love happens,” as Alberto put it.51 Morena migrated by yola with the intent of marrying an older Puerto Rican man to normalize her status. Her friend in San Juan had already identified the prospective husband, and Morena talked with him a few times by telephone. At first the relation was strictly business, but gradually an affection formed and the man anticipated her arrival. Morena’s plan was “to live together, a normal relationship,” with the exception that the couple might or might not be sexually intimate. Morena was aware that she and the husband would be interviewed and that a charade was required to convince authorities of the marriage’s legitimacy. She mentioned, for example, the need for displays of affection outside of the house

74 Undocumented Dominican Migration

(“They take photos of you and you don’t even realize it”) and to convince neighbors (who might be interviewed) of the marriage’s authenticity. Morena was unaware, however, that she would need to return to the Dominican Republic to apply for residency and would be barred from reentry into the United States. She was also unaware that her goal could be realized with greater ease and infinitely higher chances of success if the Puerto Rican were to travel to the Dominican Republic and marry her there. (In this scenario, too, she would not risk her life on a yola.) When marriage takes place outside of the United States, the noncitizen spouse can remain in his or her country until a green card is issued or can accompany the citizen spouse to the United States using a K-­3 visa. In a typical marriage for immigration purposes that takes place in the Dominican Republic, an American citizen—usually a man of Dominican origin— returns to the island, marries a Dominican, and takes the spouse to the United States. The couple then divorces after the spouse attains lawful permanent residency.52 In other cases, unilateral love, generally on the part of the citizen, can complicate marriages arranged for visa purposes. These arrangements are often between an older Puerto Rican woman and a younger Dominican man, Víctor relates, “and sometimes she wants it to become a reality.” If the noncitizen does not want to forfeit the possibility of legal residence, Víctor continues, “I have to do whatever she says. And that’s real hard too. The same for women. They marry por negocio and then have to be the wife for real. Even if they don’t want to.” Tiva lived in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, contracted an arranged marriage to legalize her status, fell in love with another man, and had two children with him. The legal husband, however, wanted Tiva for himself, as though the marriage were more than a business arrangement. When Tiva refused to comply, he reported her to immigration authorities and she was deported. Tiva subsequently tried on eight failed yola voyages to reunite in Puerto Rico with her spouse and their children. On the ninth try (in July 2004, described above), she died of kidney failure after thirteen days lost at sea. Migrants and citizens also get married because they are in love, but love is a complex emotion susceptible to deception and self-­deception. An undocumented migrant who marries a citizen is sometimes driven by ambiguous motives of which even he or she may not be fully aware. In other cases deception is conscious and intentional: “the alien deludes a citizen into the marriage and abandons the citizen after getting per-

Across the Mona Passage 75

manent resident status.” The marriage fraud is thus unilateral because the citizen is genuinely in love. “Some Dominican men get married with Puerto Rican women for love,” said a woman who married a migrant. “My experience, nevertheless, reflects that I was used.”53 Unilateral fraud is also perpetrated with K-­1 visas, which are nonimmigrant visas for fiancé(e)s returning with American citizens to the United States. This type of fraud occurs in the context of sex tourism, of the more or less predatory sexuality of some expatriates (referred to as “sex-­pats”), and of the ambiguous relations between tourists looking for adventure and young Dominican women (and sometimes men) looking for visas. The conditions of paid prostitution are clear, but in these arrangements prostitution (por negocio) and romance (por amor) intermingle until the distinction becomes blurry or even moot. Women in sex work “hope that marriage to a foreigner will provide them with a house, a livelihood, opportunities for migration, and care and protection for their families and children.” The sex worker may have more than one of these relations in motion at once to see which one will last for the long term. Some women who are not in sex work are strategically promiscuous in pursuit of these same goals.54 In a typical scenario, a forty-­something divorced American tourist at an all-­inclusive resort meets a beautiful twenty-­something Dominican woman, and after sexual encounters the man, who cannot believe his luck, thinks he is in love. The woman’s emotions and intentions vary: she is in love too; she is amenable to a long-­term relation because her desire to migrate affords latitude in partner choice; or she is purposefully deceiving the partner for visa purposes. The couple makes application for a K-­1 visa at the U.S. consulate, and the inspectors face a difficult situation because gullibility, infatuation, and marriage for partnership and financial stability are not crimes. (“I don’t know what she sees in me,” one American man confided to an inspector.) If the visa is granted, the couple returns together to the United States and has ninety days to marry; thereafter the two-­year conditional residency begins. In many cases these marriage (like most others) end in divorce. In the most blatant deceptions, the American is abandoned at the airport upon arrival; the Dominican spouse-­to-­be gets picked up and disappears. Married Dominican couples, when separated by migration, often find themselves in the difficult and strange situation of having to divorce in order to reunite. A husband, for example, might migrate by yola and discover a single option to legalize his status: a marriage arranged for this

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purpose. If he is married formally (rather than in consensual union), he divorces to free himself, marries a citizen, gains legal residency, divorces the citizen, remarries the ex-­wife, and then sponsors her permanent residency. Such convolutions yield to perceptions and statements that in other contexts would be bizarre: “I know that Amado will come for me soon [because] he already married a woman there,” or “I’m living in the house of my husband’s brother now because I am legally married to him.” The line between por negocio and por amor can get blurred when migration and the goal of the couple’s reunion take priority over fidelity. Martina made the remarkable statement that her spouse in Puerto Rico should get married “por amor or por negocio” so he can legalize and then sponsor her visa.55 Other women are less tolerant, and some have no idea of their spouse’s amorous involvements abroad. Juan migrated to Puerto Rico by yola and married a Puerto Rican woman for the purpose of acquiring residency: “I got married and she doesn’t know that I have another wife in the Dominican Republic and she must not know in order to avoid discord. It’s that a man here gets lonely.” Meanwhile, the wife in the Dominican Republic “doesn’t know that there is a conjugal relation, living together, because she would be offended, so she doesn’t know. She only knows that I got married por negocio and send her money every month.” And then he added an incredible observation that revealed his self-­serving criteria of assessment: “I have the best wife in the Dominican Republic and the best wife in Puerto Rico because they both believe what I tell them.”56 The process of divorcing, marrying, divorcing, and remarrying is complicated, prone to failure, and slow (today it could take decades), but before the laws changed there were variations that could overcome obstacles and expedite reunion. Manuel overstayed his visa and then married for the purpose of normalizing his status. He later wanted to bring his Dominican consensual partner, Clara, to join him in New York, but—not married to her and married to an American—he had no legal means to do so. Manuel thus arranged a marriage for Clara, she came to New York, and eventually they both gained residency and divorced their fraudulent partners. They have subsequently lived together in consensual union for more than forty years.57 In many cases marriages are arranged not for profit but as favors to facilitate the migration of family members. María and Jorge, both Dominicans legally in the United States, were engaged to be married. Before

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the marriage made it impossible, however, María asked Jorge to marry her sister, Rosa, so that Rosa could migrate legally to the United States. Jorge went to the Dominican Republic, married Rosa, and brought her back as his wife. Jorge then reciprocally asked María to marry his brother for the same purpose, and she obliged. (María and Jorge, meanwhile, lived together without marrying, because they were legally married to others.) When Rosa got her permanent residency she divorced Jorge, which freed him to do another favor for María: marry one of her cousins.58

Orlando

Orlando’s first problem was his race. He was born with skin darker than the siblings who preceded him and his father rejected him at birth. “That’s when the problems began,” Orlando relates, and they got worse as his childhood progressed. The father had married Orlando’s mother after serving eighteen years in prison for a double homicide he committed in his youth. The mother, born into a family that could not sustain its ten children, was given away at the age of two. She married Orlando’s father when she was fourteen. Orlando’s darker skin, although like hers, prompted accusations of her infidelity. The father denied paternity, resented Orlando, and later in childhood abused him cruelly. The abuse was complemented by neglect and Orlando was eventually sent to live with a grandmother. The neglect, nevertheless, continued. The grandmother had little more to offer Orlando than her indifference and chronic poverty. Orlando managed as best he could on his own: “I grew up eating mangos from trees, stealing chickens, stealing eggs, sleeping on the beach under boats.” He became accustomed to solitude. He developed the skills of a defiant outsider. “I was a person without a father, without a mother,” and finally “a total delinquent” surviving by his wits on petty crime. “What I learned there stayed with me for years,” Orlando adds, “the same story as my father, the same pattern that I learned. That’s why I wound up in prison.” Orlando left the Dominican Republic on a fishing boat at the age of nineteen in 1973, before maritime migration was common. By that time

80 Undocumented Dominican Migration

he had already fathered five children of his own, three with one girl and two with another. He described his departure almost as flight, as a wounded man fleeing a loveless youth and a life that had overwhelmed him. “I didn’t even know what I was doing because my head was screwed up, I was traumatized, I was dead. Because a human being who is not raised in the warmth of family can’t be a good person. Some kids come home and their mothers say, ‘How are you son, I love you, I adore you, here, I made you some food, I got you these clothes.’ That’s where human relations begin, in the family. If you don’t have that, you’re raised dead.” Orlando paused, thought for a moment, and added: “All of that hatred and bitterness accumulated inside me for years. I left with that inside me. I just wanted to forget. I wanted nothing to do with family or mother or father or children or wife. I was dead.” Orlando organized the voyage and departed from Miches with five others. The boat was insanely underpowered by a six-­horsepower engine and Orlando navigated without a compass, but somehow the group arrived without incident at the Puerto Rican coast, at Añasco, in three days. Upon arrival they called a taxi, were stopped by the police, and shortly after were repatriated. A year later Orlando organized another trip, this time with ten people in a nineteen-­foot boat propelled by a 7.5-­horsepower motor. During this five-­day journey the sea got rough and the boat nearly capsized. The passengers began to argue about whether to continue or turn back, but Orlando, already “dead,” was determined to risk the crossing. He calmly related how he almost threw two passengers overboard to shut them up and continue in peace. Somehow, again, the voyage ended safely on a Puerto Rican beach, this time in Aguadilla. The passengers scrambled for cover in the brush and made their respective ways inland. Orlando headed for his half-­sister’s house in the Hato Rey section of San Juan. Upon arrival he had a surprise: some others from his boat were there too. They were, it turned out, distant relatives on his father’s side, seeking refuge at the home of someone more or less known. The sister blamed their descent on Orlando—“You filled my house with illegals”—and refused the welcome that otherwise she might have offered. Orlando felt betrayed. His negative view of family was reinforced. Broke, homeless, and bitter, he made his way first to Loíza (“where there are people the same color as me”) and then Fajardo. He eventually bought false documents that made him employable and was licensed for work in scuba diving.

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It was about this time that Orlando began to suffer the digestive problems (chronic vomiting, diarrhea) that debilitated him for much of his life. Orlando described his illness in the context of “negative emotions”—bitterness, hatred, wrath toward the world—and despite visits to several doctors and hospitals the problem was never well diagnosed or effectively treated. Orlando eventually married a Puerto Rican woman and through the marriage acquired legal U.S. residency. By this time he had begun to sell drugs, primarily marijuana, and was doing so too close to home. His indiscretion caused marital problems, but the deeper cause was in his past: “I had my wife, but for me it was the same as having nothing because I didn’t know how to treat anyone.” The wife left Orlando, and as the police closed in Orlando left too, returning to the Dominican Republic in 1984. He describes himself at that time as not well mentally, physically ill, and disoriented. His divorce was finalized in 1987. Orlando traveled to the United States that same year and was received by a friend in Washington Heights. The friend, who was dealing cocaine and crack, put Orlando to work on the streets. That arrangement soon degenerated into violent conflict, however, so Orlando left the city to work with a dealer in Syracuse. There he began a relationship with another Puerto Rican woman, who also partnered with him in dealing cocaine. Orlando’s income at the time was significant, but—unlike many immigrants—he did not wire money home to support family. His children in the Dominican Republic were abandoned, and most of his income, Orlando readily admits, was wasted on extravagance and drugs. Orlando and his girlfriend had nevertheless accumulated around $100,000, with which they bought a house in Puerto Rico. When they returned to Syracuse shortly after the purchase Orlando’s luck took a turn for the worse. It was January 1988; Orlando was thirty-­six. A drug dealer called Chico, facing criminal charges and collaborating with the police as an informant, led an undercover officer to Orlando’s residence. The sale was interrupted, according to Orlando, when his girlfriend pulled him aside, asking why he was selling to someone unknown. Orlando got spooked, asked Chico and the officer to return in twenty minutes, and in the interim got rid of the cocaine. A press account based on police sources states that the undercover officer did not have cash or backup, so had to leave without making the purchase. In either case, no purchase was made, and when Orlando was arrested a few days later the warranted search discovered nothing. The case was thus built on the original offer to sell, but there was no proof that the pound of substance offered for sale was actually cocaine.

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The state’s weak case resulted in a plea bargain, and Orlando was spared a long sentence. He was sentenced to three years in state prison for third-­degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and was released in 1990. The lawyer advised that deportation, which was on appeal, was probable, but in the end it didn’t matter: Orlando was arrested again before the ruling. As Orlando related these experiences his cousin, at the other end of the table, was applying black dye to his hair with a toothbrush. The hand with the toothbrush was in a clear plastic glove. Orlando had dyed his gray hairs too—he took off his cap to show me: jet black, like shoe polish. The two of them tried to convince me to do it—“You’ll look ten years younger”—but I told them I was too far gone. Then Orlando went back to explaining how he sold a chunk of crack to an undercover FBI agent. Paul and Carol, two of his friends, began hanging around with a woman named Judy and eventually brought her to Orlando’s house. “She was really skinny,” Orlando related. “I thought she was a crack addict.” Her husband was getting out of prison, Judy told them, and she wanted some crack to celebrate. Orlando put the crack on the coffee table, beside his pistol. “How much?” “$900.” “Do you have any more?” “No.” “Nice gun—is that yours?” Paul and Carol were asking questions too, in the kitchen. Do you have more guns? Can you get more crack? Judy paid Orlando for the crack and left together with Paul and Carol. Everyone seemed particularly talkative, Orlando realized in retrospect, but he didn’t learn until later that they were wired. He asked his girlfriend, Lori, whom he had met in county jail, if she knew Judy. Lori said there was no problem; Orlando felt reassured. He was the only immigrant in the group and, disadvantaged by limited English, may have missed clues. The following day Lori said she would be home late—she was attending a wedding. Orlando was dressing to go out that evening when he heard a knock at the door. He looked through the peephole: a young man in a white T-­shirt and jeans. The man had come to inquire about Orlando’s car; it was in front of the house with a for-­sale sign. Orlando opened the door, stepped onto the porch, and was immediately knocked to the ground by a blow to the side of his head.

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When he regained consciousness, on the couch in his living room, he had no idea what was happening. “I saw one guy eating a salad, another making a phone call, another watching television, another drinking a beer.” He later learned that he had been arrested by a joint task force of state police and the FBI. They had been surveilling him for months before Judy, an undercover federal agent, was sent in to make the buy. Orlando assumed responsibility so his girlfriend would not be arrested, but it turned out that she already had been. Together with Paul and Carol, she was cooperating with federal agents as an informant. As soon as they put on the handcuffs, Orlando related, making a twisting gesture with his hand, “your mind is turned around by force.” The arrest interrupts your life without warning, like a terminal disease, foreclosing the future you had envisioned for yourself. “You have plans to travel, to buy a house, to get married,” and then suddenly there’s nothing on your horizon but prison, perhaps for life. A plea bargain resulted finally in a sentence of fifteen years in federal prison. During the first two Orlando was frequently under care for his physical and psychological problems. The digestive disorder that had begun in 1974 was severe despite treatment. Solitude, sickness, bitterness, betrayal, and rage were caged together and intermingling with the angst of a future out of his control. Orlando had given up hope and attempted suicide twice when a Salvadoran inmate, witnessing the suffering, approached him with a message of salvation. Jesus Christ would cure Orlando and save his soul if Orlando confessed in his heart that he was a sinner. Orlando was cautiously receptive to the message. He began to read, converse, and attend services. About a month later, after converting in the prison chapel, Orlando had an epiphany while reading a religious tract in his cell. “It was amazing, like the book was written just for me, was talking directly to me.” A dramatic mystical experience followed. Broken down and on the verge of Christian rebirth, Orlando asked God: “Why am I, such a good person, so sick, while other people, who are evil, are healthy?” And God responded: “Listen, I am going to tell you something. You were not a good son, you were not a good friend, you were not a good citizen, you were not a good father, and you are not a good person. You abandoned your family—how could you be a good person? There is absolutely nothing good about you.” Orlando, insane with grief, whimpered his sincere contrition. That confession in his heart is what the Salvadoran had prescribed, and a mo-

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ment later Orlando felt something happening to his body. A pressure, an upward force, gathered the illness and shot it out of him “in a spiral, like one of those fireworks rockets.” Orlando was left with an immense sense of well-­being, of peace. He touched himself tentatively on his chest, as though he couldn’t believe that this healed body was his. “The big step in my life was getting rid of that [digestive] sickness and getting rid of the hate and bitterness, which were part of that sickness.” Orlando’s Christian conversion reoriented his life “from the negative to the positive,” and whether or not one believes in religious rebirth, his transformation was profound and indisputable. The man who relates Orlando’s criminal past seems alien to the man who lived it. “I can’t complain too much about prison, because I went in sick and came out healthy. The person who went in was full of bitterness and hate and rage, and the person who came out doesn’t want to offend anyone.” After decades of hostility, Orlando made peace with himself and the world. Orlando was released from federal prison in November 2005. No one had visited him during his fifteen-­year sentence, and no one—with the exception of two federal marshals—received him upon release. Orlando, in handcuffs, was escorted on commercial flights to Santo Domingo, where Dominican authorities detained him briefly and placed him on probation before permitting his return home. The six-­month program required monthly visits to Santo Domingo, which—at best—was six hours by car from his village, and Orlando didn’t have a car. He nevertheless fulfilled the obligations of probation, and at the conclusion his record was cleared.1 When I asked Orlando how it was to be home after thirty-­one years abroad, he responded with a weary “Not easy.” I followed up with a flurry of misguided questions—everything must have changed, how do you adjust—before I heard what Orlando was trying to tell me: nothing had changed. Except him. His family and acquaintances still moved in the criminally conducive environment in which Orlando was raised. They expected Orlando to return as a hardened felon but instead encountered a humble man under the influence of Jesus. No one could accommodate the change. In the best of cases he was tolerated or maybe vaguely pitied for his trauma, but otherwise being home meant “being rejected by my own family, because they don’t understand.” Nor was there consolation elsewhere. “Even though you might want to get close to someone,” Orlando explains, “people keep their distance. I was away, I came back a convict, I’m marked by that, and I have nothing to offer.”

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Orlando thus returned to enduring solitude. He was broke, essentially homeless, and with nowhere to turn for support. At desperate moments he lived with his mother, “but if you know you’re not welcome in someone’s house, you don’t want to impose.” Orlando’s strong sense of pride, independence, and self-­sufficiency—“I’d rather just keep on moving,” “I have to survive on my own”—protected him from descent into pathetic dependence. Sometimes, as in his youth, he slept on the beach and ate whatever he could acquire. Odd jobs as a night watchman and in a bar (“Imagine that—as a Christian I had to go to a bar and sell beer”) provided temporary income, but unemployment was the rule. Orlando had studied massage in prison and, back in his village, put together a studio behind a partition in a cigar shop run by his cousin, but the business has no customers. Orlando is living through hard times. He has no job, no home of his own, and no real prospects. There are some glimmers of hope—a relationship with a woman from his church, with whom he is now living; the possibility of borrowed land on which to build a house—but the lack of employment in his village makes true stability improbable. The miracle of Orlando’s conversion is trying to hold against the poverty that conspires against it. You can see the vulnerability just beneath the pride of his carriage. Even in photographs. He calmly fights off the impending disaster to which he could so easily succumb. It is that strength of character that makes Orlando impressive, the stamina in defending his convictions. If this man were not born into destitute poverty, a tradition of crime, and a family with abusive and neglectful parents, then what could he have accomplished with his intelligence, motivation, charisma, and good looks? How should one see an Orlando in retrospect, as a “deportable criminal alien” or as a victim forged by abuse? The answer, ultimately, has to be both, but with a measure of mitigating compassion for his successful struggle to redefine himself. “It must be very lonely,” I once said to him after he described his identity besieged on one side by his criminal past and on the other by rejection at home. Orlando lifted his eyes, caught mine, and surprised me with a word in English: “Wow.”

The Culture of Migration

Seductive Illusions Illusion “Dominicans have an illusion,” Silvio explains, “that they’ll get to the United States, that everything is going to be wonderful. They’re going to make easy money. Then when they get there—if they manage to get there, because many are lost in the crossing—they realize that they have really made a mistake.” Migrants are motivated by idealized expectations that have little in common with the realities confronted upon arrival. The distance between the illusion and the reality is less abysmal than it was in previous decades, but current migrants are nevertheless disappointed and sometimes shocked by an inhospitable utopia and the limited potential for advancement. Their predeparture knowledge of migration and of the United States is a complex composite derived from information, misinformation, and disinformation that are filtered through a culture of migration, processed by desperation and hope, and moderated by the hard, repressed reality of which migrants, in the end, are well aware. The sources of migrant illusions are summarized in the sections that follow. Ostentation of Return and Visiting Migrants Migrants who return to the Dominican Republic tend to exaggerate their success abroad. They narrate exotic adventures and costume a drama of

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accomplishment with bling (epitomized by the de rigueur gold chain, sometimes borrowed or even rented for the occasion). This ostentation has multiple sources, including degrees of simple, dishonest self-­ aggrandizement; of memory revision beneficial to image management (enhancing the successes and discounting or dismissing the failures); of transnational identity in search of itself; and of measures to avoid the shame that comes with returning to the Dominican Republic as a failure. The boastfulness also results from the very basic human need to glow, to feel the positive emotions elicited by perceived success. Such emotions are particularly important among people who are demeaned by marginalization and who struggle for compensatory dignity.1 However transparent these displays might seem out of context, within their culture they make an impact on prospective migrants, especially young men. Narrative constructs a reality for people who hear similar stories repeatedly and who retell them as motivational discourse. Gordito was typical. He got excited relating the adventures and success of a yola migrant who became a legal resident, returned to his town, and showed off his jewelry and pistol: “You see that and are motivated,” Gordito explained. Trinidad thought that people who migrate are “more important” based simply on “saying they were there.” Migration is attractive to Trinidad for the material gain, but also because people with money are more respected than “us poor people.” Víctor made the perceptive observation that when people imagine their futures as migrants, they ignore the majority who fail and compare themselves instead with the few migrants who succeed, or who give that impression convincingly. He also pointed out, as did Sonia in almost the same words, that “not everyone has the same luck.” The yola migrants who can visit because their status has been legalized are the few who have a decent chance at advancement. Others cannot return to tell their stories, and no one is interested in the stories of migrants who return broke or in handcuffs.2 Real Gains and Relative Deprivation Despite the failure of most undocumented migrants, many—particularly those who departed decades ago—have made real gains that are apparent to members of their communities. Potential yola migrants are motivated when they witness the improved standards of living of neighbors who return from abroad or who receive remittances from relatives. Many do not distinguish sufficiently, however, between those who migrate legally

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(and therefore have access to better employment) and those who arrive and remain undocumented. All the admirers see are the gains. Houses, motorbikes, washing machines, televisions, stereos, jewelry, clothing, and other consumer goods are multiply meaningful: they have functional value in enhancing the quality of life, they have symbolic value as indicators of status and success, and they have motivational value for others who feel deprived in comparison. As Sonia summarized it, “There are a lot of people who see someone else’s success and say, ‘I want to have that same success.’” They see the house, the Jeepeta (SUV, which is a symbol of prosperity), the coming and going with dual citizenship, and say “look at that man who left by yola, and look how he came back. I want to go too and come back just like that.” In these words Sonia captured the essence of relative deprivation. “It is not what a person does not have that motivates him or her to leave; it is what that person’s neighbor has that compels him or her not to be left behind—that is, relative deprivation.” Relative deprivation does not require an objective difference but rather entails a subjective assessment of one’s social and economic status in comparison to that of others. The nuance is important because the perceived deprivation and the consequential migration can result from others’ real advancement but also from one’s belief (fostered by ostentation, for example) that others have advanced. A “contagious goal” is spread through the inference that other migrants are successful. In a broader view, relative deprivation is a dimension of the mental contrasting by which negative aspects of one’s present situation are accentuated by positive expectations of an envisioned future.3 Downward and horizontal comparisons result in relative satisfaction and complacency, but upward comparisons, insofar as the summit seems within range, inspire and motivate action. When I asked Sonia if poor Dominicans compare themselves to foreigners, such as the many French expatriates who live in the area, she replied, “No, only to other Dominicans.” The foreigners have an unfair advantage, she explained, such as pensions, visas, birth into the European middle class, and the restaurants and hotels that they own. Potential migrants focus their comparisons on other Dominicans “who go through the same hardships as I go through” and who find a way out by yola. Thus the comparison is upward but in range; it aims toward the high end of the community.4 Chicho defined his success in terms of his situation prior to migration—“Compared to what I was, I’m rich now”—and also in comparison to older peers in his community. “When I left here I had nothing. Noth-

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ing. I lived on someone else’s land, it wasn’t mine.” But then he went to Puerto Rico and subsequently, he said, “I bought a plot of land. Now I have my house, I have a house that cost over a million pesos. Here there are people who are old and can’t do that.” Valdesio more typically referenced the success of other migrants as a basis for comparison of his futile work with the quick advancement that he envisions abroad. Like other successful migrants, he said, “I’ll go and in a year, two and a half years, I’ll already have my house, I’ll have my visa, I’ll have everything. Because I’m not going to do that here as a motoconcho.” Contact with Tourists and Expatriates Poor Dominicans might not measure their relative deprivation in comparison with foreigners, but a significant presence of tourists and expatriates nevertheless has effects conducive to migration. Potential migrants learn what to want from their communities but also from incursions into their communities. The infrastructure that is built for tourism—good roads and potable water, for example—also benefit local Dominicans and reveal how much better life can be if minimal services are provided. Foreigners broaden one’s perspective, cultivate alternative attitudes and lifestyles, expose one to new love prospects, introduce procedures and protocols (such as ways of doing business), and provide models for life with money. Alberto wants to migrate by yola, marry a Puerto Rican, become a legal resident, and travel abroad to experience new countries, “like the tourists” whom he sees daily; and Delgadino wants to “walk down the pretty street” in Puerto Rico and “eat a lobster in one of the best restaurants.”5 The presence of tourists and expatriates also has beneficial effects on short-­term economic security that could diminish or postpone migration. These gains are perhaps offset, however, by identity lost to subservience. As Chicho had it, “Without the tourists we’re no one.” He then gave an example: “You come here to build a house. So based on you there can be thirty of us, and those thirty people eat based on you.” After the house is built the local workers continue to provide services—“We clean your patio”—that support them indefinitely. Media American television, movies, and advertising foster the illusion that the promised land is promised to you, too, and that a better life awaits you abroad. One acquires a familiarity with places, with “people,” and

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A poster from the U.S. Embassy campaign to discourage yola travel. The text reads: “What you see as a yola is a collective coffin. Illegal trips are trips to death.” Courtesy of U.S. Embassy, Santo Domingo.

with the culture that one hopes to later negotiate. Media and advertising propagate images of American opulence, fuel the fantasy of easy access to wealth, provide fictional role models that are emulated in reality, and enhance the desire for unaffordable name-­brand products required for the realization of an envisioned identity. The product’s social meaning confers on the purchaser a measure of status that is entirely illusory but nevertheless satisfying, especially when recognized by peers. Aspirations, including migration, are defined and fueled by desires that are cultivated by advertising.6 Media can dissuade migration as well. Between 2004 and 2006 the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo ran anti-­yola public relations campaigns based primarily on fear as a deterrent. Melodramatic Dominican yola movies that overdramatize the creepiest evils—sharks, menstruating women thrown overboard, slow death by starvation and dehydration— also instill a deterrent fear. The melodrama engages the viewers emotionally and the fiction is accepted as fact. “It makes us see the reality of the trips,” Sonia said.

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Sales Pitch of Recruiters In theory, the recruiters for yola voyages have a hard sell. Many potential migrants are ambivalent due to fear, concern with being swindled, and awareness that many voyages fail. If they reach the stage of talking to recruiters, however, it is because they have sufficiently processed these concerns and are finalizing decisions that have been made provisionally. The recruiters raise their comfort level, reinforce their illusions, and help them gravitate to what they want to believe. When the future is imagined, “most people predict what they would like to see happen, rather than what is objectively likely.” The sales pitch is sometimes deliberately dishonest—the promise that fees for failed trips are refunded, for example— but is usually limited to exaggeration of financial gains and assurance that a trip is seguro.7 A viaje seguro, which is on the mind of all migrants, translates literally to a safe or secure trip but connotes more than safety at sea. Maritime safety, in fact, is of secondary importance in the complex of seguro’s meanings. When a yola migrant testifying during a trial said certain yola trips were safe (seguros), the prosecutor asked what “safe” meant. “By ‘safe,’” the witness responded, “I mean that the trips had arrived here in the United States.” A safe trip does not capsize or sink at sea, but the stress falls more heavily on the goal, arrival. Seguro in this sense might best be translated as “dependable” or “sure”; the trip has a good boat, good engines, and a good captain, so it is a safe place to invest one’s money.8 Another trial witness made a comment that provides context for understanding seguro in relation to the safeguarding of one’s investment. When asked about the capsize of the yola on which he traveled, he responded, “I am paying 45,000 pesos to come to Puerto Rico, so if I am paying my money I am being watchful about what can happen to me.” His first priority is not safety or fear of drowning but rather the paramount importance of his investment. Another migrant narrowly escaped death when her yola was lost at sea, and when her mother tried to dissuade her from another voyage, she responded, “I have to go because I already paid that money, and on top of that I have to go so I can help you.”9 When I asked Amado if, as a captain, he intentionally deceives people who are considering migration, he replied, “No, we have the recruiter for that.” Another captain, Moreno, is more involved but said, “The recruiter deceives them more than I do.” Moreno elaborated on the nature of the pitch: “If we don’t tell them a tale, people won’t go. You can’t say to a passenger that you’re going to drown, that you’re going to get arrested,” nor

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can you let passengers focus on the money they will lose. Rather, you must “fill their heads with a fantasy,” with “illusion and hope.” “There’s nothing here. In a few months [there] you’re going to have a house here, your kids are going to live more comfortably, you’re going to make hundreds of thousands of pesos, you can send your kids to the university, you can buy whatever you want.” You must “close their minds [around the idea] that this is true” and “sell them this image so that they believe it, fill them with this tale, like politicians. It’s easy; you don’t have to say much.” Disillusion “There is a dream that you dream and manage to turn into reality,” Saúl said, “when you discover that the dream is a huge illusion.” Víctor added that “everyone tries it. Everyone who is here wants to leave because we think we are going to a better paradise.” Upon arrival, however, migrants discover that “it’s not like they say it is.” Others—almost all of my informants—reported similar disappointment: “You leave here with an illusion that’s too strong”; “It’s not like people paint it”; “I thought the United States was one thing, and I experienced another.”10 Undocumented Dominicans abroad find themselves caught in the gap between “the culturally expected and the socially possible.” They underestimate the difficulty of immigrant life and overestimate their potential, they appraise their situations abroad in light of their predeparture expectations, and they are demoralized and confused by the incongruity of their illusion and the reality it confronts.11 Migrants do not fully appreciate that the United States, despite being a rich country, has a huge, impoverished underclass. (According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011, 15.1 percent of the population—or 46.2 million people—lived in poverty in the United States.) Undocumented status guarantees new arrivals a place in that underclass, and upward mobility is unlikely. “In contrast to other immigrants, undocumented immigrants do not attain markedly higher incomes the longer they live in the United States.” One’s life is overtaken by toil but the rewards remain elusive. Advancement bogs down into daily struggle, economic survival is challenged by double household expenses (here and there), and in some cases income is depleted by repayment of smuggling debts or expenses on arrival.12 Unemployment, underemployment, and underpaid full employment are the principal obstacles to migrant success. Formal-­sector work is

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generally inaccessible, particularly in contexts of high unemployment among citizens, and underpaid, off-­the-­books grunt jobs hardly deliver the anticipated easy money. Migrants with fraudulent documents and even those whose status is legalized are generally limited to laborious and poor-­paying jobs due to lack of education, lack of skills, and—on the mainland—lack of English. The typical jobs are in construction, housekeeping, domestic care of children and the elderly, agriculture, factories, restaurants, and small (often Dominican-­owned) grocery stores. Many of these are jobs that the migrants would not have taken in the Dominican Republic.13 Salaries in New York City for employment with high percentages of undocumented workers range between $250 and $400 per week. A 2006 study of Dominicans in Washington Heights reported a median annual salary of $19,000, and 72 percent made less than $25,000. In Puerto Rico the earnings are lower. “They give you whatever work they want and pay you whatever they want,” Saúl said, and Ramón illustrated the point: “They make you work there like the Haitian slave here.” The slavery analogy is particularly apt for work on coffee plantations, where migrants are paid about $100 to $150 per week.14 The low pay is often exacerbated by unethical or illegal practices that exploit the vulnerability of workers. A study conducted between 2003 and 2006 regarding unregulated work in New York City documented “employers paying less than the minimum wage, failing to pay overtime, not paying at all, forcing employees to work off the clock, not giving breaks, stealing workers’ tips, and violating prevailing wage laws on public construction projects.” This was in addition to violations concerning health and safety, workers’ compensation, right to organize, and taxation, among others. Unethical employers also use migrants’ undocumented status to intimidate and coerce. A common practice—mentioned by my migrant and Border Patrol informants—is to refuse payment to migrants by threatening to call immigration authorities. In the New York study, employers threatened to report the migrants’ family members.15 Despite the common perception to the contrary, “undocumented immigrants are formally protected by the nation’s employment laws” and are “covered employees” under U.S. laws regarding wage, anti-­discrimination, and collective bargaining. In practice, however, because migrants are vulnerable to deportation, “the rights they technically enjoy are rendered ineffective or meaningless.” An employer violates federal law when he or she contacts immigration authorities in response to undocumented

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workers’ attempts to organize, for example. Even when the employer acts unlawfully, the immigrant is not protected from the deportation initiated by the employer’s phone call to authorities. In response to such violations, in August 2011 the U.S. Secretary of Labor signed declarations and letters of arrangement with ambassadors from Latin American countries including the Dominican Republic to better protect the rights of undocumented workers.16 While exploitation seems apparent in a privileged American perspective, migrants do not necessarily view low wages as undesirable. Perceptions of income are relative, and even the lowest-­paying job compares favorably with migrants’ earning capacity in the Dominican Republic. When eventually migrants “understand that the jobs may be demeaning and poorly paid by U.S. standards, they do not see those standards as applying to them because they do not imagine themselves to be part of U.S. society: reference group substitution is minimized.” On the Puerto Rican coffee plantations, to cite an extreme example, migrant workers live in horrid conditions and earn meager incomes, but nevertheless 66 percent of them describe their experiences as positive.17 There is a certain desperate (and easily exploitable) gratitude for having something that is better than nothing, particularly among migrants committed to supporting families. Manuel worked for twenty-­five years as a dishwasher at a luxury restaurant in New York: “It was a very hard job; some new employees used to last only two days doing that job and leave. I, on the other hand, had no choice but to stay because I had my family back home to support.” In times of high unemployment among legal workers—9 percent in the United States as a whole and 15 percent in Puerto Rico in June 2011—many migrants ride out recession by “clinging to low-­wage jobs, often working more hours for less money, and taking whatever work they can find, no matter the conditions.” When jobs cannot be found, some migrants rely on reverse transfers—drawing from remittances sent and saved earlier—and the gains from previous years of work are thus depleted.18 The migrant illusion of easy money also conflicts with the work ethic— long hours, no life—in the United States. The relative leisure of Dominican underemployment is forfeited for a work-­dominated regimen that immigrants often find overwhelming. Dominicans in Washington Heights express resentment when the relatives they support show little appreciation of the toil and privation that makes remittances possible. The relatives “think we’re rich here,” “never think it is enough,” and “think we find

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money on the street.” Consequently, “no one understands the sacrifice.” Some of these remitters partially blamed themselves for the ingratitude, saying, “We are so flashy when we go back” or “We go back with fancy clothing and fancy gifts and make them believe that the dream [of our lives in America] is real.” The ingratitude on the one side and the resentment on the other are by-­products of the clash between the illusion and the reality of immigrant labor.19 Manolo migrated to Washington Heights in 1974, when he was thirty-­ four years old. He has worked for twenty years on the nighttime maintenance staff of a private school, and with his $37,000 salary he supports his family of three in New York and his mother and siblings in the Dominican Republic. Manolo sends home at least $200 a month, with increases for holidays and medical emergencies, and these remittances are possible, in part, because his rent ($500) is low and stable. Manolo understands that his family in La Vega depends on the remittances but also that his lifetime of hard work has added up to little because he is committed to supporting others. He also lost the opportunity to spend some of his income on the lifestyle he imagined before migrating.20 As Manolo’s story illustrates, the grand life imagined prior to migration yields finally to the burdens of self-­support abroad and support of others in the Dominican Republic. “It’s not like one is going to get rich,” Chicho said, “because there are too many expenses.” “Double expenses,” I said, and Chicho replied, “Not double, triple,” because (as in Manolo’s case) parents and siblings are often supported in addition to spouses and children. Self-­ imposed austerity—“no restaurants, no movies, no ice cream, no trips” or, for others, no bars, no clubs, no women, no drugs— helps immigrants to pay the bills, support relatives, and, when things go well, try to save for a future. Cheap apartments in bad neighborhoods and with multiple roommates help too.21 Santiago’s first job in San Juan was in food service; he made $190 a week and sent home what was left after expenses. His wife called, however, and said that she and the children had nothing to eat. In response Santiago sent everything he could but realized as a result that “you almost have to go hungry” in order to pay bills and remit sufficiently. The hunger merely shifted from the family to Santiago. Later he got a better job in construction and then a free place to live in a storage room, which made it feasible for him to remit modestly but regularly. Undocumented migrants in the land of plenty are thus deprived of the most basic gains and the fulfillment of the very purpose—a better life—

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that motivated their migration, while in the Dominican Republic their remittances improve the families’ economic situations but rarely enough to escape poverty. The illusion is gradually eroded and migration is deterred as disappointed return migrants disseminate a counterdiscourse. “Too many people have already gone,” Olivario explained. “People here are happy with life, but there you have to work hard, carrying cement or harvesting coffee. There’s too much work and too little pay, so people come back on planes with a carta de ruta, tell others what it’s like, and no one wants to go. It’s not like it used to be.” Santiago, who returned disillusioned after two years in Puerto Rico, explained: “When you talk with someone, they tell you that you’ll earn dollars there, but they don’t tell you that you’ll spend dollars too. I have to pay for the apartment in dollars, I have to pay for transportation in dollars, I have to pay for the telephone in dollars.” Earnings are insufficient: “To live there and send money here, you can’t manage.” Fewer people are traveling by yola, Santiago thought, “because people realize that what is said [about migrant life in the United States] is not true. There’s more awareness that it’s not paradise there.” Chicho similarly reported that yola departures have decreased “because there are a lot of people who have gone there and have returned and explained the situation there.”22 Gladys had retrospective wisdom after spending twenty-­six years in the United States and then returning to Miches to retire. In the United States “there’s always something else to pay”—rent, heat, electricity, taxes. Like Santiago, Gladys found that her income (about $300 weekly from a factory job in Lawrence, Massachusetts) was insufficient to meet expenses and regularly send remittances. When I asked what advice she would give to someone considering yola migration, she responded: “Please don’t do it.” Almost all of my informants responded similarly to that question. (A notable exception was Tito, who gave navigational advice.) Others said: “It’s too dangerous”; “a lot of loss for nothing”; “Don’t get involved”; “If I would have stayed home, it would have been better”; “Even with a piece of yucca, or plantains and egg, it’s better because we are in our country”; “If you can get a visa, do it, but going illegally you won’t have any opportunities”; “It’s good for people who are from there, but not for us.” Even Moreno, a yola captain, said he would not recommend Puerto Rico to anyone. “And it’s not in my interest to tell people not to go.”23

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Critical Mass On a sandy street in Bayahibe, on Christmas Day in 2010, I overheard a conversation between a girl, maybe six years old, who was walking hand-­ in-­hand with a younger boy. The girl was relating with enormous pride (the boy, too young to understand, was completely indifferent) that she had family in Italy, New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. These children, growing up in transnational families, take global dispersion for granted and aspire to the ideal of a better life abroad. Their conversation illustrates in miniature how migration “eventually becomes normative” and how young people, as they grow, “increasingly expect to migrate internationally in the course of their lives.” On another day I saw a group of boys animated by the future they were imagining for themselves. One was bragging about the big house he was going to have, and another pointed to an expatriate condominium complex, thinking it was a single residence, to indicate his future home, which would be adorned by the Jeepeta parked outside. Such ideals and goals are transmitted by something like cultural osmosis through contact with the Europeans among them. These boys, unaware of their internalization and replication of socialized desires, set their sights on migratory gains in a distorted, exaggerated vision that leads in one direction to crime and another to disappointment.24 Aspirations to emigrate are fostered directly through contact with friends and relatives who have migrated and indirectly through an ongoing history of migration and an implicit consensus that migration is the best (or only) route to advancement. “At the community level, migration becomes deeply ingrained into the repertoire of people’s behaviors, and values associated with migration become part of the communities’ values.” A “general cultural disposition” to migrate eventually develops, an “institutionalization of migration.” Familiarity lessens one’s aversion, and motivation is doubly enhanced because the culture conducive to migration also provides the means, yolas, so that migration and its dangers become routine together.25 In coastal villages, yola voyages are part of a poor Dominican’s everyday life. For most they are the only means of leaving the island. Moreno compares them to air travel by Americans. Mothers, fathers, siblings, cousins, groups of friends, and even children and grandparents make the journey. A history of yola migration in one’s family, one’s town or neighborhood, and—ultimately—one’s country predisposes the departure of

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each new migrant. When I asked Roberto what motivated him, his first response was “I’m from Nagua” (where yola migration is common). “In the neighborhood where I live,” another migrant said, “almost everybody knows the people who do illegal trips.” Yola voyages are readily accessible, many people know one or more captains personally, everyone knows someone who has migrated, and news of departures circulates regularly. The circumstances are far different, for example, than those of a criminal smuggling operation insulated by layers of secrecy. Your cousin knows a guy, your neighbor has a boat, you’re a fisherman and your friends are captains. This routinization makes a significant contribution to migrant flow.26 It also engenders collective excitement and group dynamics that predispose individual decisions. Once migration becomes accepted as a remedy—or as the only remedy—for poverty, people sign on without a clear sense of the implications and consequences. In the 1980s, Gladys said, “Everyone was saying, ‘Let’s go to Puerto Rico! Let’s go to New York!’ You do it without thinking because you don’t know how it’s going to be, but when you get there: Oh my God.” The frequent repetition of a precedent, even one that is ill-­advised, fosters attraction to a frightening prospect, increases confidence, and makes behavior conforming to the precedent more likely. The decision is more a result of collective momentum than of individual deliberation. Saúl called it a fever; another migrant said, “Everyone was going to Puerto Rico, so I wanted to try it too and I went.” Migration spreads like a contagion on the waves of excitement. Risk and responsibility diffuse through the group: if everyone is doing it, it must be a good idea.27 When many trips are successful, too, the momentum is maintained or accelerated by the impression that there is no time like the present. The same occurs when a hiatus is induced by failures. These reactions misconceive the nature of chance, however, in the same way that several heads produced by coin tosses make people feel that a tails is due. Many migrants discern patterns in random events and at moments of collective excitement make their move. Valdesio is more pragmatic, even if his math is disputable: “You have to try to do it constantly, because more people have arrived than have failed.”28 Once critical mass has accumulated, the threshold is lowered so that forms of migration regarded as necessary—to support or reunite with families—are complemented by more elective departures, such as migra-

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tion for adventure. The cumulative growth becomes exponential: as departures increase, they create an ever greater attractiveness, a consequent increased need for family reunification, and a sustained demand for voyages. Smugglers rise to the occasion and, in turn, increase migrant flow by making voyages more plentiful and by marketing them more actively. An entire infrastructure eventually evolves on both sides of the Mona Passage: trip organizers and their associates, forgers of documents, marriage brokers, money lenders, family and friend networks, undocumented labor networks, nongovernmental agencies, legal services for adjusting status, and law-­enforcement agencies that respond more aggressively to the growing illegal activity and, consequently, keep it in constant evasive evolution. When these phenomena occur globally, as they do presently, migration gains “structurally transformative agency.” What was originally an anomaly, a deviance from the norm, occurs on such a massive scale at so many diverse geographic locations and over such a significant period that it challenges the viability of global structures, stresses the malleability of norms (such as the nature of borders and nation-­states), and tests the laws that would purport to govern, punish, or contain it.29 The routinization of death at sea further contributes to migrant departures by assuaging fear. In one case a mother drowned during a failed yola trip, and a year later, in 2001, her husband tried and drowned too. Their three orphaned children were then raised by a grandmother. A woman from Miches, also in 2001, spent three days holding onto the wreckage of a capsized yola as others around her gradually gave up and drifted away, until she was saved by a passing fisherman. Moreno tells the story of a woman who spent fourteen years in Puerto Rico, came home to the house built with the proceeds, but was not happy without her husband. She boarded a yola to rejoin him but died in the crossing. And Franklin was the captain on a small voyage with twelve passengers when the compass broke and the group got lost, ran out of gas, and drifted for five days with no food or water. Three migrants died and were thrown overboard; a fourth died after rescue. Stories like these circulate among migrants, causing shock, horror, fear, and mourning, together with a degree of catharsis for passing the burden on to someone else. The news of tragedy also spreads rapidly through the media. The disappearance of smaller yolas barely merits a domestic headline, but more sensational events—high death counts, spectacular rescues, cannibalism, breast-­feeding—are widely covered by international

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media, especially after press releases by U.S. agencies. The more sensational the event, the more voluminous the coverage. When the death toll is tolerable or abstract—it happens somewhere else—the impact on migrant motivation is negligible. Frequent tragedies that occur in rapid succession and at a single location, however, such as the multiple lost trips around the Samaná Peninsula in 2009, cause fear and horror. In April 2009 two yolas—one with about 50 passengers and another with 18—either sank or capsized, and all of the passengers were lost. Moreno reported (probably with exaggeration) that 150 people were lost in another month; he attended funerals for 11 friends. “People have gotten really scared of going to Puerto Rico,” Moreno added. When I asked Amado why migrant departures had decreased, he replied with similar words: “A lot of people are getting scared of traveling by yola now.”30 But then the fear passes. The more tragedies occur, the more they become routine. Lost yolas are traumatic for the towns and neighborhoods that suffer the deaths, but the deterrent effect is fleeting. The rules of the game change, the bar is raised, and people adjust to the increased risk. “When a trip is lost,” Carlos explained, “it scares you.” No one wants to travel after the death of friends, relatives, or neighbors, “so we wait a little more time until it is forgotten.” Gordito had a similar view: “What happens in the past stays in the past. Those people were lost. A week later you say, ‘I’m not going to Puerto Rico, I’m not going, I’m not going, because people are getting lost.’ But in time that is forgotten. Time goes by and you ask me, ‘Do you want to go to Puerto Rico?’ and I say, ‘Yes, let’s go.’ I already forgot about what happened before.” The forgetting, however, entails only the release of the dissuasive emotions, because the losses are remembered even by saying they have been forgotten. Moreno similarly related that time heals the wounds, then added that migrant drownings—common now for decades—are no longer shocking enough to deter migration. “If it weren’t like that, no one would travel.” Ramón illustrated the point: “Some people can see a drowned person there [he points] and step over him to get on the yola.” Tragedies at sea, in short, may postpone travel, deter lukewarm migrants, and fortify the resolve of those opposed to yolas, but they do not dissuade migrants who are committed to departure.31

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The Law Corruption “Here in the Dominican Republic,” said Luis, “obedience to the law is a joke. It’s only a formality—none of that is obeyed here. The very authorities are linked to crime, the people who are supposed to be punishing it. If you’re a no one and you steal a salami from a colmado because you’re hungry, they give you twenty years in jail, but nothing happens to a politician who steals millions of dollars. That’s why no one respects the law.” Other informants were similarly unambiguous: “Here bribery is the law”; “The law is only a piece of paper”; “There’s no real justice”; and “Those who represent the law don’t obey it.” Marta said, “There is no law here,” and Chencho corrected her: “Yes, there is law here, but it’s not obeyed.” As suggested by these statements, corruption undermines confidence in government and respect for the rule of law. It harms societies by subverting the legitimacy of institutions, exacerbating injustice and inequality, fostering a sense of futility, and perverting commitment to traditional values. When it flourishes with impunity, many people who are otherwise disinclined to corruption eventually participate because it seems pointless not to share in the spoils. In high-­profit illegal activity, such as migrant and—to a greater extent— drug trafficking, many federal officials (navy personnel, police, judges, immigration officers) take advantage of the benefits of impunity. The level of corruption is revealed at moments of sporadic and inconsistent enforcement. In September 2007, more than 400 Dominican immigration inspectors were fired (but not sentenced) for collusion with document forgers in the smuggling of migrants.32 Corruption is a principal cause of Dominican poverty as well. The best recent example is the collapse and government bailout of the Banco Intercontinental (Baninter) in 2003. Bank executives defrauded depositors and the Dominican government of $2.2 billion worth of account holdings by keeping double books—for fourteen years—to hide the embezzlement from auditors. After the bank collapsed the Dominican government guaranteed all deposits, including those held in Baninter branches in the Cayman Islands, and by doing so depleted an estimated 65 percent of the annual national budget. Three-­quarters of the payments went to eighty wealthy depositors. The Baninter collapse and bailout caused the impov-

102 Undocumented Dominican Migration Morena’s inextinguishable radiance

erishment of more than 2 million Dominicans and, as a result, an exodus by yola.33 In October 2007 the principal perpetrators of the fraud, Baninter ex-­ president Ramón Báez Figueroa and financier Luis Álvarez Renta, were convicted in Dominican criminal court and each sentenced to ten years in prison. In December 2008 President Leonel Fernández issued pardons that freed them; most members of the pardons commission resigned in protest. Over the previous decades Báez Figueroa had paid more than $75 million in gifts and payments to government officials including Fernández.34 In a 2001 survey, 93 percent of the Dominican respondents believed that politicians “take advantage of their positions for personal gain,” and 94 percent believed that corruption is serious or very serious. According to 90 percent, the law only applies to subordinate people who have no contacts, and “a good contact in a high position is worth more than the law.” In Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perception Index, the Dominican Republic score was 3, as compared to New Zealand’s 9.4 (the highest) and Somalia’s 1.1 (the lowest). Other Latin American countries ranged between 1.8 (Haiti) and 3.7 (Brazil); the U.S. score was 7.5.35 The importance of having a well-­placed contact (referred to as an enllave or padrino) is illustrated by Morena’s experience following a failed

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yola voyage. Dominican navy authorities held Morena in custody because she had been repatriated three times in rapid succession; as is common in such circumstances, she was suspected of being a trip organizer. Morena went into a bathroom and, using a cell phone that she had hidden in her clothing, called her mother, who in turn called a political contact. Morena was freed within an hour. Corruption in everyday transactions became more institutional when Joaquín Balaguer, during his first presidency beginning in 1966, authorized public officials to accept bribes as a supplement to their low salaries. These “speed payments” are made by service users to expedite results (when applying for driver’s licenses or requesting birth certificates, for example), overcome access barriers, and avoid spiteful, retaliatory delays for refusal to pay. “Corruption” in the American sense of the term implies sinister, secret, and exceptional impropriety, but these payoffs for services are routine, normalized by custom, facilitated by impunity, and even adorned with a façade of legitimacy. In the great majority of cases—81 percent in a recent study—the bribe is solicited by the service provider, not first offered by the service user. Dominicans are relatively tolerant of paying small bribes to local clerks and officials because they receive something in return. A study done in Santo Domingo reported that 18 percent of respondents were absolutely intolerant of corruption, 3 percent were absolutely tolerant, and the rest were distributed in the middle.36 The everyday speed payments are complemented by more serious payoffs to influence decisions (in courts and allocation of resources, for example), to overlook criminal activity, and to appease civil officials (such as police) whose discretionary power places one in jeopardy. Positions of power at all levels—from the president to the local clerk—are opportunities for self-­enrichment. According to the United Nations Development Program, “The political system in the Dominican Republic has created a society without consequences, where illegal actions are not subject to penalties or sanctions.” “Neither accountability nor the application of sanctions are common practices in the country, while impunity and complicity are habitual, with the poorest being the most affected.”37 In views from the United States, “Weak institutions and an ‘every man for himself’ culture combine to make corruption a problem in the Dominican Republic, both in the government and private sectors.” One result is that control of migrant smuggling is “hamstrung by persistent corruption in multiple levels of government and society.” The U.S. Department of

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State’s 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices states that corrupt officials are not prosecuted but rather receive nonjudicial sanctions, such as “the dismissal or transfer of armed forces members, police officers, judges, and other minor government officials engaged in bribe taking and other corrupt behavior.” Another State Department report finds that “endemic corruption at all levels of the government of Dominican Republic (GODR) and throughout private sector special interest groups still hinders efforts to counter narcotics smuggling, money laundering, migrant smuggling and a wide variety of other criminal activities.”38 The Dominican navy has been deeply corrupt and for decades complicit in migrant smuggling. The most significant effect is facilitation: the authorities responsible for impeding undocumented migration are profiting from it through collusion and payoffs. Departures are informally divided into two types: those that have paid navy officers and those that leave in secret without paying. Enforcement targets the latter, which tend to be trips organized by small-­scale captains or by migrants themselves. Payoffs to the navy are often represented as the purchase of a permiso (permission or permit) or payment of a peaje (toll) for yola departures. One is subject to arrest not because smuggling is illegal but rather because one failed to pay the toll or purchase the permit. Selective enforcement extorts higher payment from smugglers, punishes noncompliance, eliminates competition for the benefit of favored smugglers, appeases the U.S. Coast Guard, and maintains a public relations façade of active interdiction. Naval intelligence routinely reports known yola departures to the Coast Guard, and selective reporting can favor or disfavor a given smuggler. All of the captains I interviewed described payoffs to Dominican navy officials, and most of the interviewed migrants likewise attest to navy collusion in yola voyages. The complicity of the navy was explained in greater detail and with varying degrees of candor, caution, and frustration by officers and agents at the Coast Guard and Border Patrol. They all stress that the navy has the capacity to enforce the law when it has the will, that the degree of cooperation depends on who is in charge, and that frequent rotation changes the situation regularly, for better or for worse. The division of the Dominican navy known as M-­2 is often implicated. M-­2 is the navy’s intelligence division but is operational in migrant interdiction. The payoffs are made at two levels. The first, which is made in advance of the voyage, is to M-­2 or other navy officers with sufficient rank to control deployments. Once a payoff is made, the departure area is left

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free by sending beach patrols elsewhere. The second form of payment supplements or substitutes officer payoffs by negotiating on the beach if a patrol discovers an unauthorized departure in progress. On Christmas Eve 2004, navy personnel body-­checked passengers and then allowed them to depart on a yola. When a departure is impeded and the captain arrested, navy personnel compensate themselves in other ways. Stealing outboard engines is one way, and the corresponding reports indicate that a yola had no engine or only one. Some informants say that these engines, along with confiscated vessels, are sold to other captains. Gasoline, compasses, GPS devices, and other items of value are also confiscated and dispatched illegally. The captains are detained to extort from them a percentage of the smuggling fees paid by the migrants. Thereafter the captains are freed to continue making the voyages from which everyone profits. The disruption of migrant smuggling is consequently against the interests of navy personnel at many levels. Their meager salaries are supplemented by yola migration, and in most cases they facilitate departures with impunity. At the same time, political decorum requires that the navy propagate a public-­relations illusion of efficacy. High-­profile scandals and yola tragedies thus result in temporary surges of interdiction, but over the decades the navy’s collusion in migrant smuggling—including voyages organized by navy officers themselves—outweighs its commitment to enforcement. When officers are detained for involvement in migrant smuggling, criminal charges are rare and the penalty is generally limited to transfer or discharge from the navy. The payoffs by these two forms—advance payment to officers and payment on the beach—are subordinate to involvement at a higher level. In 2009 I met with a federal border-­enforcement official in a restaurant; we talked for about an hour and a half. At one point in the conversation, after asking for reassurance that I would protect his anonymity, the official took out a pen and drew a map of the Dominican Republic on a napkin. He explained the hierarchical structure of the Dominican navy, indicating the titles and names of three top commanders—chief of navy, deputy chief of navy, and chief of operations—and then drew lines dividing the eastern part of the map into three sectors. If a yola leaves from this sector, he explained, then the chief is paid; if it leaves from this sector, then the deputy chief is paid . . . Corruption in the Dominican navy began to wane in August 2008, after navy officers executed seven Colombian drug traffickers and the

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subsequent scandal revealed navy complicity and leadership in a drug and migrant smuggling organization. A new chief of navy was appointed at the end of February 2009, and he began his command with a pledge to end corruption. (He was subsequently promoted, in March 2011, to vice minister of the armed forces.) Unlike his predecessor, who made similar statements while deeply complicit with migrant and drug smuggling, the new chief purged the ranks, punished collusion, and began migrant interdiction in earnest—burning yolas, disrupting organizations, cooperating closely with the U.S. Coast Guard, and restoring the docked fleet to maritime patrols. It remains to be seen whether these changes are sustainable or will revert to collusion in smuggling when a new command is appointed or a new president elected. The survival of the anticorruption initiative in the navy is also contingent on its ability to insulate itself from the corruption endemic to the government around it.39 The Dissonance of Law and Social Values Migrants are aware that yola voyages are illegal and indeed refer to them as viajes ilegales (illegal trips) and to themselves as ilegales (illegals). Milagros explained that legal trips are when one travels by plane or ship, “but we go as illegals, the majority of Dominicans, we go in hiding.” They do so, she thought, because “there’s no money to get your passport. It’s very expensive”; others understand that they are ineligible for visas. Delio said, “There are so many steps to go legally—papers, money references—that it’s impossible, so we go illegally.” Tito, a captain, was likewise clear on illegality. I once tested his resolve by saying that in the United States yola voyages were considered illegal, but perhaps they were not considered so by poor Dominicans. Tito would have none of that: “It’s a crime because we’re traveling illegally. Against the law.” Moreno was similarly unambiguous: “illegal at sea and illegal in a country that is not mine.” Yola trips are against the law in a context in which the law is flexible, selectively enforced, not respected, and undermined by corruption. Laws are broken for self-­benefit by the authorities entrusted to promulgate and enforce them; are sometimes at odds with implicit codes of proper social conduct; and are viewed to some extent as obstacles that poor people must outmaneuver to survive. Every migrant recognizes that yola voyages are illegal, but few would regard them as unethical or socially reprehensible. There is no moral outrage when immigration laws are broken. One boards a yola to support one’s children, to seek a better future, to

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reunite with a loved one, to build a home for one’s family—the illegality is incidental to these socially valued goals. While law and moral values might coincide to deter, for example, stealing from a neighbor, there is no similar coincidence for illegal migration.40 Consider Roberto’s response when I asked him what the difference was between legal and illegal migration. “The difference is family,” he said, because legal travel makes it possible to return home for visits. Roberto thought for a moment and added, “If I go legally I’m protected, not in a yola that can turn over.” In these comments Roberto is concerned not with breaking the law—it never crosses his mind—but rather with being separated from his family and with drowning. His implied premises are that poverty necessitates migration and that he is excluded from legal migration, and these lead to consequences that are alienating (no visits) and life threatening (drowning). Undocumented migration is one of many areas in which the law does not correspond with the values of its subjects or with the social reality in which they live. Dominican culture in this regard is characterized by a “double code: the formal, in conformance with the body of declared juridical and social norms; and the informal or practical code, comprised of a series of behavioral norms as they are actually practiced by, at least, one social group.” In addition to yola voyages, the law and common practices are at odds regarding fraudulent documents, entry without inspection, recidivist migration after deportation, marriage fraud, the sex work of minors, and family abandonment, among many examples.41 In all of these cases, traditional values have evolved under the pressure of poverty as it adapts to migration and, more broadly, to globalization. The values, which are resilient, deviate from the law, which is less flexible and slower to change. Finally the law and values are incongruous, and the laws become difficult to enforce because people do not recognize their validity. When the law is not aligned with “the community’s shared intuitions of justice” and is not revised, it becomes incumbent on government to “engage in a campaign of persuasion seeking to convince the community of the moral correctness of the laws.”42 To that end, Dominican authorities, together with the Inter-­American Development Bank, the Ricky Martin Foundation, and the International Organization for Migration, ran an antismuggling awareness campaign in 2009. The results were disappointing, however, “because people do not view them [yola trips] as a crime,” and “they resist reporting organizers of yola trips because they think they would lose the opportunity to try to

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travel again.” A hotline was established, “but no one has called to report the organizers of yola trips.”43 Once migrants are abroad, they face exacting enforcement protocols and alien attitudes toward the law. Yola migration is illegal on both sides of the line, but the illegality is perceived differently in the U.S. jurisdiction. Americans are raised with what Orlando called a respect for the law, for rules, but in the Dominican Republic “that doesn’t exist. We don’t know about laws. If you go from here to Samaná you don’t see a single stop sign, speed limit, any kind of traffic controls.” Dominicans don’t acquire respect for the law because the rules are more flexible and if you bend them too far “the idea is just not to get caught.” In the United States, conversely, “there’s a lot of law, it overwhelms you, you don’t get it. So when you drive in New York and finally start to understand something they’re already about to take away your license. You get a thousand tickets but you don’t understand anything.” “You learn everything too late,” Orlando concluded, because you are already arrested before you realize the gravity of your transgressions.44 Sonia gave a similar example—the routine passing of red lights—then said: “The law there is obeyed. Here it’s not; here you do whatever you want.” Gordito explained that “the law there is different” because you cannot play music loudly, throw trash in the street, or ride on a motorbike with a child on your knee. Delgadino got deported after he killed an iguana (“There are too many iguanas in Puerto Rico”) and then argued with a policeman about it. “You can’t kill animals there; here people kill them but not there.” Julio’s repatriation resulted from a beer not in a bag. I told Sergio the story and he replied, “The law there is stricter. You have to do it in your house and keep the bottle. Not here; here you’re free.” Sergio’s regard of the law as an imposition on freedom captures the essence of a dominant perspective. The laws are someone else’s—they benefit someone else by imposing limitations on me—and consequently I do not recognize them. In this perspective, the breaking of immigration-­ related laws is a kind of civil disobedience: we refuse to obey because this law defends interests detrimental to our well-­being and freedom. The strictness of U.S. law baffles some migrants who settle in Puerto Rico or on the mainland. “It’s strange,” Víctor said, “a little weird.” You’re having a drink with a friend “and it’s 12:45 and already we have to get ready to leave. The owner lowers the music, they start shutting down, the police arrive outside, everyone goes home. The law is very strict. And you have to obey. And you see that the law is very hard for you, and you

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say no, this is very different than the life that I live. And you find it too intense.” As Raúl summarized this attitude, “The law takes away your pleasure.” Other migrants, particularly those in residence long enough to acclimate, prefer American-­style obedience to the law. “I like the laws there better than the laws here,” Chicho said, “because there, after midnight, you can’t make noise, so that someone who works can sleep well.” Pepe said, “I personally would like people in the Dominican Republic to behave the way people do here [in the United States].” And Raúl pointed out that ultimately the difference in law obedience between the Dominican Republic and the United States is a matter of degree, because “the idea is just not to get caught” applies perfectly well to the great majority of Americans in cases such as exceeding the speed limit on highways.45 The same is true of enforcement as illustrated by Luis’s steal-­a-­salami example: in the United States crimes of every nature are punished severely, but with notable exceptions. Since the 1970s there has been a steep rise in the number of people incarcerated and the length of sentences, and the U.S. rate of incarceration is now the highest in the world, with one out of a hundred adults in prison. At the same time, many corporate crimes (finance, antitrust, environmental, campaign financing) and political crimes (such as the Iran-­Contra and Valerie Plame affairs) remain unprosecuted or are cleaned up afterward with pardons, commuted sentences, and bailouts at public expense. There is also a distortion in the assessment of severity. The George W. Bush administration remained unsanctioned for misleading Congress into the Iraq war, for example, while at the same time an Assistant United States Attorney in Puerto Rico sought the death penalty for a yola captain and crew charged with migrant smuggling.46 Easy Money The guiding principle or defining factor of most poor Dominicans’ lives is money. It is constantly on one’s mind because it is constantly needed. This individual priority is shared by the collective, and the pursuit of money thus becomes a cultural norm, a common endeavor, a base of identities, and a measure of success. “We have one idol, which is money,” Luis related. “Money is the synonym that things are going to go well, are going to get better, that people are going to regard you better.” He then added an observation—“The in-

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stinct is the amount of money that you get, it doesn’t matter how”—that captured the malleable ethics of many migrants, particularly those inclined to criminality, but also of corporate capitalism. In both cases, the focus on income or profit erodes traditional core values like honesty, integrity, dignity, generosity, and solidarity. To a certain degree the globalization of neoliberalism filters down and catalyzes this overhaul of poor people’s values and priorities, but the likeness seems more a coincidence of parallel phenomena. The corporate quest is motivated by greed and the migrant quest by need. As Sonia put it, describing poor Dominicans, “They simply have one thing in their heads: look for money. They don’t know how but: look for money. That’s the main thing.” When I asked informants what they thought of Luis’s idea—that money is the goal and the means of acquiring it are irrelevant—Rubén thought it applied to 25 percent of Dominicans. (He may have underestimated. In a 1985 study, 52 percent agreed with this statement: “For making money there are not forms that are correct or incorrect, but rather difficult or easy.”) Sonia thought that “the majority of Dominicans are like that—that’s why there’s a lot of crime,” and both Sonia and Rubén agreed that such people are not impeded by the morality or consequences of their actions. Gregorio, however, saw it differently: “I would say that for me the amount of money that I get doesn’t matter, but it does matter how I get it. You have to get it in an honest way.”47 Almost all of my informants were decent people, with strong moral principles and conscientious commitment to their values. Their values, however, permit drift back and forth across the line of the law. Americans define that divide more rigidly. The perception of law abidance is polarized—however hypocritically—and everyone on the far side is criminal. Poor Dominicans do not have the luxury of that contrived clarity. They are trapped in a paradox: smart, able people are supposed to succeed, but there are few opportunities for success. The default is to illegal activity—if only undocumented migration— which opens new opportunities for income but also for self-­realization. In some peer groups acquisitive crime is rewarded emotionally with a sense of pride, of accomplishment, of recognition of astuteness and worth, because one achieves the ideal—getting money—despite the lack of opportunities. This is particularly apparent in the subculture of tigueres (delinquents) who proudly ostentate a defiant, deviant identity. The same rewards accrue to the con men who swindle migrants. The con is about

The Culture of Migration 111 Gladys: “In my country working is not a crime.”

money, but it is also about a delight in deviance, a sense of superiority, and the joy of income without hard work.48 It was important to many informants that I recognize their astuteness and integrity; these were the two qualities that were most emphasized. The stress on astuteness was sometimes compensatory bragging—with “I’m very smart” as a kind of punctuation—but it also illustrated pride for ingenuity that overcomes obstacles. The stress on integrity or honesty was more complex: it communicated to an outsider the informant’s commitment to maintaining a decency (or the impression of decency) that could so easily be lost to poverty. The implied discourse was something like, “Despite all this—look around—I don’t betray my integrity.” Tito was exemplary: he was determined to impress me with his goodness. On one occasion I ran into him outside a colmado; he still had the change in his hand. Tito explained, moralizing the point, that he had just bought rum (“for some Haitian friends”), that the colmado owner had given him too much change, and that he had called attention to the error and duly returned the excess. Some migrants do commit crimes, of course, either by intent or by default. This occurs, among other reasons, because the migrants are excluded from formal employment and because their cultural referents (including drift across the line) are inapplicable in a strange world abroad. After a failed job search, for example, Gladys improvised employment

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by hawking fruit on the street. That went well until the police shut her down for a local code violation. Gladys didn’t understand. “Oh my God, why don’t you let me work? I’m not doing anything wrong, I’m working. In my country working is not a crime.” Other migrants apply their ingenuity to criminal activity beyond selling fruit. People cross the line in different places. Some, like Jamel, are unambiguous about criminal intent. Jamel wants to get rich quick, knows that will not happen on a day job, and will do whatever is necessary to reach his goal. The idea of crime as a shortcut to wealth is the primary motivator of his migration. Others arrive undocumented and unskilled, despair of the poor-­paying jobs accessed with that resume, and resort to crime out of misguided necessity or to achieve what they view as success. Family members or friends who are dealing drugs provide easy entry and a seductive Scarface flashiness of dollars, power, and excitement. Domingo is a good example: he despaired of underemployment, began selling heroin for a cousin, got arrested, jumped bail, got arrested again, served three years in prison, and was deported. Rubén explained that recruiters tell potential migrants they will earn $500 a week, “but they don’t tell you that in order to do that you need a trade—an electrician, a plumber—or else the only way you can make that kind of money is doing something illegal. I was offered work, a cousin of mine from here who sells drugs—who sold, because he was arrested for that.” Many others face the same decision: crime or struggle. Some are attracted to crime (usually drug-­related); others measure the income against their values and the compromises that a life of crime requires, then decide it is time to go home. As Santiago put it, “Honest people look for honest work, but without papers I couldn’t get work. I decided to return to my country because I didn’t go to do illegal work.” Consensual Union and Procreation Dominican poverty is sustained by the structural factors described in the introduction together with a range of concomitant problems including underemployment for subsistence; insufficient infrastructure, social services, and education; and a high tolerance of inequality. The structural factors create a social context hostile to human development and conducive to the emergence of norms and practices that transmit poverty to subsequent generations.49

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Carlos, his father, and his son

The concept of family tends to be perceived as fixed and immutable, but in practice—if one considers the actual families in a given locale—it is a dynamic and evolving institution that adapts to social and economic conditions. The very definition of “family” in the Dominican Republic has changed from the traditional structure of nuclear and extended family to include now, among the poor, a preponderance of unmarried couples and single mothers as heads of household. Formal marriages, be they civil or religious, are rare among poor Dominicans, who instead unite and procreate in consensual union (cohabitation without formal marriage). The phrase for consensual union in Spanish, unión libre (free union), suggests the openness and sometimes transience of the relation. The 2010 Dominican constitution recognizes consensual union in Article 55 (paragraph 5) and endows it with rights and responsibilities, including the parents’ shared responsibility, even after separation, “to feed, raise, train, educate, support, protect, and help their sons and daughters” (paragraph 10).50 Some external observers regard consensual union and the female-­ headed households that often result from it as aberrant and even immoral deviance from the traditional norm and as necessarily detrimental to children. Others, quite to the contrary, regard consensual union and female-­

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headed households as acceptable alternate forms of family and view the alleged superiority of traditional family structure as a perpetuation of patriarchal dominance.51 In my own opinion, D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the “good-­enough mother” extends well to a “good-­enough family,” whether headed by one parent, both, or a surrogate parent or parents, as long as children are spared abuse and neglect and receive basic love, nurturing, and guidance. Alternative forms of family and child rearing—like nuclear families themselves—can be positive or negative experiences for children, depending on the commitment and capabilities of the parents or guardians.52 On the downside, consensual union creates a more loosely structured family unit that facilitates abandonment by one spouse or the other. Silvio summarized the general male position when he explained, “You get together with a woman, and if it doesn’t work out you can leave that and go on.” Some people—men and women—prefer consensual union because it leaves open the possibility of marrying a foreigner and migrating legally. Others are deterred from formal marriage by the expense, which, if it ends in divorce, is redoubled on exit. Infidelity is another predominant concern. As Caridad explained, in couples “either one or the other is always unfaithful. In order to get married—with a document that indicates you’re married—you always have to have the responsibility of both parties. And that doesn’t happen much here.” Consensual union is often described as a trial period, and when the trial works out the union may continue for years or decades before the couple decides to marry or not marry. Chencho and his spouse have three children and have lived together for nineteen years: “Now we’re doing an analysis to see if we’re going to get married.”53 The relationships are generally abandoned by the man. Some women, like Ramona, who has an unsupported child and was pregnant when I met her, are disturbed by the facility of dissolution: “There isn’t any kind of commitment.” José stressed the same word: “If I am married with a woman, it’s a very big commitment. And Dominicans are among the people who do not like to have commitments. So, if you have a consensual union, when the time comes that you want to leave her, you leave her. You don’t have any commitment to her.” Julio said in summary, “We Dominicans don’t believe much in marriage.” Women like Ramona seek a traditional family structure not because they are subservient or old-­fashioned but rather because female-­headed households consign them to the double burden of raising children and

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overworking in scarce and poorly paid jobs in order to support the family. When the relationship is working as one envisions, the man provides love, companionship, and fatherhood, but also income. The economic desperation of single mothers makes them vulnerable to hastily entering relationships with unreliable and sometimes abusive men, however, and consequently the same repeated pattern—procreation followed by abandonment—aggravates the woman’s problems and economic need. Mothers and female relatives partially alleviate these problems when they are available, although many are burdened with variations of the same problems themselves.54 Other women, like Marta, who was pressured by an evangelical minister to enter a marriage that failed within the year, are grateful for the easy exit of consensual unions. Another Christian woman, Josefa, is legally married and was abandoned by her husband after he migrated to Puerto Rico. “Marriage for me is now the same as AIDS,” she said, and when I asked why, she responded: “Because I can’t get married to someone else. The Bible clearly says that what God has united, man cannot separate. Only by death. I believe in that.” Procreation often begins in the mid- or late teen years, and accumulation of three to six children is common. According to the Population Council, about 14 percent of Dominican girls nationally are married or in consensual unions by age fifteen and about 40 percent by age eighteen. The rates are higher in rural areas (18 and 50 percent, respectively).55 About 75 percent of fifteen- to nineteen-­year-­old girls who were or are married or in consensual unions have been pregnant or have had a child.56 Men tend to have multiple, simultaneous partners, even when they are in stable relationships, and women tend to be serially monogamous. Having children with multiple partners is socially acceptable, as is informal polygamy (maintaining a stable, procreative relationship and household with a woman or women in addition to one’s wife or consensual partner). Many of my male informants proudly related the number of children they had fathered, sometimes pointing in different directions—two over here, one over there—as though to illustrate their coverage of the four cardinal points. In previous generations the numbers were significantly higher, and informants today commonly report that their fathers had between ten and twenty children. One reported thirty-­five. The always perceptive Luis observed, “We’re harvesting the consequences now.”57 Moreno offered an imaginative recreation of my home life to explain why Dominicans have more children than Americans. In doing so he

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made three important inferences: first, that sexual relations are predisposed by idleness due to underemployment; second, that contraception is entirely alien to these relations, which are perceived instead in terms of reproduction; and third, that attitudes toward sexual relations and reproduction are affected by education. You spend your day working. Your wife too, working. If not studying, reading. Not us. People who study, who think—people who don’t study can’t think. So you spend your day, most of your time, working, your wife is working too, and a week can pass without seeing each other. Not us. We go out fishing and that’s it. We spend the day very well doing nothing. Sitting around with our wives, or lying down, and we wind up making children [he laughs]. We make more children because we’re sitting around at home, and seeing our wives there, we’re alive. That’s why we make so many children. My informants are divided in their assessments of how the ability to support children might affect procreation. The most common view is that the two are unrelated. José said: “If I have a woman and I have three or four children with that woman, and I leave her and get another woman, I don’t think that I have four children, I make four more with the new woman, even if I don’t have work, and that is what happens with a Dominican man, he never thinks about supporting his children.” Gordito editorialized this position with a refrain: the man who can least afford children has the most.58 Other informants who tended in general to be more competent in life skills had a better sense of family planning. Víctor summarized this position when I asked him why some people have fewer children: “If you have fewer, you can raise them better.” In the past people had twelve or fifteen children, but Christian explained, “I’m a poor man, I can’t have more than two or three children.” If you have five the expenses are overwhelming, “but if I have two, I’m going to strive to make my kids get ahead.” Sonia made the same point: her husband migrated and she works at home “to give this child a good life. But imagine with five children, without knowing where you are going to get the money to support those children.” Sonia accredited her greater awareness to education. When I asked if she had studied family planning in school, she came back with an insight that reminded me of Moreno’s comments: “You don’t learn it in school. But by learning things in school you later see things from a point of view that other people who didn’t study don’t see.” Education (and, she men-

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tioned later, a kind of continuing education through radio programs) has transformed her perceptions in ways that have practical benefits in everyday life. The abandonment of families by men is usually due to combinations of discord in the relationships, new loves, and a father’s inability to support his children. Some fathers simply flee; others struggle for varying periods (sometimes abroad) before they are finally overwhelmed and give up. As José explained, these experiences do not prevent them from beginning new families under the same unviable economic conditions and with the same predilection to flight. Families are also abandoned by women who enter relations with men other than their spouses (sometimes while the migrant spouses are abroad), but this occurs less frequently. According to a 2007 Dominican study, only 41 percent of girls and 46 percent of boys lived with both parents in the household. Approximately 20 percent of boys and girls lived with neither parent in the household. Those who lived with one parent almost always lived with the mother. In a study done in a migrant neighborhood in San Juan, “two of every three Dominican families in the neighborhood were headed by women.”59 By law and social conventions, a biological father who abandons the family is responsible for supporting his children. Compliance is generally partial and temporary. My female informants were unambiguous in their expectation of paternal responsibility, but at the same time are victims of ex-­partners who do not support their children. Male informants similarly agree that child support is their responsibility, but few of them actually make payments. Julio explained: “Having children and not supporting them is a lack of responsibility as a man and as a father,” but “the majority of us don’t support them.” In all cases, male and female, the stress falls heavily on financial support, with little mention of other paternal or parental responsibilities (such as loving, meeting basic needs, instilling values, disciplining, and nurturing self-­esteem).60 The mother has the option to file a suit to demand child support from the father, which the court determines in consideration of the father’s means. Once a monthly child-­support payment is imposed, the father theoretically faces legal sanctions if he fails to meet the obligation. In practice, however, enforcement of payment is usually fruitless, primarily because most deadbeat fathers are unemployed or underemployed in the informal economy. Many mothers who file suits eventually give up the cause as hopeless. Court decisions can also be purchased.61 When a father abandons the household, the burden of child support

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falls on the mother. She has few options: working, although jobs are scarce and pay is insufficient; beginning a new relationship with a man who is willing to provide for her children; depending on support from family members, who are usually poor themselves; or migrating in search of work abroad. In the absence of employment options, which is common, many women resort to sex work at home and abroad. Despite the implied moral stigma, sex workers “have strong beliefs about familial responsibility and obligations,” and their work is “an important form of family labor that sustains their siblings, children, parents, and other relatives.” Human traffickers exploit this conscientiousness: “They prefer to take women who have children so that they tolerate more [sex work].” One woman in sex work abroad observed that “no one imagines how you made this money” but also thought that “society wouldn’t criticize this any more.” My informants gave the same impression; there was little or no judgment because people understood the necessity.62 When mothers migrate, the children are usually left with the maternal grandmothers or other female relatives. Grandmothers are often happy to receive, love, and nurture the grandchildren who are entrusted to their care, and they can provide well for them when the mothers abroad are able to send remittances. Some grandmothers are incapable of caring for children or resentful of the burden, however, and the children suffer the consequences. Josefa related the story of a neighbor whose daughter migrated by yola without telling anyone and left her four children at home alone. The daughter called her mother upon arrival—“I’m in Puerto Rico”—and asked the mother to pick up and care for the children. This grandmother—single, poor, unemployed, tired—was burdened without consent, and the mother failed to send regular remittances. “I told her to look for the four fathers,” Josefa said, “so they can take responsibility for their children.”63 The abandonment of consensual unions is often a concession to poverty, but it also perpetuates poverty through a “transmission of disadvantage” or “intergenerational transmission of inequality.” In female-­ headed households, which generally suffer the most severe poverty, “the disadvantages of the mother (in income earning, protection, and social power, among others) may translate into special burdens and risks for the children, especially girls.” According to the Population Council, the children are disadvantaged by possible social isolation, lack of economic resources to attend school, need to work to help support the family, reduced access to health care, and lowered assurance of safety. Many of my

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informants added that the lack of paternal authority in the household predisposes youth to delinquency and migration. Competent mothers are capable of guiding their children, however, and some, like Miguelina, decide not to migrate precisely because their children are approaching the years when they are most at risk.64 The abandonment of consensual unions, the procreation of multiple unsupported children, and the prominence of female-­headed households without stable incomes all contribute to generations of youth whose self-­ realization is impeded by poverty. The situation becomes more critical in increments, for example, when a father migrates, when the migrant father abandons the family, when the single mother migrates to compensate for the loss, when the mother’s income abroad is insufficient to maintain the children at home, and when the care arrangements for the children become unstable.65 Luis, who had a fatherless, neglected childhood in a poor neighborhood of Santo Domingo, describes himself as “the fruit of no planning, the fruit of chance, the fruit of a relationship that was totally informal.” He explains how youth thoughtlessly repeat patterns regarded as the norm— early procreation, dropping out of school, informal underemployment for subsistence, crime—unless parents intervene to motivate them, educate them, and mark out a path for their advancement. “Who do you think gets on those yolas?” Luis asked rhetorically. “It’s a lot of young people from neighborhoods like mine.” Youth who are born into poverty, dead-­ended by neglect, struggling against redundancy, and searching for an escape from their foreclosed future.66

Marta and Sergio

Marta

a head full of lightning and hat full of rain Tom Waits

Marta’s story is the least dramatic but the most common: her trip failed. When I met her shortly after her attempt at migration she was living in a rented house with her husband, Sergio, and their two young daughters. Marta is from a rural village and clearly out of place in town. She reminded me of a racehorse whose gate won’t open. Strong-­willed, energetic, and eager to start living her dream—which consists simply of returning to the village where she was born—Marta was succumbing to inertia. When I arrived she was sleeping, the house felt lethargic, and the kids were hooked up to the television. “One day is the same as the next,” Marta said. She stays home and watches the kids, she misses her family, and she is eager to do something—some work, some way to move her dream along—but there is nothing to do. A life with nothing to do. Sergio was building a cinderblock house for the family on a hillside adjacent to Marta’s village, but the construction had stalled for lack of funds. Like the migration of countless migrants around the world, Marta’s yola migration in 2008 was motivated by the desire to have a home for her family, and among family. Sergio was opposed to the trip from the beginning due to a general aversion to yolas and dislike of smugglers—“People call them captains, but in other words they are criminals”—and for fear that Marta would drown. Marta originally planned to depart in secret, without telling Sergio, but finally confided her plan. There was no way for Sergio to dissuade her. The house construction would never be completed unless she worked abroad, Marta said: “I got more desperate and desperate

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and got this idea in my mind—I’m going, I’m going, I’m going—and when an idea gets in your mind the decision has been made.” Sergio cried often, Marta said, especially when departure was imminent. Marta herself felt safe because she was traveling with a captain who had safely transported three of her relatives to Puerto Rico. There were a few false starts—the passengers gathered but then the trip didn’t leave— until finally the departure was scheduled definitively. Marta traveled by guagua to Nagua and stayed with a relative while waiting. A couple of days later, on a Friday at two o’clock in the morning, the call came. The trip left from Nagua with about 140 people. A navy beach patrol, visible in the distance, was indifferent to the migrants because officers had been paid off to allow the departure. The yola made a stop in Las Galeras, the passengers got off and were told to hide in the monte, and the crew went on horseback for gasoline. A couple of days later, on Monday night, the passengers worked their way back down the hill to the beach with flashlights, “in mud up to my knees,” Marta said. They formed a single file before boarding, and one of the recruiters looked at each face to make sure that no one was trying to travel without paying. He didn’t recognize Marta, but then another recruiter—a few had fed into the same voyage—said, “That’s one of mine,” and Marta was allowed to board. The crossing was slow—it took about thirty-­six hours—because the propeller of the main engine was damaged and the yola was powered by the smaller reserve engine. The sea was calm and the sun was strong. Water and food were depleted and people began to get desperate. Marta lay on the floor between two benches and left her fate to God: “Arrive or don’t arrive—there’s no way out.” Two delirious passengers jumped overboard with the intention of walking away in search of food, but the captain U-­turned to save them and the crew pulled them out of the water. On Wednesday afternoon the migrants spotted a patrol aircraft in the distance; the aircraft had also spotted them. The captain turned off the engine and told everyone to crouch, but instead some passengers—hoping for rescue—stood up and waved their arms. A helicopter arrived shortly afterward and then a cutter. The migrants were transferred to the cutter (a few were unconscious and taken on stretchers), fingerprints and photographs were taken, and the migrants were interviewed. They had already thrown away the telephone numbers of contacts in San Juan to avoid implicating undocumented friends and relatives. No one denounced the captain—out of solidarity because he took care of them during the voyage and saved the overboard passengers—but the database check revealed an

Marta in the kitchen of the rented house

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infraction and, along with about ten others, the captain was taken ashore for prosecution. The Coast Guard doused the yola with the unused gasoline and torched it (“a huge cloud of smoke—nothing was left”) and repatriated the migrants to La Romana. They arrived, after delays, on Friday, a week after the yola’s original departure, and were held by the Dominican navy until Sunday. When I saw Marta and Sergio a year after our first visit, in May 2010, they had moved from the rented house into a wooden shack behind their house under construction. Marta was notably happier and more alive than she had been previously. She was living now in the country and among family, tending to her conuco (fruit and vegetable garden), and witnessing the realization, however slow, of her dream. Sergio had made significant progress on the house—the walls were up and the roof was on—but it still had a long way to go. Underemployment was a perpetual problem; Sergio had only worked seven days since 2009, and Marta had a housekeeping job at a tourist hotel two days a week: “I don’t earn much but I earn something.” Somehow with that limited income, and perhaps some other of which I’m unaware, they were managing to subsist and at once make progress on the construction. Marta also had the debt of borrowed money for the smuggling fee. The couple was pressured to complete construction quickly because their shack— leaning visibly to one side—was on the verge of collapse. Sergio said it was a matter of months. Both Marta and Sergio have an amazing, raw, uneducated intelligence under the influence of Christianity. When I was asking them about the common preference for consensual union instead of marriage, Sergio said, “Dominicans don’t like, don’t believe in divorce” because the Bible says one should not divorce. The solution to avoiding the sin of divorce, consequently, is cohabitation without marriage so that one never runs the risk. Marta never divorced the husband from whom she separated more than twenty years earlier, and she lives now with Sergio in consensual union. Marta and Sergio work off one another to lead progressively to new ideas and insights. When I asked how life in their community changes when family members migrate, for example, Marta first gave a standard response: remittances improve life because there is money for food. Even in its simplicity the response is revealing, because Marta didn’t say money for jewelry (or house construction) or even “more money” for food. Sergio then took the response to another level. Life also changes, he

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said, because Dominicans who have family abroad witness firsthand the improved quality of life, which motivates them to migrate in turn. He was relating, in his manner, the motivating quality of relative deprivation. Marta then lit up with her characteristic enthusiasm when excited by an idea and took another step: “If I go and become legal there, with my papers, I can legalize my sister, and that sister who becomes legal can legalize someone else—she brings her father, she brings her mother—so when someone goes first, more people always go. They keep going, they keep going, until all have gone.” I always held Marta in high esteem for her assertive, mischievous, inquisitive personality. After our first visit in the rented house, when the exchange was more an interview than a conversation, Marta said timidly, tentatively, at the end: “You asked me a lot of questions. Can I ask you one?” I said sure, and she asked why it was so easy for foreigners (such as the many European tourists and expatriates in the area) to come to the Dominican Republic and so hard for Dominicans to go anywhere abroad. The beautiful naiveté of that question, together with the injustice, took me apart—I tried to control my face, recomposed, and answered as best I could. On a later visit, we were sitting on plastic chairs inside the cinderblock walls of the house under construction; two of Marta’s brothers and several children of all ages were listening in. After the recorder went off, Marta said: “You gave us pictures of us, but I don’t have one of you.” I told her I didn’t have a photo of myself but that if she’d take one I’d have it printed and give it to her. I handed Marta my camera and—to the great delight of the laughing kids—she put it up to her eye backwards, looking through the telephoto lens.

The Psychology of Migrant Motivation

Cognition “People Don’t Think” Early in my research, frustrated by the brevity of an informant’s responses, I had a realization that changed my perceptions: migrant decision making is less ponderous than a life-­threatening and life-­transforming transition would seem to warrant; is highly emotive in its cognition; is often inaccessible to expression; and, even when accessed, is generally articulated simply and directly, with minimal narrative detail. I would ask, for example, “You took another yola trip after you almost died at sea and after your friend drowned. How did you overcome the fear?” That seemed to me an important point—fear in relation to repeated attempts—but in response informants looked puzzled and said: “Like I told you, to get to Puerto Rico,” or “Because there’s no work here.” Some informants used truncated responses simply for evasion, but for others what was essential to me was implicit to them and as such both irrelevant and difficult to express. The assumptions, concerns, priorities, education, and relative wealth that conditioned my inquiries were negotiating with the cognition of informants who approached social reality, derived meaning from it, interpreted it, and narrated it in accord with their own cultural norms and social station. The informants’ silence was saying, in effect: Those details are part of my everyday life; I take them for

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granted without giving them a thought and without analyzing my reasons and emotions. Migrant motivation, and even the haphazard nature of migration, are misunderstood insofar as one expects that migrants process information in the same manner as the privileged outsiders who study them. The contrast is clearest when experiences abroad are interpreted within migrant frames of reference. Upon arrival by yola to a Puerto Rican beach, Félix was asked if he spoke English, said he did not, and thought Border Patrol repatriated him because he lacked that proficiency. Morena, on a Coast Guard cutter after interdiction, was told that she would have been taken ashore (for prosecution, after a second entry attempt) if Puerto Rico were closer, but Morena understood this admonishment as a kind offer of transportation in recognition of her perseverance. And Fernando, when he had the opportunity to speak during the resentencing hearing following his smuggling conviction, said to the judge: “I know I committed an offense, the offense of trying to come to this country illegally. I know I am guilty of that offense.” These simple expressions bring into relief a cultural perspective and manner of cognition that must be taken into account if one purports to understand migrant motivation. Fernando’s comment, for example, is remarkable in its conception of culpability. The court regarded Fernando as a felon, punished him heavily, and expected his remorse; but Fernando, who was a crew member on a yola, saw himself more or less as another migrant. That self-­perception—as a migrant, not a felon—was critical to his decision to participate in what the United States regards as a crime. One can impose accusations and interpretations that redefine Fernando before the law, but nevertheless in his self-­perception he was a responsible son migrating to support his mother.1 When informants are asked about migrant motivation they often preface the response with the phrase “La gente no piensa” (People don’t think). The phrase summarizes a tendency to make critical, life-­changing decisions without analysis of the risks, benefits, and consequences. As Rafael put it, “I feel bad here” is the extent of many deliberations before boarding a yola. Sonia elaborated: “‘I’m going to do this because I want to do it. Because this is what I want.’ They don’t stop to think about what they’re going to experience, what’s going to happen, how they’re going to earn money, how they’re going to live their lives there.” Someone who thinks it through says, “‘No, if I’m going to do this, why am I going?’ But there

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are a lot of people who simply say ‘I’m going, period, and I’m not going to think about it.’ I’m going, period; I’m gone. A lot of people do that.” What are you going to do when you get there? Run. Do you know where? No. Is there someone you can contact upon arrival? My cousin. Does he know you’re coming? No. Planning for contingencies is minimal, usually because migrants expect against the odds that everything will go well on the journey. “No one brought food,” Morena said. “We boarded and left, thinking that we were going to arrive—understand?—you never leave thinking that you’re not going to arrive. We left thinking this is a viaje seguro, good motor, everything good, good compass, good weather.” But then, due to a compass malfunction, the captain got lost, the yola ran out of gas, and the migrants were adrift for three days. “Luck betrayed us, and we didn’t bring any food. By chance I brought some chocolates, because the captain said to me, ‘Negra, bring two chocolates and two bottles of water for yourself,’ so I bought chocolate and water and carried them in my hand.” Morena bought the provisions not of her own initiative but rather at the captain’s suggestion, which is characteristic of deferred responsibility. Migrants know that trips get lost and that people die for lack of food and water, but only some apply that knowledge to efficacious action. There is a disconnect between knowledge of the problem and anticipation of its recurrence. In many cases, like Morena’s, personal responsibility is accepted or relinquished by appeal to authority. When I asked one of the surviving crew members, Rolando, if he had checked the weather before his yola cruised into Tropical Storm Hanna, he replied that the captain had checked, “but we didn’t, because he was the boss.” Rolando deferred to an authority who was apparently negligent and then, like Morena, conceived of the crisis as accidental bad luck: “The captain said that it was a good boat and that we would arrive in one night. But there was a storm.” The same deference and relinquishment of individual initiative is evident in dialogue from a trial transcript. The passage is also indicative of the broader lack of preparation for yola voyages, particularly in comparison to Americans who are stocked with provisions—sandwiches, coolers, warning flares as a precaution until AAA arrives—even when they go on day trips. “And what preparation, if any, did you do?” “None.” “Well, what did you bring with you?” “The clothes I was wearing.”

The Psychology of Migrant Motivation 129 Caridad was presumed dead at sea.

“Why didn’t you bring anything else?” “They didn’t tell me anything. That’s the only thing, the clothes.”2 Deferral of individual responsibility is also suggested by the phrase nosotros los dominicanos (we Dominicans) that many informants used as a preface to their responses. The more independent thinkers claimed ownership of their ideas (“In my opinion,” “I think”), while others were more cognitively dependent and drew their views from the knowledge of a collective or sought anonymity through attribution.3 The idea that “people don’t think” is further illustrated by a lack of empathetic forethought. In 2007, Caridad and a friend planned to travel by yola from Miches. The migrants were left in a remote house for days, and, thinking they had been defrauded, Caridad and her friend walked away. They went to Sábana de la Mar, spent a few days with a friend there, and then returned home. More than a week had passed since Caridad’s original departure, but she had not called home: “My mother considered us dead because she thought that we had drowned in the ocean. That same night a yola left and people drowned, they saw it on television, and they thought it was us.” In a similar event, a woman made it successfully to Puerto Rico but did not call home for two weeks: “In my house they were building an altar for me because they thought I had drowned.”4 Within this general context of lack of forethought there are exceptional migrants who do plan in advance and establish goals for themselves. These tend to be the most successful. Even if the plans ultimately come to nothing, the very act of making them is beneficial to motivation insofar as “goals improve task performance” and “having a specific, challenging goal increases effort and persistence.” Chicho had a simple, com-

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mon plan—to build a house and to advance his family however he could— but most importantly he arranged employment in advance, which made his goals realizable. The plan thus included a goal but also—unlike many other migrant plans—a means (prearranged employment) to goal completion. With the earnings from less than five years of undocumented work in Puerto Rico, Chicho bought land, built a house, bought a motorbike, and “got good clothes and shoes” for his family, in addition to supporting others with remittances. Psychological benefits such as self-­fulfillment, self-­esteem, and the respect, gratitude, and admiration of others complement these material gains. Goal completion also motivates migrants to set new goals, including more remunerative employment, family reunification, and onward migration from Puerto Rico to the mainland.5 Sonia was among the most intelligent and competent people I interviewed, and from her descriptions I imagined her husband to be similarly astute. While many migrants embark with no plan other than to run when they hit the beach, Sonia and her husband exemplify family decision making and the use of migration as a strategy of advancement. “What he has is a goal: to earn money there so we can do something here.” The plan itself is simple—an articulation of the implicit goal of most migrants—but it works because both partners are focused, responsible, and mutually committed. The husband sends remittance to support the family, and Sonia spends the income judiciously so the surplus can subsidize a nail salon that she has established in her home. Her plan is to eventually cover living expenses with profits from the salon so the remittances can be saved, the goal can be realized more quickly, and her husband can return to the family. Some migrants plan for months or years; others board yolas at the last moment because an opportunity—usually for free or cheap travel— presents itself. The lack of forethought is as much instinctive as impulsive. The decision can be spontaneous because a culture of migration, evolving over the course of decades, has taken care of the ruminations and provided ample precedents. One’s own previous experience on yolas also facilitates spontaneity. One of Franklin’s cousins was out fishing when a migrant boat en route to Puerto Rico passed by. The cousin knew the captain, who offered him a bola (free trip), and the cousin climbed from one boat into the other. This event illustrates, in the extreme, the lack of ponderous decision making and planning as well as migrants’ tolerance for little advance notice (sometimes only hours) of departures that will change or end their lives.6

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When Dolores was seventeen she was hired by a trip organizer to escort male passengers past a navy checkpoint on a pier and then onward to the yola’s point of departure. Dolores changed her disguise after the escort of each passenger—a wide-­brimmed hat, sunglasses, a skirt switched to pants—to give the impression of couples out for a stroll. It was the first time she had done this, and she escorted eight of the nineteen migrants to the yola. The charade extended throughout the day and well into the night. Dolores was exhausted after delivering the last passenger, and she looked back wearily at the hourlong homeward walk alone in the dark. The migrants were already departing, but Dolores—surprising even herself—yelled for the captain to return to shore and then boarded the yola. Now she lives in Chicago. Decision making “without thinking” is further indebted to the role of emotion in cognition. Emotive decisions seem so irrevocable because they “feel” valid. The decision does not need to be justified to oneself— we know we are attracted to a certain person, house, or future—and we do not explain these feelings to ourselves rationally. “People do not get married or divorced, commit murder or suicide, or lay down their lives for freedom upon a detailed cognitive analysis of the pros and cons of their actions.” The same is true of migration: it feels right and one commits. Emotions are used as evidence to strengthen one’s conviction. “Attitudes toward risk depend on feelings, not on the objective properties of a choice.”7 When an analysis does occur, it tends to support the emotional commitment that precedes it. The cognition is more implemental (information is processed with a bias that supports a chosen goal) than deliberative (information is gathered and evaluated more objectively, without a predetermined goal). “Motivation can bias information processing, leading people to selectively attend to and process information that will allow them to reach desired conclusions.” The selective processing of information (“however casual and imprecise this process often may be”) occurs on two fronts: overvaluing confirming evidence and devaluing disconfirming evidence.8 The confirming evidence is often informal and inaccurate. Hearsay, rumors, casual conversations, biased reports (from recruiters and visiting migrants, among others), and fragmentary information from migrants at home and abroad contribute to a motivating but unreliable body of knowledge. The cumulative power of this information together with the repetition of similar discourse from multiple sources contributes to a

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sense of anonymity and objective truth. The source’s credibility, even if originally doubted, is dissociated from the message, which allows unreliable information to seem as irrefutable as common sense. Ambiguity is also exploited: the same reports can support migration or staying home, depending on how one spins them. These effects are compounded by oversimplification when one gathers the minimal information necessary to support (and not threaten) a decision to which one has committed emotionally: “He’s a good captain” or “It’s a viaje seguro” is all that many people need to hear.9 The dismissal of disconfirming evidence, meaning evidence that challenges or contradicts one’s convictions, works simultaneously on another front to protect an emotive decision made beforehand. There is a sense of relief, even release, when the threat to a conviction is neutralized. Gordito, who is resolute in his determination to reach Puerto Rico, is a good example: “They say it’s bad, but they don’t come back. It’s really bad, but they don’t come back. If it’s so bad, they should come back to their country, but they stay.” Gordito’s goal is further supported by neutralizing disconfirming evidence with success stories. The illusion of economic advancement in the United States sometimes coincides with the truth, of course, and that powerful association relegates the failure of others to questions of ingenuity or luck. The defensive denial of job shortage—or even death at sea—ameliorates the disconfirming evidence. Many migrants persevere in their conviction because they have previously resolved that migration is their only hope. The resolve becomes impenetrable. Even migrants whose own bad experiences have undermined their illusions tend to short-­circuit or loop back to an implacable conviction that the voyage is safe and prosperity awaits them abroad. Their experiences with failed migration or underemployment abroad are not an adequate deterrent because they are motivated less by acquired gains than by belief in the probability of gains, by the quest for gains. Often the disavowal of disconfirming evidence is nonconscious and expressed in verbal reports that reveal an illogical rationale. One migrant was inspired to yola travel by a friend’s experiences, even though those experiences were failures: “He tried coming here several times, but they always caught him, and it was through him that I decided to come.” Delgadino revealed a similar override of contrary evidence, here along the contours of hope: “Despite the motor stalling a lot, we thought we were going to arrive.”10

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Many prospective migrants are caught in the crossfire of a double discourse: encouragement on one side (implicitly by cultural precedent and explicitly from recruiters and co-­traveling friends) and discouragement on the other (from family members who fear the migrant’s death at sea). Once a migrant has made the decision, however, and especially after the smuggling fee has been paid, objections to yola travel are generally dismissed. Migrants who anticipate the objection of family members often depart in secret, without informing anyone who might object. They do this for two reasons: first, simply to evade the objection and, depending on the strength of the relation, the possible prevention of their migration; and second, to spare the nervous spouse or relative the agony of worrying, particularly if the journey is prolonged by delays or malfunctions. If the migrant dies at sea, however, the intended kindness results in greater agony. Uninformed families are doubly deprived of closure because they never had the opportunity to affirm their love and say goodbye and because the bodies of capsized yola victims are rarely recovered. Mothers and spouses learn of the deaths by deducing the meaning of an absence or by hearing the story from a friend or surviving passenger. Some relatives search among survivors at hospitals after broadcasts of yola tragedies.11 Paradoxical Values In the culture that informs Dominican migration there is constant tension between adherence to principles and, simultaneously, actions that violate these principles. No one seems uncomfortable with the contradiction. On the one hand people subscribe to and defend a principle, and on the other they do not obey the principle or conform to its proscribed behavior. This phenomenon is reminiscent of George Orwell’s “doublethink” (the simultaneous acceptance of two mutually contradictory beliefs) and of the double thinking that is sometimes regarded as an attribute of Dominican character: “People express in public something different from what they truly feel.”12 In my experience, however, the discrepancy is not between word and word but rather between word and deed. My informants work the free play of abstract duty where it meets their real-­world ability to comply. They abide by social mandates in theory but in practice do the best they can. They accept the shortcomings as their personal failures but, at once, divert the blame to reasons beyond their control.

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In child support, for example, Dominican men readily acknowledge that they have the responsibility to support their children. Many poor fathers do not comply but nevertheless, despite nonpayment, believe that they do. There is a subjunctive quality to this cognition because what should be done is represented as what is done, or would be, if only . . . These fathers exalt the principle of child support with a solemn pride, like the conviction of someone making an oath, but then exonerate themselves with counterfactual thinking: “If I had a job”; “If they lived with me”; “If they really needed it.” The responsibility is fulfilled in the abstract but rarely translates to payment. The deadbeat fathers also find consolation in the commonality of dereliction in child support, which routinizes their transgression. The incongruity of a held belief and its practical application gains multiple expressions in the culture around migration. Men migrate by yola and promise to call for their wives, but, as Amado put it, “that almost never happens.” Altagracia’s unemployed husband cannot send remittances, but nevertheless the purpose of his migration is “to help us live better.” The idea of communal solidarity and mutual help—“Anyone here will do you a favor,” as Chicho put it—is generally regarded as an attribute of Dominican society, but this principle, too, is stronger in theory than in practice. Moreno explained that people defend their own interests because everyone is poor and trying to survive: “If you didn’t earn anything [today], you go home to be hungry.” There is solidarity within means—a handful of mangos from one’s tree, for example—and among people (such as close family) with strong affective bonds, but otherwise boundaries must be defined so that the poverty of others does not overwhelm one’s own poverty.13 The single most prominent rationale for yola migration is to improve the future for the next generation, which migrants often express as “a future for my children” or “to educate my children.” As explained by teachers and administrators in a village school on the Samaná Peninsula, the migrants (and their parents) have little education and consequently have struggled economically their entire lives. They want more for their children, and they view education as a means for their children’s advancement by becoming professionals—architects, doctors, engineers, lawyers—and thereby assuring a stable and lucrative future. The parents desire this success primarily for the benefit of their children but also for support of the parents in their old age. The goal of building a future for one’s children motivates migrants,

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but beyond that it gives them a sense of purpose and abnegation (the migrants make the sacrifice) that helps them to face dangers, to persevere, and to tolerate the frustration of slow advancement. As José put it, he did not want his family to suffer hardships; he was going to avoid that by migrating. Santiago knew that he could not support his family with a Dominican income and that his children would have to drop out of school and go to work. Rather than sacrificing their future for the family’s present need, and feeling duty-­bound by his sense of responsible paternity, Santiago took the risk on a yola. For other migrants, ostensible abnegation serves as a laudable pretext or as a socially admirable, pro forma rationale. People often explain their behavior not by providing their individual motives but by resorting “to a pool of culturally supplied explanations” that conventional wisdom associates with a given action. “A future for my children” or “to educate my children” are in these cases automatic responses; it is what one says when asked about migration.14 In other cases, the abnegation that motivates migration can yield to personal interests conducive to abandonment. Many men migrate with good intentions but then fall in love and stop remitting to their Dominican families. Others squander the money in clubs and bars because they cannot resist the good life that the illusion of migration promised them. Earning sufficiently to send remittances is an enormous burden; if one can let it go, if one’s conscience can process that abandonment, then one is suddenly freed of the self-­imposed austerity and poverty and obligation. The weight is lifted.15 There is a good measure of goal ambiguity: the responsible-­sounding motive of supporting one’s children—although people believe it when they say it—can be a pretext for just the opposite. The true goal (escaping burdensome family responsibility) remains unacknowledged even to oneself, as though the offense of abandonment could be softened by claiming an intent that upholds the principle one is violating. An action thus undermines the principle that justifies it. “Immediately upon arrival there,” as Gregorio put it, “they forget what they have here.” Living in a Prayer For many migrants, religious beliefs make the difference between boarding a yola and staying home.16 Motivated by desperation and facing possible death, migrants commend themselves to God’s protection. Faith

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overcomes fear, reinforces courage, alleviates stress, and enhances the capacity to cope with danger. The prevalence of prayer during yola trips, the frantic incantations in bad weather, and the carrying of prayers, rosaries, and sometimes Bibles all invoke supernatural protection. Stories of divine intervention at sea abound, and they are sometimes interpreted as endorsements of migration. Francisco’s yola was caught in a storm, God saved it, and Francisco understood this to mean that God was guiding his journey and would assist with resettlement and finding work. Santiago likewise credited his success to otherworldly protection—“If God helped me to arrive alive, it’s so my children could have a better life”—and in doing so implicitly imbued migration with a greater sense of meaning and obligation. Another migrant, Ramón, explained at length why he had sworn off yola trips forever, but near the end of the interview he made a curious comment: he would migrate again if God told him to. “How would God tell you?” I asked, and Ramón replied, “I’m sleeping and He tells me, ‘Go to Puerto Rico, it will go well for you.’ Then I could go.”17 “Some arrive, some don’t,” Moreno said. “It’s up to God.” This fatalism (without the negative connotations attributed to the word) is common among migrants. They recognize God’s power to take their lives at sea but subordinate this recognition to a happier presumption: “God wants me to live and arrive.” This motivating belief, together with the deferral of ultimate responsibility to God, lowers the need for competent actions such as preparation for safe passage and for success abroad. The locus of control shifts from the individual to God (as it does, in a lower scale, to captains), and the idea of preparation shifts with it from pragmatic to spiritual tasks. Migrants surrender to God or fate—whatever will happen will happen— but spiritual preparations improve the odds. Some appeal to the supernatural resources of Christianity and others to more obscure forces— some say the devil—through brujería, which denotes folk-­religious and magical practices.18 When Christianity is concerned, as Christian explained, “The first thing you have to do when you’re going to travel [by yola] is commend yourself to God. You say, ‘My God, help me to arrive alive because—look at my children, my wife, my mother, they all need me.’ So you commend yourself to God so that God gives you that strength.” During the trip itself, Christian and a group of other migrants prayed together twice during the voyage. Gregorio prayed the night before his voyage “so that nothing bad would happen to me, and thanks to God nothing bad happened. The only thing I lost was the money I invested.” When I asked if he prayed during

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the voyage, Gregorio made this endearingly honest observation: “I have always believed in God, but there are moments when one forgets everything.” He was so frightened on the yola, he said, that he could not think of anything but drowning and sharks.19 In Saúl’s case, divine intervention is more comprehensive. Saúl was born into extreme poverty and believed, as he put it, that “God would help me to leave” by yola. God protected him on several voyages, especially the last, when he was hanging onto an overturned yola for six days. The night before departure he dreamed that the boat overturned—he called it a revelation—and felt safer during the event itself for having experienced the trauma in advance. “It was God who saved me and pulled me out of there. Sometimes a wave would come, from here or there [he points], and I would say to myself: ‘You can have peace in the middle of a storm.’ It’s from a hymn” based on Mark 4:35–41. And Saúl said to his companion, Rolando, who was also hanging onto the yola, “Let’s have faith in God, because we are not going to die here. I said it to him with the authority that God had granted me—God granted me that authority—so that I could talk that way and encourage my companion. I have lived the spirit of God in my very flesh, and my companion has too” because God retrieved their beaten bodies from that wreckage. Rolando (who was interviewed separately) said, “I thought that my life had ended, but God gave me another chance.”20 Johnny used to be a thief, converted to an evangelical church, and believes that God saved him from drowning after capsize. Morena’s five voyages failed, but “God always helped me and accompanied me,” she said, notably when her yola was adrift for three days. On another trip, when the yola was about to sink, the Coast Guard arrived and saved the migrants. I asked if someone had called for help, and Morena replied, “No, God wanted us to be rescued.” Morena was subsequently going to try again—a captain had offered her a free trip—but she had a new boyfriend and decided to stay home. The declined yola voyage disappeared at sea and all of the passengers died. “That’s why I always said that God protected me in those voyages.” But Morena is protected, she explained, because she ritually prepares herself before each voyage. The diligence of these preparations is noteworthy in comparison to the indifference of most yola migrants to practical preparations (such as bringing food and water, investing in a life vest, and checking the weather). In addition to the grace of God, Morena beseeches the Virgin of Altagracia, is purified by ritual baths, and carries

Prayers like this one, to Santa Camisa, are carried by migrants on yola voyages.

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prayers to specialized folk saints who protect one from drowning and from law-­enforcement authorities. The baths and the prayers to folk saints bridge Morena’s essentially Catholic devotion to the darker side that many Dominicans consider diabolical. Generally a choice is made, either God or the devil, but as Morena illustrates one can hedge the bet by recourse to both options. The diabolical option is ministered by brujos, who are mediators to otherworldly powers not recognized by institutional Christianity. Catholics and Protestants generally disapprove of these practices; “There’s no better protection than God’s,” Saúl said. The prayers to folk saints, either printed or handwritten, are sold in religious stores and by brujos at modest prices. The migrant memorizes the text in advance, then folds the paper, wraps it in a plastic bag to protect it on the voyage, and carries it in a pocket or elsewhere on his or her body. Saint Michael the Archangel (a canonized saint adapted to folk uses) and Saint Camisa are often mentioned. Some migrants carry resguardos (protective amulets) instead of or in addition to prayers.21 Whether the source is God or the devil, not everyone believes in supernatural protection and even among believers there is a measure of hypocrisy. No one remembers God when the water is calm, Moreno said, but there is an outpouring of faith in rough seas. Delgadino had an open mind and might have believed in supernatural protection, but he abandoned the idea after a reality test on one of his voyages. “I don’t believe in that,” he said. “The third time that I went to Puerto Rico there was a person who brought a boiled egg.” The egg, which the migrant had gotten from a brujo, was accompanied by an image of Saint Michael. The purpose was to calm the ocean, but “on that trip we had to turn back because the ocean got really rough.” On another voyage, when capsize seemed inevitable in rough seas, a terrified, sobbing passenger turned to Raúl (like Saúl to his companion) and said, “Have faith, God is not going to let us die in this horrible ocean, because we are good people.” The man explained that he had been a good son, a good husband, and a good father and that God would not permit such a meaningless death. Raúl had been an evangelical Christian in his youth, but he had lost the faith prior to migration, was inclined to a pragmatic realism, and consequently was unprotected by otherworldly beliefs. “We were both in the same situation,” Raúl remembered, “but he had his faith.” Raúl had nothing but a hard and horrible reality enforced by rea-

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son: “God has nothing to do with this mess” because migrants drown all the time, and some of them must be good people too. Religious beliefs can sometimes prevent migration rather than facilitating it. Sergio is not interested in yola migration because he regards it as a sin comparable to suicide. God gave you life, he explained, and you have no right to risk it recklessly. Sonia, along the same lines, said she would not migrate because God gave her life, “and I have to take care of it.” Marta, who like Sergio is an evangelical, interpreted scripture in a manner that dissuades migration, or makes it unnecessary. We are currently in the end times, Marta said, when “many will go back and forth,” following Daniel 12:4. She understands the passage to signal an imminent freedom of movement between the Dominican Republic and the United States, so rather than boarding another yola she awaits the prophecy’s fulfillment. Migrants who believe in supernatural protection are empowered by an illusion of control; if the illusion turns out to be true, that is even better. The actual control a migrant has over a yola voyage is minimal or nonexistent, but faith highly enhances one’s perceived control, meaning “the judgment that one has the means to obtain desired outcomes and to avoid undesirable ones.” Perceived control is the sense “that one can influence potential outcomes,” and migrants, having few other resources, exert that influence supernaturally. Even if God does not accompany the migrant on the yola, the belief in itself is empowering. Perceived control has psychological benefits conducive to migration—primarily overcoming fear through a sense of invulnerability—but those benefits are also liabilities because they expose the faithful to life-­threatening risks.22 Religious beliefs also sanitize the illegality of migration. Beliefs help people “to expand their options, to wiggle from strict prescriptions of behavior, or to imagine themselves beyond what they are told they must do or think or feel.” Migration is endowed with a moral structure and meaning endorsed by God. Far from a crime, it is an act of abnegation and Christian self-­fulfillment (similar to the principles of liberation theology) by which impoverished, marginalized people with little access to institutional remedies deploy the grace of God to change their social situations. One by one, boat by boat, the injustice of the social order is remedied.23 Along these lines the Catholic Church recognizes migration as a fundamental human right. “When persons cannot find employment in their country of origin to support themselves and their families, they have a right to find work elsewhere in order to survive. Sovereign nations should provide ways to accommodate this right.” The Second Vatican Council

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wrote, “Justice and equity also require that the mobility which is needed for economic progress is so arranged that the lives of individuals and their families are not uncertain or unsettled.” Immigrant workers should not be exploited by wage discrimination, and “everyone, especially public authorities, ought to consider them not just as mere instruments of production but as persons, and should help them to bring their families to join them and find suitable accommodation, and should encourage their insertion into the social life of the people or region receiving them.” The council further recognized that employment structured “in a manner harmful to individual workers” is “unjust and inhuman” and that human dignity requires that labor “be rewarded in such a way as to provide people with the capacity to cultivate in a worthy manner a material, social, cultural, and religious life for themselves and their dependents.”24 Rumors, myths, and nonreligious beliefs also affect migrant motivation. News reports, presidential speeches, changes of administrations, and other occurrences relative to U.S. immigration policy circulate in multiple and multiply misunderstood versions that are interpreted, revised, and redirected toward desired conclusions. The conclusions can go either way. For some migrants, pending immigration reform is a catalyst because they mistakenly presume that an amnesty would apply to them, too, if only they were to arrive in time. For others, the same pending reform signals the imminent possibility of traveling with a visa, so undocumented migration is deferred.25 Myths frequently emerge to explain lost yolas and alleviate fear, in part because failure has “more attributional ambiguity than success.” Morena expressed the concern of many migrants when she related that yolas are disappearing at sea “and there’s no explanation.” No one understands what is happening, “and that’s one of the reasons why trips have been cancelled.” Sonia made a similar point: “Ten years ago there wasn’t as much danger as now. People used to go and arrive just fine. But not any more. People go and drown, they’re lost.” She then specified a detail that has caused particular confusion and concern: in the past when trips were lost at least something was found—corpses, wreckage, gas tanks—but now there is simply mysterious disappearance of everything.26 Theories began to circulate more actively after two yolas from the Samaná Peninsula were lost at sea in rapid succession. Marta and Sergio thought corrupt smugglers, in partnership with the Dominican navy, were intentionally sinking yolas in order to steal smuggling fees without having to transport the migrants to Puerto Rico. The theory is based in

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part on rumors regarding captains who turn up alive after failed voyages on which all passengers die. These rumors, in turn, are derived partially from lies that migrants tell the Coast Guard to protect captains—“He was picked up by another boat”—and that then appear in news accounts as truths. At first I thought Marta and Sergio’s theory was an idiosyncratic invention, but later I heard versions of the same myth from other sources. When I followed up with Morena, she said, “They put something in the water, and it detects yolas from under the water; it’s watching them.” Franklin, among others, specified the underwater object: “People are saying now that there’s a submarine.” When I asked Amado why there were fewer voyages, he responded like others—due to fear caused by the mysterious disappearances—but thought the migrants were being attacked from above. He conjectured that airplanes were bombing the yolas by dropping sandbags. While these theories perhaps miss the mark in explaining lost yolas, they make apparent the profound vulnerability felt by migrants and the power of fear as a deterrent. Marta and Sergio implicate corrupt smugglers and the navy in mass murder for profit, and by doing so they consolidate two predominant migrant fears—being swindled and dying at sea—into a single explanation. If the yolas are lost to the machinations of criminals rather than to the turbulence of the ocean, then migrants who travel with trustworthy smugglers are safe. The danger is transferred from the ocean (which cannot be avoided) to specific culprits (who can be avoided). The theory thus expresses and at once neutralizes two principal dangers. Migrants envision a world in which tragedy has explanations, misfortune is not random, and there is a discernible relation between proper behavior and positive outcomes. If one chooses the right captain, travels on a viaje seguro, and commends oneself to God, then a safe arrival is more or less assured. “We assume that we can control what happens to us by engaging in the ‘right’ behaviors” that give us a sense of agency and invulnerability. As migrants prepare for voyages and again in crises at sea, an internal dialogue argues: “If bad things happen, they happen to people who acted improperly or are bad people. I am a good person and I do the right things, so I’m protected. Bad things can’t happen to me.”27

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Subjective Motivation Forced Redundancy My informants self-­identify collectively as poor people and often begin their responses to questions with the phrase nosotros los pobres (we poor people). Their attitudes toward poverty, however, are varied. Sonia approaches poverty with fatalistic acceptance combined with a strong-­ willed determination to get ahead: “I’m one of the people who if God made me poor, I’m going to stay that way. Because He knows why he does things. I’m going to work, I’m going to make an effort working here, and if God wants to give me something he will give it to me.” Her husband adapts that diligence to migrant work in Puerto Rico, and together, presuming God’s blessing, they struggle for advancement within the poverty to which they feel destined. Others relax happily into the confines of their fate, succumb to a defeatist mope, or move back and forth along this continuum. The happy version of resigned content is well captured by the Spanish phrase jodido pero contento (fucked but happy). Many others, notably youth, are debilitated by chronic boredom despite the festive façade of street life. They hang around in sun-­drunk groups, listless and defeated, and stuck somewhere between needing a dream and trying to unload a dream (such as migration) that is unrealizable. The days are monotonous, there is little sense of future, life is directionless, and there is nowhere to go. Dignity, self-­respect, self-­fulfillment, and ambition are slowly depleted by despair, frustration, and futility. Similar feelings demoralize family providers who are exhausted by the pointlessness of their daily struggles for subsistence. “Sometimes you say to yourself,” Rubén explained, “‘My God, so much struggling for nothing. I work and I work and I don’t have anything.’” As he spoke I remembered reactions to the song “Me olvidé de vivir” (I Forgot to Live) when it plays in guaguas. Many passengers assume soulful, nostalgic faces as they sing along—“From so many failures, from so many attempts”—and then repeat the chorus, “I forgot to live, I forgot to live,” with distant gazes hardly distracted when the van stops to cram in more passengers.28 Variations of an implicit decision—to struggle against poverty or to settle into it—are played out on the streets of neighborhoods and villages. Settling into poverty is sometimes perceived as defeat (after failed migration, for example) but more often is an acceptance of one’s inevitable,

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even God-­appointed station in life—nosotros los pobres—and an ownership of this identity and reality. Those who struggle rather than (or before) acquiescing to poverty might reject such inevitability but not necessarily: ultimately the struggle is not so much against poverty as within it. The goal for most poor Dominicans, even those who migrate, is not to climb socially but rather to live more comfortably and less precariously in the ambience in which they were born. Success within that ambience requires ingenuity, perseverance, a measure of luck, and a lowered threshold of what constitutes success. Chencho is a good example: while dozens of motoconchos hang out waiting on corners, Chencho almost always has a passenger. He will never get rich, but his family of five lives comfortably by local standards and Chencho is proud of his accomplishment. His pride underscores the nonmonetary values of employment. “Work is not simply a way to make a living and support one’s family. It also constitutes the framework for daily behavior and patterns of interaction because of the disciplines and regularities it imposes.”29 Unemployment, conversely, deprives one of this structure and coherence, together with the sense of meaning and self-­fulfillment that many people derive from work. One young motoconcho told me he worked all day but made no money. When I asked him why he kept doing it, he replied that working is important, that one cannot just do nothing. Work gives him an identity and his life a purpose, however absurdly in the absence of income. He is protesting an affront to his sense of viability and responsibility. When anyone asks, he says, “I’m a motoconcho.” Earnings are—at least temporarily—incidental to these gains, but his poverty is nevertheless perpetuated. Others relax into the comfortable inaction that a lack of opportunity affords. The implied discourse is: this is my fate, and it requires nothing of me. There is nothing to be done because everything is impossible, and consequently one resigns to a blind drift, to apathy and laziness, to an erosion of ambition, motivation, and responsibility. A low-­stress sense of well-­being in the moment is betrayed by long-­term unease. Boredom and frustration maintain a balance with pro forma excuses—“There’s no work”—that free one to relax into the luxury of misfortune.30 There is an extraordinary amount of hanging around, a bored inertia to which young people assimilate. Caridad lives with her three teenage children in a rented apartment that she cannot afford. Her despair, loneliness, and desperation are almost palpable. She gave the impression of

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Caridad’s apartment

being trapped in a house, a life, and an irresolvable situation but without having resigned to the misery of that fate, even after three failed migration attempts. The children are not attending school, and when I asked why not, she responded, “Because of my economic situation.” So what are they doing, if they’re not in school? “They’re here with me, in the house.” One of the daughters, the fifteen-­year-­old, was pregnant. A resistance to this culture of poverty and its “misery of vague uneasiness” is at the crux of migrant decision making. Once domestic advancement is perceived as unviable and is discarded, poor Dominicans are left with two options: acquiesce to inescapable poverty or take their chances on a yola. Those who are most motivated, who are unwilling to succumb, are attracted to migration: “Vámonos,” as they say, “aquí no hay nada” (Let’s go—there’s nothing here).31 The unpaid motoconcho illustrates by analogy the nonmonetary benefits of choosing migration. Sleepy monotony is suddenly energized by purpose, direction, and hope. The drift of unemployment is structured by a goal and by the small daily successes—choosing a captain, saving some money, finding a contact abroad—that divest one of the accumulated sense of uselessness and contribute to one’s self-­efficacy and self-­

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actualization. Yola migration is also life-­threatening, so the enterprise is adrenalized by challenge and risk, an all-­or-­nothing commitment, a sense of destiny, and, for some, the excitement of adventure. All of these transient gains accrue to migrants even if their efforts fail, and migration is thus a potential escape from poverty but also from the psychological numbness that poverty induces. Rubén’s ambivalence toward migration captures a dilemma experienced by many migrants: relaxation into the comfort zone of familiarity on the one hand and self-­actualization through challenge and risk on the other. During our first meeting Rubén described his hardships abroad and said he would never migrate again. The overall impression was negative. Later, during our third meeting, the negative impression had not changed, but Rubén added that his experiences abroad, despite the hardships, were the best of his life. This was something he had accomplished, a part of him and his past, a dimension of his identity, and a parenthetical digression from the tedium of everyday work for sustenance. (It reminded me of the retrospective valuation of drafted military service and of the Peace Corps slogan, “The hardest job you will ever love.”) In this perspective, migration is a means “of gaining control over one’s own destiny,” of resisting passive acceptance of an imposed life and identity. For many migrants it is important to benefit socially from others’ recognition of the gains, to self-­actualize in the context of external approval. As one yola migrant put it, “I did it for me, so people won’t see me as a failure.” For me, but me in the eyes of others. “I’m going to Puerto Rico,” as Altagracia summarized some migrants’ motivation, so “I can say I’m there.”32 Risk Tolerance Individual dispositions regarding fear, prudence, and tolerance of (or attraction to) risk contribute to decisions to migrate. Some yola migrants walk away, even after paying, when they see gross overcrowding, questionable engine power, or yolas that creak and wobble as they are loaded at the beach. Others in the same situation cram themselves on before their money and the opportunity are lost. The details—one engine, bad boat, no compass—are insignificant in comparison with being left behind. Later, explained Raúl, “they confront the reality of the ocean,” where the range of dispositions is again dramatized. When surveillance aircraft fly above yolas, some passengers crouch or lie on the floor with the hope of passing undetected, while others, traumatized by the journey, wave their hands

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and scream. The latter are ready to forgo their dreams in exchange for getting out alive.33 Migrants with high risk tolerance are not deterred by near-­death experiences. Alejandro spent seven days adrift at sea and was terrified by the ordeal—“All you think about is death”—but nevertheless made two subsequent (and unsuccessful) attempts to reach Puerto Rico. Others, like Gregorio, are overwhelmed by the ordeal of yola migration even when their lives are not in imminent danger. In 2004 Gregorio was one of the seventeen migrants on a small fiberglass fishing boat heading for Puerto Rico. The experience was traumatic for him from the beginning: “Before leaving, you have to suffer through a lot—hiding from authorities, walking in the woods, going hungry.” Gregorio spent two weeks in the monte with no shelter and little food: “Supposedly the navy knew about the trip, so we had to stay hidden.” Gregorio, like the other passengers, had already paid for the trip and could not leave without forfeiting his investment. Once the boat was at sea, matters got worse for Gregorio. Even in mildly choppy waters he was panicked, and people were talking about sharks. “I would have done anything to go back,” Gregorio thought, but it was pointless even to express his fear because “my word was worth nothing there.” In the end, Gregorio was captured by Border Patrol on a Puerto Rican beach and lost his money after suffering through the voyage. “I’ll never do it again,” Gregorio said, with apparent anxiety stirred even by his recollections. He is resigned now to accepting gratefully “whatever God gives me here.” For many Dominicans, including some whose husbands are captains, the fear of death at sea is so predominant that it precludes even considering migration. Others are ambivalent; the will to migrate negotiates with fear until one or the other prevails. “I wanted to and didn’t want to,” Víctor said, “for fear of the crossing.” Ramona, the widow of a yola passenger who died at sea in 2009, well exemplifies ambivalence. She is opposed to yola travel because of the dangers, but she understands that for many people—including herself—necessity can override the danger. Miguelina made that explicit: “I couldn’t be afraid, because I wanted to get on that yola.” Moreno generalized this view by explaining that people who have options do not risk yola travel; others get over their fear because they have no choice. And Franklin, for his part, clarified that many people (like Gregorio) never actually overcome fear—they just travel terrified. Roberto explained that migrants must enter a positive mindset in order to overcome fear and travel by yola. This is done, Amado said, by distanc-

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ing the dangers—drowning, interdiction—and focusing on the goal of arriving. Once a commitment is made, the dangers are pushed out of one’s mind, and this imbues some migrants (like surrender to God’s will) with a sense of invulnerability. “One never thinks things are going to go wrong. One always thinks, ‘If somebody else can make it, why not me?’”34 Experience and familiarity alleviate fear as well. Delgadino has traveled six or seven times to Puerto Rico and is now desensitized because the dangers have become routine: “It’s like going from here to Nagua on a motorbike, because a guagua can crash into me, or a minibus, or a truck.” His repeated exposure to the dangers has resulted in a “lowered estimation of risk,” a “redefinition of what is acceptable,” and an overestimation of perceived control. Given the high percentage of migrants who make multiple attempts, experience is a significant facilitating factor for each new voyage.35 Migrant peer groups contribute further to the alleviation of fear. “Individuals may take more risks, evaluate risky behavior more positively, and make more risky decisions when they are with their peers than when they are by themselves.” And, recalling that many migrants are young males, “relative to adults, adolescents are more susceptible to the influence of their peers in risky situations.”36 “I was afraid that I’d drown, that a shark would eat me,” José said, but his friends alleviated these fears and convinced him that the voyage would be safe. Christian gave an example of the discourse that friends use to encourage one another: “Let’s go. Look for the money to give to the captain so he’ll take us because there’s nothing here. Tell your father to get you five thousand pesos so we can go because there’s nothing here.” When I asked him what one would say specifically to alleviate fear, he focused on need rather than danger: “Let’s go there, there, there, let’s go, look at how your family is, your mother, your wife, look, there’s nothing here, let’s go.” The peer group itself is situated within a culture of migration, which provides implicit incentive and a context for encouragement. The sense of belonging to a group also provides for the diffusion of fear and responsibility. Miguelina, caught in bad weather, found relief in common destiny: “At first I was afraid, but I said, ‘OK, there are 121 of us. If we go [die], we all go.’” Altagracia and many others described how migrants surrender to their fate once they have committed to yola travel: “If I arrive, I arrive; if I don’t arrive, I don’t arrive; if I drown, I drown.” This abandon is predisposed by

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deprivation but also by routinization of yola trips and of death at sea. At a certain point fear, together with other inhibitors, is moot: you get on the boat, come what may. The degree of risk that one is willing to face is relative to how strongly one feels about migration; “resolve is an emotion.” Many migrants make a conscious decision to reach Puerto Rico or die trying. As Sonia put it, “A lot of people do it and say, ‘OK, everyone dies anyway. I’ll survive or I’ll die; one or the other. But I’m going in search of something.”37 Hope Illusions are generally regarded negatively as shared deceptions, but they can be beneficial to the realization of dreams and goals. Positive illusions such as an optimistic view of the future, an inflated self-­perception, and an exaggerated sense of control “typically lead to higher motivation, greater persistence at tasks, more effective performance, and, ultimately, greater success.”38 The same is true of hope: it is “causally efficacious,” the “projective dimension of human agency,” and an “imaginative engagement of the future.” Particularly in contexts of despair and defeat, hope “frees you from the bleakness of beliefs that would reduce you to numbed inaction” and “gives you firm and friendly coordinates in an uncertain and uncompanionable world. To have hope is to have something we might describe as cognitive resolve.” These attributes of hope inspire confidence in task selection and completion, including the pursuit of ideas or projects that one otherwise might avoid. Hope is goal-­directed cognition, a reinterpretation of the present in the perspective of a better, imagined future. It summons the energy, determination, and strategy to bridge from one to the other.39 The implications insofar as migration is concerned are apparent. Long before they commit to a voyage, migrants are exposed to slow seduction by the illusion of prosperity abroad. The illusion kindles hope and, in turn, motivation, both of which are fueled generally by a culture of migration and specifically by the selective use of precedents (modeling one’s dream on the success of a known migrant, for example). The cultural context is critical: an individual illusion (“I’m going to take my boat across the ocean and get rich abroad”) seems a delusion, but a collective illusion broadens one’s horizons and endows one’s dreams with precedents,

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coherence, and means of implementation. “The formation of projects is always an interactive, culturally embedded process by which social actors negotiate their paths toward the future.”40 The sales pitch of recruiters solidifies a migrant’s emotional commitment by further instilling hope (which, in a way, is part of what they are selling). Once payment is made, remorse and retreat are unviable. The numbness of nothing to do is revitalized and mobilized for concerted effort toward realization of the goal, and an improved self-­perception— from a sleepy subaltern to master of one’s fate—affords increasing levels of agency and energy. The illusions of control and invulnerability—whether consequences of bravado, experience, or faith—alleviate fears (of drowning, of living abroad, of continuing to the mainland) that otherwise might impede one’s pursuit of a goal. And hope, as a future-­oriented form of resolve, keeps the dream in focus and facilitates perseverance after failure. All of these aspects of hope and positive illusions strengthen one’s propensity and capacity to migrate. On the downside, however, hopeful thinking bends evidence to suit its designs, thereby exposing one to dangers that can be fatal.41 Flight Some migrants are motivated not as much by an attraction to where they are going as by a need to leave where they are. Migration as flight from the Dominican Republic seeks a clean break and new beginning. Yola migrants flee debt, child support, abuse and neglect, troubled relationships, unbearable homes, and a range of other problems. Emilio summarized the situation, concluding with the poverty that is always in the background: “There are women who have problems with their husbands, there are men who have problems with their wives, there are people who owe money, there are people who kill, there are people who have problems with their mother and don’t want to stay home, and there are people who have children and are in economic crisis.” Many migrants are not fleeing a specific problem as much as an accumulation that seems irresolvable. Migrants in flight are on one-­way escapes, and they often leave in secret to avoid the possibility that a vested interest—a victim, a vengeful ex-­ spouse, a creditor—might report their departure or otherwise try to detain them. Flight from many of the same problems, such as debt, imminent arrest, and domestic violence, likewise motivates return migration back to the Dominican Republic.42

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Gender relations in the couple, the home, and the community are a predominant factor in many female migration decisions. These migrations are “a response to a certain lack of well-­being in the couple or the home (lack of freedom, an overload of work), to violence (of gender or intergenerational), or to a desire to experience a society with other cultural codes and to escape the social control imposed by the original society.” Domestic disintegration, which is often cited as a consequence of migration, is in this perspective also a cause of migration.43 In some cases migration is motivated by flight from arrest warrants or anticipated criminal charges. This often becomes evident when yolas encounter bad weather or engine problems and captains decide to turn back. Fugitives cannot turn back and sometimes manifest a reckless coercion that obliges other passengers to take the risk with them. (It is for this reason, in part, that smugglers no longer permit passengers to carry weapons.) As Orlando put it, some people (and he was one of these people) prefer death to return. Compulsion Many migrants describe yola travel as an addiction (vicio, adicción): once one makes the commitment, a compulsion drives the relentless quest forward. This is particularly true of migrants who are repatriated and deported or whose yola voyages fail due to bad weather, engine trouble, interdiction, or swindle. Salvador tried four times before he finally entered Puerto Rico successfully, and then he returned home disillusioned after six months of underemployment. Despite the bad experience, he tried again a few months later and this time drifted at sea for four days, not sure if he would live or die. “It’s like a drug,” Salvador said, “like someone who needs a drink or a cigarette.” The reality he had experienced in Puerto Rico contradicted the illusion that motivated him, but he was nevertheless compelled to keep trying. The illusion overpowers the evidence that undermines it. As Milagros put it, “When people get those trips in their heads, all they say is ‘I want to go, I want to go, I want to go,’ and that’s like an addiction.” Morena also thought migrant compulsion was analogous to an addiction. “That happened to me. It’s like a drug. It’s exactly the same. The more you board yolas and the less you arrive, the more quickly you want to board again.” The boat used for one of her trips was stolen, and Morena, with her usual insight, realized that she was also “like a drug addict” in

152 Undocumented Dominican Migration Francisco: “All you want is to get there.”

her attitude toward that theft. “I didn’t care if they stole another and another so I could travel again.” Ramona called yola travel an “obsession,” and Víctor elaborated: “It’s a mental obsession. You don’t believe anyone who is there, you don’t believe the news, you just believe in yourself.” Border enforcement cannot deter the resultant compulsion—“If they catch me or don’t catch me, I’m going to try to go,” Valdesio said. Francisco explained how this compulsion is stronger even than the deterrent effect of drownings: “You don’t think about some person who was lost. All you want is to get there. You don’t think about anything, only ‘I want to get there, I want to get there.’ It’s like a mental thing, it gets stuck in your head. That’s all you think. It doesn’t matter if you drown, if you don’t drown, you just want to get there.” A gambling addiction is perhaps the compulsion that is most analogous to yola travel. Migrants put everything they have (and have borrowed) on the table. They do so anticipating a payoff worthy of the risk. “They

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sell their house because they think they’re going to get a better house— two houses—but they wind up with no house,” Delio said. Futures are gambled with the expectation of jackpot compensations, but when the trips fail and the dreams crash, migrants return to financial situations worse than those they had fled. Debt backs up against unemployment. The stakes get higher. And the only redemption is to try again because giving up ratifies the failure.44 Multiple attempts become routine because arrival on the first try is improbable. Perseverance is part of the package; migrants who give up after a first failure have, in effect, wasted their investment. The fruits are in the follow-­up. When you are poor, Carlos said, you have to find a way out without getting discouraged. “Try, try, try, until you achieve it. Despite the risks, despite the hardships.” Once migrants lose their house and have nothing to come home to, they are willing to do anything except give up. Some people also adapt to the rush and stay in the game for the thrill. Others get lost in transit, neither here nor there, between an abandoned past and a foreclosed future.45 In its simplest form, migrant compulsion is an effort to recuperate a lifestyle to which one has been exposed or has become accustomed. Life abroad is more comfortable, Moreno explained, and when migrants are repatriated—“back here with nothing, fishing again”—they long for the lost comforts. Migrants mention basic amenities (bathrooms, reliable power) as much as status-­loaded consumer goods (jewelry, cars). The greater one’s adjustment to the amenities, the more difficult one’s readjustment to their loss. The readjustment is particularly difficult when the return home—by deportation, for example—is against one’s will. “You get used to life there and want to stay,” Julio said.46 A similar reorientation occurs prior to departure when migration is factored into one’s future. The importance of former plans dissipates when the new, radical, transformative opportunity of migration is introduced and takes precedence. A possible self interrupts the current self-­concept and motivates a desire for change. Betty was establishing a life for herself and her daughter: she had a job in a shoe factory, plans to continue education toward a career, and the aspiration to build a house. When the possibility of migrating became a reality, however, her mindset shifted—“You don’t think the same way”—and her original priorities yielded to greater prospects abroad: “If I don’t drown, it’s most probable that I’m going to live better.” The matter-­of-­fact “if” clause and the uncertain main clause nevertheless underscore the contingency of that projected future.47

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Betty eventually became a U.S. citizen and built a new life abroad, but migrants who are less successful must return to the past they have abandoned. Their Dominican lives and plans, however happily and proudly they were once pursued, are decathected and no longer seem viable means of self-­fulfillment. A projected or imagined self—abroad, earning money, successful—enters into unfair dialogue with a real self that is broke, jobless, and hopeless. Compulsive migrants strive to transform the latter into the former, to recuperate a dream lost at sea or on a beach or in handcuffs. Their ambition and motivation are flight from an unbearable self-­identity toward an ideal that still seems within reach. Motivation is especially high among Dominicans who have spent much of their lives in the United States and are then deported. Even lawful permanent residents (green-­card holders) are subject to deportation under the unforgiving laws passed in 1996. These laws mandate the deportation of immigrants who commit an aggravated felony at any time after their admission into the United States. The term “aggravated felony” suggests ominously ruthless criminality but encompasses offenses as minor as two counts of shoplifting and immigration offenses such as using a fraudulent document for employment purposes or to gain entry into the United States. The catalog of offenses is strikingly incoherent in content and organization and “appears to be nothing more than a laundry list of serious-­sounding offenses that Congress cobbled together and enacted under the banner of cracking down on illegal immigration.”48 Because the 1996 laws are retroactive, “a criminal offense committed in the 1980s that did not trigger deportation at that time can now render a non-­citizen deportable, even if the non-­citizen served a prison sentence, successfully completed all terms of probation, and has since lived, worked, and raised a family in a community without ever running into trouble with the law again.” Appeals are not permitted, and those who are deported are permanently barred from reentering the United States. Deportation thus results in the division of families, including those with American-­citizen children.49 Gustavo arrived in the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was eight and was deported when he was twenty-­two. He was a lawful permanent resident, convicted on drug charges, and removed under the 1996 laws. With anger for what he viewed as an injustice, Gustavo explained that his life was American—“I went to school here. My mom, my dad, all my brothers live here”—and that he was being deported “to a place where I’m a stranger” and about which he knew nothing. The

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deportation separated Gustavo from his three children, and he planned to return illegally as soon as possible: “I have to find my way back”; “I have no choice.”50 Many other deportees likewise seek return to the United States. Upon arrival to the Dominican Republic, as Jamel put it, “all you want to do is leave again.” Some were convicted of minor offenses and others of serious felonies; the great majority of the crimes are immigration- or drug-­ related. The lives, livelihoods, families, and friends of deportees are in U.S. cities; some own homes or businesses, and most have the financial resources to arrange for boat transport or to buy fraudulent documents for air travel. Many are caught and deported repeatedly and at multiple borders. Deportees are highly compulsive for all of the general reasons but also because of psychological reactance: “When any given freedom is threatened or eliminated, the person will be motivated to regain that freedom.”51 Through perseverance one endeavors to undo the defeat. Separation Emotions The high cost of migration, the hardship of the voyage, and the goal of advancement provide high incentive for a migrant to remain abroad, but these practicalities are no match for jealousy. Among men in long-­ distance relationships, the principal fear is infidelity and return migration is sometimes motivated by the agonizing, obsessive suspicion (sometimes visualized in mental film clips) that the spouse is making love to someone else. Amado, who was one of these men, used the phrase that typically summarizes this fear: “I didn’t know who she was with.” He left a job in construction, bought a transportation letter, and went home to find out.52 Women often are more tolerant of infidelity but fear permanent loss of the spouse. Those who have husbands or consensual partners in Puerto Rico are highly predisposed to yola migration in general but particularly when motivated by this fear. After her husband moved in with another woman, one wife mobilized to get him back. The couple had five children together. “I felt desperate,” she said, and compelled “to make a decision in order to save my home.” She applied for a visa, was refused, and resolved to travel undocumented. “Taking a yola is terrible, it’s the hardest thing that someone can live through. You risk your life 100 per cent.” The wife was captured upon arrival in Rincón and spent a few months in detention, during which the family’s pig business fell apart and the money her

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husband had sent for the children was squandered by relatives. “All I had left was the little house but I decided to keep on struggling. Almost immediately I decided that I had to take another yola.” The woman thus put everything into play in order to “reunite with my husband and recuperate my home, my marriage, and the education of my children,” but the marriage nevertheless ended in divorce. The husband legalized his status through subsequent marriage and then sponsored visas for the children.53 Less dramatic than jealousy but more prominent is simple loneliness and longing for loved ones. As Rubén summarized it, “If you have a commitment here, you don’t feel well there.” In theory the family is willing to separate in order to advance economically, but in practice one or both of the spouses suffers the consequences in terms of love, bonding, and family stability. The benefits of a migrant’s presence in the family is subordinated to economic benefits, but then the reality of the absence becomes unbearable. Migration solves—or is an attempt to solve—one problem but in doing so creates others. The family is saved and broken up by the same solution, and, stuck in that paradox, the migrant’s homesickness from abroad is complemented by the family’s longing at home.54 Some psychologists describe these emotions as a form of mutual mourning, but with an “ambiguous loss” because recuperation of the absent person is anticipated. In the past, when border enforcement was less intense, undocumented migrants in Puerto Rico had more freedom of movement and could periodically return for visits. Now, unable to visit or to bring their families to Puerto Rico, migrants experience loneliness, sadness, regret, and a sense of loss of control. Male migrants who return due to homesickness often remain with the family for a period but then migrate again. The pull is always toward the lost option.55 For female migrants, who are often single mothers, the most intense longing is generally for children left behind with relatives. “I left fourteen children,” Gladys said. Some were young and some were grown, “but my children.” Gladys suffered through a period of depression—crying, insomnia, longing for the children, reminiscing—until finally she adjusted to the long-­term reality of the separation. “It deeply affected my life and my mind.” Homesickness is aggravated by news from home, even good news. Happy calls from home can generate sadness and sometimes resentment for missing family events, holiday celebrations, and, in general, the warmth and fun of social events happening in one’s absence. Bad news is also troubling because one is powerless to resolve problems and fulfill

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obligations from abroad. A parent dies, a daughter gets pregnant, a wife falls ill and one is overcome by the wrenching anxiety caused by absence and impotence. Bad news is harder to process at a distance—one cannot be there for one’s family because one is away from one’s family. Migrants negotiate the intensity of the crisis, of their emotions, and of the pull from home to decide if they must abandon the purpose and goals of migration in order to return to their families. Ramona told the story of a child who was hit and killed by a car while his single mother was in Puerto Rico. The bereaved mother, knowing that return to Puerto Rico would be unlikely, was indecisive as to whether to attend the funeral. Finally she thought, “Rather than going back for the one who is dead, I should stay here and keep working for the three that are still alive.” Chicho arrived in Puerto Rico by yola in 2005 and was earning decent wages in construction. His family advanced economically and everything was going well for him as a migrant, but then his wife began to call frequently because some neighbors were harassing or mistreating his children (the specifics were unclear) and the wife felt vulnerable and endangered. Chicho became “very desperate about my family, I was going crazy, I had to return.” He had been in Puerto Rico almost five years and had more or less met his goal, so simple homesickness was also a factor in the decision to pack it in: “I also missed my mother, my father, the ambience—you miss everything when you’re far from your country.” Culture shock, rejection, and remorse also contribute to migration in both directions. Yola migrants arrive wet, broke, fatigued, malnourished, dehydrated, and off balance, and from that inauspicious beginning must survive and thrive in an alien ambience. Once they recover from the shock of entry and settle into daily life, they discover the magnitude of the challenge. The stress of undocumented life is less acute than that of a life-­threatening voyage, but it is more enduring and, for some, more intense. Potent stressors converge precisely at the moment when migrants are most vulnerable, having lost family and community support. The predominant stressors are solitude, fear, threats to identity, the possibility of deportation, the scarcity and nature of employment, the struggle for subsistence, failure to achieve objectives, and guilt for that failure. Adverse conditions and the emotions they generate can, conversely, be a source of motivation for migrants who rise to the challenge and strive to survive and prevail.56 Even in Puerto Rico, where there is a familiar Hispanic Caribbean language and lifestyle, Dominican migrants confront differences in customs,

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work rhythm, dialect, food, and interpersonal relations. The differences are all the greater on the mainland: language, landscape, culture, sensory ambience (sights, sounds, smells), and social presentation (faces, corporal postures and carriage, manners, clothing and hairstyles). Some migrants, particularly those who are more traditional, feel the sorrow of living in a place where they have “no roots, no history, no older generation (ancestry), and no personal memories.” The loss of everyday cultural norms, including banalities that reaffirm identity, is experienced as disorientation, uncertainty, and insecurity. Even in the absence of open hostility, there are implicit (or perceived) rejection messages embedded in what one sees and how one is seen, including the stigma of race and ethnicity.57 “You don’t know anyone there. You don’t have family there,” Sonia said, so if you get sick, if you are hungry, if you have a problem, you are on your own. Chicho similarly remarked, “It’s everyone for themselves there. If you don’t have resources, you’re dead.” Migrants forfeit the security of a support system to which they are accustomed and at the same time lose the social roles they played (in extended family, circle of friends, neighborhoods, and church groups, for example) and the social standing they acquired through these roles. The degree to which each migrant tolerates isolation is relative to individual capacity for independence and to the extent of family and community integration prior to departure.58 Many Dominican migrants find American society to be cold and unfriendly. This occurs because they are accustomed to more open and amicable interpersonal relations, because they are resented, because many live in inherently unfriendly inner-­city neighborhoods, and because American society can in fact be cold and unfriendly. Rubén spoke at length about isolation and an attitude of indifference in Washington Heights, even among assimilated Dominicans: “No one’s a friend there,” “a smile is unlikely,” “your best friend betrays you,” “I never saw my neighbor’s face.” One feels unwelcome, unwanted, and inconsequential. “People reject you,” in Víctor’s summation of San Juan. “No one likes you.” These sentiments are less accurate as cultural assessments (there is ample solidarity among Puerto Rican and mainland families and friends) than as expressions of alienation, but at the same time members of the host society (like the migrants) feel their identity threatened. Whether in Puerto Rico or on the mainland, many Americans respond with degrees of hostility toward what they perceive as an invasion by outsiders who undermine cultural integrity.59 Even many Dominicans who are established in Puerto Rico resent

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the fallout of stigma when their respectable, legal, middle-­class image is tainted by hordes of undocumented newcomers. “Poor, black, and foreign, Dominican immigrants are a minority in a triple sense: economic, racial, and ethnic.” They are stereotyped—what is true of a minority is true of the group as a whole—and (like Haitians in the Dominican Republic) are easy scapegoats for social ills such as unemployment and crime.60 The fallout is most directly experienced by migrants as a fear of deportation. Some migrants move about freely and defiantly, come what may; others describe their street life as reduced to the route between home and work, and even that feels risky. Withdrawal becomes a refuge. One false move and you are gone. Víctor isolated himself in a tiny room he shared with other migrants, and when he began to take chances he got deported. Martina’s unemployed husband is trapped in an absurdity: “He can’t go out to look for work because he’s there illegally.” Rafael pointed out that the situation is less risky for women who have live-­in domestic work because they do not have to travel to their jobs. And everyone has a story about someone who got deported because he or she went out for a beer. For these reasons, Rubén explained, being undocumented abroad is “like you have half a life.” Some informants (most of them deported) said they preferred the Dominican Republic despite the hardships because they had all of their rights. “They can’t deport me here,” Domingo said. Others emphasized the suffocating lack of freedom abroad combined with the constant paranoia of arrest and deportation. Víctor was the most passionate. After the recorder was turned off he talked from the heart, explaining the absolute vulnerability and loneliness and anxiety—he called it panic—of living illegally and knowing that at any moment he could be deported. He described working on a roof at a construction site, hitting a nail and then looking around to see if immigration agents were approaching. The image reminded me of a nervous grazing animal that lifts its head looking for predators, with legs tense and ready to sprint, before lowering the head again to eat. Deportation is feared because it forecloses the plans or goals of migration but also because it sends one home as a failure. You return to a life where you have nothing but shame, Víctor said, because you sold or pawned everything in order to migrate. “Then it’s harder to begin again here than to be there.” The same is true when migrants repatriate due to insufficient incomes, and the consequences are more than monetary. Families invest all of their hope in migrants—everyone’s future depends on their success. Migrants face the difficult reality of undocumented work

160 Undocumented Dominican Migration Altagracia. Her husband struggles through hard times in Puerto Rico.

abroad, while relatives at home form expectations based on the severity of their need and on the illusion of easy prosperity. When migrants are unable to meet expectations, the composite of negative emotions they experience is augmented by the disappointment of others. As family providers they let everyone down, and that crushing defeat leads to the unanswerable question “What are we going to do now?”61 Martina, who was going through this crisis with her husband when I met her, explained that unemployed and underemployed men want to come home: “They get desperate; they can’t take the desperation.” She discourages her husband from an impulsive return: “I tell him to wait, to stick it out, to keep looking, because luck will turn up.” Later in the interview, when I asked her what was meant by the phrase “La gente no piensa,” she steered the concept toward return migration. The phrase refers to “people who have returned from there to here. They don’t think about sticking it out so that their life will change. They have to think about staying,” but “they don’t think—they make the decision and come home.” “Love waits,” Martina concluded. “You have to stick it out for things to get better.” Altagracia’s husband also struggles in Puerto Rico and wants to come home, but she often tells him: “A lot of sacrifice to get there just to come back here with nothing.” You have to find a way to cope and eke it out, Salvador said, because if you give up too soon you lose everything. Perseverance is heavily valued because everything is at stake if the migration

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fails. Unemployed and underemployed migrants are attracted to repatriation, to accepting defeat and resuming family life, “but emotional, social, and economic constraints may render such a course of action unlikely.” The decisions to migrate were based on incomplete and biased information, and once abroad the migrants find themselves “committed to a sequence of events from which they can only extricate themselves at great cost.” “You’re obligated to stay,” Rubén said, because you already have too much invested.62 Some migrants experience high anxiety and remorse immediately upon arrival, and they retreat back to the Dominican Republic as quickly as possible. This “spontaneous regret” has many causes: a traumatic crossing, psychological exhaustion, disillusionment, lack of forethought, difficulties upon arrival, homesickness, and fear of the ominous realities ahead. Migration remorse is experienced even by migrants who are admitted legally to the United States. One Cuban migrant from the Mariel boatlift was so depressed and worried about his family that he wrote to President Jimmy Carter asking to be repatriated; another wrote to the first lady; others hijacked planes to get home. Among transatlantic migrants from Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some “became disillusioned so soon after their arrival in the United States that they went back on the same ship that had brought them out a few weeks earlier.” Between a quarter and a third returned to Europe.63 Roberto departed from Nagua in 2003 with thirteen others and three days later, after a difficult voyage, arrived at a beach near Aguadilla. The captain, fearing imminent arrest, dropped the passengers in the water about a half-­mile offshore. Three fatigued passengers drowned in the surf. Most of the others who made it to shore had contacts—family and friends who would facilitate entry—but Roberto had no one. He was hungry and exhausted and had no idea where to go or what to do. Roberto wandered aimlessly for a couple of days, hiding among trees, until his will and stamina were depleted. “I had a nervous breakdown,” he said, and “what I paid to go, I would have paid double that to return.” Roberto found a park and sat on a bench, resolved to getting caught and repatriated. The wait was not long. “I was ready to go back. I didn’t want to be there.”64

Raúl

I am lying on a damp bed in Las Galeras, reading through a pile of photocopies. A bilateral agreement, a Coast Guard budget request, another study with “transnational” in the title. The tedium is polyrhythmic: on one side someone’s bachata on auto-­replay and on the other the torture of television murders backed up by competing merengues. But the next work in the pile, a migrant testimony, broke through the tedium and distractions and put me inside a migrant’s mind on a yola. I read the book through in amazement, then studied the photograph of the author, Raúl. He was tall and skinny, dressed in a wedding-­white suit and exuding an evangelical demeanor. The next morning, on an Internet center’s dumpy computer, I searched for Raúl and sent an email. That was the beginning of a friendship. Raúl is an amalgam of audacity and humility, of ambition and a love of simple pleasures. When his parents separated in his early childhood he lived with his paternal grandmother, alternating between Santo Domingo and “eating fruit and chasing chickens” in rural Cotuí. The grandmother, like his mother, was strong-­willed and hard-­working; Raúl inherited those qualities. After six years, when he was nine, he reunited with his single mother, who supported Raúl and his five siblings by selling fried meats and plantains. Raúl’s path to migration began with studies of English. The language skills made him eligible for a job at a car-­rental agency (better-­qualified candidates had declined the job due to the poor salary), which in turn put

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him in contact with a yola-­trip organizer who rented vans to transport migrants. The personal relations with the organizer afforded a discount: Raúl paid $300 instead of the $500 that others were charged, which made migration more within his means. At the time of his departure in 1986, Raúl was twenty-­three, was earning $133 per month at the car-­rental agency, and had completed a year of university studies in systems engineering. The first migration attempt failed because the yola, “a little boat for twelve people,” was overloaded with sixty. The inherent buoyancy of the vessel was overwhelmed, and, on the verge of sinking, the captain turned back, unloaded weight (including some passengers who volunteered to swim), and barely made it to shore. Raúl’s mother had opposed the trip and was reinforced in her opposition after this failure. Raúl was brooding, broke, unemployed, and hungry. Rather than burdening his mother, however, he sold an iron that he had used to press his rent-­a-­car shirt and sustained himself with the proceeds. His mother later reciprocated the kindness, giving him $100 that she owed to a butcher so Raúl would have cash for his journey. Raúl’s second voyage departed soon after the first, again on a small and overloaded vessel. The organizers decided to leave secretly from Punta Cana, a tourist site on the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic, rather than paying off the Dominican navy for another illegal departure. The yola leaked profusely, and Raúl—self-­appointed to the task—bailed constantly and struggled to understand the lethargic indifference of other passengers. The yola was underpowered by two outboard engines, one twenty-­five and the other forty horsepower, and both were disabled en route when a wave crashed over and soaked them. The yola drifted for five hours, leaving plenty of time to think about slow death by dehydration and corpses given over to the ocean. Capsize also seemed inevitable as the engineless yola rocked and bobbed violently in the rough seas off the coast of Puerto Rico, with unpredictable waves breaking over the sideboards and drenching the screaming passengers. After repair of the engines and a rest on Desecheo Island, the migrants arrived finally at a Puerto Rican beach and waded ashore in chest-­deep water. The crew sank the yola to evade detection; the engines and gas tanks were hidden in brush. The migrants were stranded, however, because the ground transportation awaiting them had long since departed. Raúl and the sixty-­six other migrants hid in the monte for twelve hours, fighting off mosquitoes and ants, while new transportation was arranged.

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Dehydrated and hungry, exhausted after days at sea, the migrants crowded into a minibus and onto a pickup truck for transport finally to San Juan, where Raúl was accommodated by an uncle. Raúl’s intent from the beginning was to travel to the mainland, specifically to Chicago; he had a close friend there who would assist with logistics. Like most migrants, Raúl faced the San Juan airport with dread because the risk of repatriation is high. He was particularly vulnerable given his race, which fit the Dominican profile of “illegal alien.” When the day came to take his chances, Raúl psyched himself up with positive thinking (“I’m strong and understand the problem”), with a sense of entitlement (“I deserve to cross that airport after all the suffering I tolerated to get this far”), and with conviction in the role he was playing (“I’m an American citizen and no one has the right to stop me”). The immigration officer let others pass casually but stopped Raúl and, in Spanish, asked his nationality. Rather than responding in an imitated Puerto Rican accent, which is the ploy used by most Dominican migrants presenting false documents, Raúl paused, pretended not to understand the question, and responded in English, to which the surprised officer replied, “Have a nice trip.”1 Raúl arrived at the Puerto Rican beach in February 1986 and by December 1987 he was a lawful permanent resident of the United States, living and working in Chicago. The accomplishment is all the more remarkable because he arrived, like most migrants, with nothing but the wet clothes on his back and built a new life up from that nothing. Fortitude, determination, perseverance, and ingenuity contributed to his success, but it is also a result of the period during which he migrated. Today, some twenty-­five years later, the conditions are such that most yola migrants are doomed to failure despite their personal strengths and attributes. Raúl found his first employment at a McDonald’s in downtown Chicago. Using the same documents—a false Social Security card and a valid driver’s license—he then worked for a customs broker, driving a truck inside O’Hare airport. About a year later he began working in hotels, first in security, then as a busboy, and finally as a waiter. In 1993 Raúl began his own business—a home-­based carpet-­cleaning service—and continued working as a waiter until the business income stabilized. At its prime the business was running three vans, Raúl’s and two others, but was later scaled back because of lowered demand. While Raúl was working at McDonald’s he began to date and eventually married a manager there, Alicia, who was a U.S. citizen originally

166 Undocumented Dominican Migration

from Panama. Raúl petitioned to have his immigration status legalized on the basis of the marriage and—as is required—left the country (he went to Tijuana, Mexico) to do so. His petition was closely examined and nearly declined for two reasons: first, Alicia was much older than he was, arousing the suspicion that the marriage was contracted for immigration purposes; and second, the couple separated before the review process had been completed. The green card was issued nevertheless, and in 1993, about six years after acquiring residency, Raúl became a citizen of the United States. During a visit to the Dominican Republic in 1991, Raúl reencountered a girlfriend from his adolescence, Betty. She was living in the Simón Bolívar neighborhood of Santo Domingo and working at a shoe factory to support herself and her young daughter. Raúl suggested that Betty join him in Chicago, and shortly afterward an unanticipated opportunity presented itself. Betty was approached by a yola-­trip recruiter while she was walking in the funeral procession for a relative of a coworker. A friend also interested in migrating encouraged her, and in the confluence of these unexpected motivators—Raúl’s visit, the recruiter’s offer, an accompanying friend—Betty surprised herself with a quick decision to take the chance. After a failed attempt and then a successful one, both from Miches, she informed Raúl of her arrival in Puerto Rico. At this time, in 1991, Raúl was still legally married but separated from Alicia. He flew to San Juan to meet Betty and to help with her transport to the mainland. Betty had seen Dominicans in handcuffs on television news and was terrified that she might wind up among them, humiliated at the airport and repatriated as a prisoner. She prepared and calmed herself by going to the airport on two occasions—one of them to meet Raúl’s incoming flight—in order to get comfortable with the ambience. When the day for the flight to Chicago arrived, Betty and Raúl traveled together. Raúl had the ingenious idea of turning racial profiling against the profilers, which is to say of benefiting from the special interest his appearance would arouse. Betty was of lighter skin and more easily passable as Puerto Rican. The couple approached security as though they were traveling independently; Raúl went through ahead of Betty. An immigration officer on the far side of security had moments earlier arrested a Dominican man, who was standing in handcuffs against a wall. Betty panicked, then repaired to an emotional numbness that imbued her with an inexplicable calm. Raúl cleared security, gathered his belongings, and was stopped as expected by the immigration officer. The officer asked ques-

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tions and asked for documents, and Raúl, in leisurely compliance, kept the officer occupied while Betty continued to the gate uninspected.2 “I wasn’t calm until the airplane took off,” Betty said, especially because the initial relief of being on board was undermined when authorities on the speaker system announced—as Betty imitated—“So and So, please come to the front of the plane; So-­and-­So, . . .” Betty’s name was not called, the couple arrived in Chicago, and Raúl took Betty to the mesmerizing panorama of the Chicago skyline as viewed from the aquarium, where they talked and dreamed and could not believe the luck of this new life that somehow, unimaginably, was theirs. Ultimately their children, like those of all successful immigrants, are the primary beneficiaries of this forward leap that youth can hardly imagine—a one-­generation transposition from transgenerational Dominican poverty to relative stability and opportunity in the United States. Today Raúl and Betty own a home in a Latin American neighborhood of Chicago and have built a comfortable house in Santo Domingo, where they hope to retire. Their daughter recently entered a university, and their son, in high school, is seemingly on track for the Ivy League. Betty’s daughter, who lives above the family in an upstairs apartment, is a nurse, and Betty herself is studying toward a bilingual teaching certificate. When I last saw Raúl and Betty in August 2011, we hung out in their kitchen drinking beer and cracking up while Raúl rubbed lime and adobo into chicken. When he dropped the first batch into the oil it cracked and splattered and sent the three of us backward, choreographed by the noise, as though we were attached at the shoulder.

Border Enforcement

Reactive Policy During the 1980 event known as the Mariel boatlift, some 125,000 undocumented Cuban migrants were transported to Key West, Florida. The following year, in response to Haitian migration and mindful of the Cuban exodus, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12,324 and, simultaneously, Presidential Proclamation 4,865. The latter provided that “the entry of undocumented aliens from the high seas is hereby suspended and shall be prevented by the interdiction of certain vessels carrying such aliens.” Reagan’s order and proclamation were the beginnings of current interdiction policy and of national security perceptions of migration as detrimental to U.S. interests and sovereignty.1 Again in response to Haitian migration in May 1992 and pursuant to the suspended entry of undocumented migrants, President George H. W. Bush issued Executive Order 12,807. This order mandated continuing interdiction at sea and that the Coast Guard “return the vessel and its passengers to the country from which it came, or to another country, when there is reason to believe that an offense is being committed against the United States immigration laws.” Bush’s order closely followed Reagan’s 1981 order, but with an important exception. The Reagan order concluded with recognition of “the strict observation of our international obligations concerning those who genuinely flee persecution in their homeland,” and the Bush order concluded with an exemption to these obli-

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gations: “Nor shall this order be construed to require any procedures to determine whether a person is a refugee.”2 Bush’s order would appear to violate Article 33 of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which prohibits repatriation of endangered refugees (refoulement), but the prohibition was evaded by stating that Article 33 does not apply to migrants outside of U.S. territory. In 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this view in Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, which set a precedent for similar legislation. The United States could no longer screen migrants at sea and defend its borders, the decision argued, and national security took precedence. Justice Harry Blackmun, the sole dissenter, found it extraordinary that “the Executive, in disregard of the law, would take to the seas to intercept fleeing refugees and force them back to their persecutors—and that the Court would strain to sanction that conduct.”3 Between 1993 and 1996, the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice issued a series of legal opinions that were binding on all federal agencies. These provided that migrants interdicted at sea are not entitled to removal (deportation) proceedings. Even if interdicted in U.S. territorial waters, migrants “are not considered to have landed ashore, and thus U.S. law permits direct repatriation without further process.” As worded in the October 13, 1993, opinion, “Undocumented aliens interdicted within the twelve-­mile zone that comprises the United States’ territorial sea are not entitled to a hearing under the exclusion provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” These stipulations are critical to interdiction of Dominican migrants in the Mona Passage, because these migrants may be repatriated without legal formalities.4 Cubans were welcomed into the United States as refugees after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 provided for parole into the United States and adjustment to permanent-­resident status after one year. (“Parole” in immigration law means that the alien has been granted temporary permission to enter and be present in the United States.) In 1994, an exodus of Cuban migrants on improvised rafts—almost 40,000 were rescued and brought to the United States by the Coast Guard—resulted in the Cuban Migration Agreement of 1995. President Bill Clinton announced that Cuban migrants found at sea would no longer be brought to the United States (unless they expressed credible fears of persecution) but rather would be returned to Cuba (where, if they wished, they could apply for entry into the United States at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana). This was the beginning of the policy known as

170 Undocumented Dominican Migration

“wet foot/dry foot”: Cubans who are found at sea (wet foot) are returned to Cuba, and Cubans who reach U.S. territory (dry foot) are permitted to stay. In June 1993 Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 9, which (in response to an increase in organized smuggling of Chinese nationals) established a policy “to preempt, interdict and deter alien smuggling” into the United States.5 The combination of the 9/11 attacks and the George W. Bush administration ideology was decidedly detrimental to undocumented migrants, in part because it conflated migrants with terrorists. Homeland security became the lens—in this case a distorting lens—through which migration was perceived, and a politically expedient tough-­on-­crime posture solidified the prototype of “illegal alien” and the attending perceptions. In November 2002 the now-­defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued a notice that required expedited removal and mandatory detention of undocumented aliens arriving by sea. This was in response to the arrival to Biscayne Bay, Florida, on October 29, 2002, of a migrant vessel carrying 216 undocumented Haitians and Dominicans. The purpose of the INS notice, as stated in the text, was to deter illegal migration, especially mass migrations like those in the 1980s and 1990s from Cuba and Haiti. It also sounded a note that has echoed for a decade: “A surge in illegal migration by sea threatens national security by diverting valuable United States Coast Guard and other resources from counter-­terrorism and homeland security responsibilities.”6 A few days later, on November 15, 2002, President Bush issued Executive Order 13276. This order delegated responsibilities and gave the attorney general the right to “maintain custody, at any location he deems appropriate, of any undocumented aliens he has reason to believe are seeking to enter the United States and who are interdicted or intercepted in the Caribbean region.” Consistent with the INS notice and a statement made by the attorney general, the order defines “mass migration” in national security terms: “the term ‘mass migration’ means a migration of undocumented aliens that is of such magnitude and duration that it poses a threat to the national security of the United States, as determined by the President.”7 These presidential mandates over the course of some twenty years were issued in response to the Mariel boatlift, the mass departures from Haiti and Cuba in the mid-­1990s, Chinese smuggling, and the 9/11 attacks, and this crisis management has endured as U.S. policy. Rather than well-­reasoned, proactive policies developed through consideration of the

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complexities—such as U.S. labor demand and the global effects of neoliberalism—the United States has taken a simplified approach: to repel maritime migrants as far from U.S. shores as possible and, that failing, to expedite their removal from the country.8 The reactive mandates and the failure to revise them into coherent policy have resulted in inconsistencies and even absurdities. Dominicans who enter the United States illegally are detained and deported, for example, but Cubans who do the same are paroled and eventually granted lawful permanent residency. When Cubans are smuggled to Puerto Rico’s Mona and Monito Islands, they are shuttled by Coast Guard cutters or Customs and Border Protection helicopters to the main island and then freed. The United States prosecutes the smugglers who transport Cubans, but the migrants themselves—unlike all others who arrive illegally— are unprosecutable. An illegal migration thereby becomes legal if it is successful.9 In addition, deterrence is a principal goal of border enforcement, but the Cuban Adjustment Act and the subsequent wet foot/dry foot policy provide incentive for continuity and growth of undocumented migration. The Cuban government has rightly protested for decades that the U.S. exceptional policy for Cubans encourages illegal migration. In 2007, Mexico’s attorney general made the same argument in response to increasing “dry foot” (sometimes called “dusty foot”) Cuban migration through Mexico.10 And finally, Cuba is one of the four countries designated by the U.S. Department of State as a state sponsor of terrorism. The United States justifies its rigorous border enforcement largely on grounds of homeland security, but at the same time it offers special privileges—parole and residency—to migrants who arrive illegally from one of the few countries classified as a terrorist threat.11 A less sensational but more important inconsistency concerns the allocation of resources. Over the past decades U.S. policy has intended to deflect migrants—forward deployment, direct repatriation after interdiction at sea, expedited removal—and to keep them out of immigration court. Today, however, policy has evolved to punish rather than deflect migrants and to do so in criminal as much as immigration court. Border-­ enforcement strategy now includes the routine prosecution and incarceration of migrants (in addition to smugglers) because this is believed to be a deterrent. The great majority of these prosecutions are for the misdemeanor of illegal entry (8 U.S.C. § 1325). In “zero-­tolerance zones” on

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the U.S.-­Mexican border, all apprehended migrants are detained, prosecuted, and formally deported. The first zone was established on December 6, 2005, as Operation Streamline in the Del Rio Sector. Prior to the operation, the misdemeanor docket of Del Rio’s federal courts had approximately 2,700 cases per year; after the inception of the operation, the docket had in excess of 11,000 cases.12 In Puerto Rico beginning in 2006, the United States Attorney’s Office prosecuted undocumented Dominican migrants on their third entry attempt. In April 2008 the threshold was lowered to prosecution on the second attempt. This initiative, together with a new enforcement regimen at sea and on land, resulted in a 500 percent increase in prosecutions between 2006 and 2009. The purpose of Section 1325 prosecutions, as explained by an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), is to break the cycle of recidivism—in the past migrants were caught at sea, repatriated by the Coast Guard, and simply boarded another yola, with nothing to deter multiple attempts.13 The new enforcement initiatives are effective to the degree that they replace chaotic and ineffective antecedents, but (in addition to the human rights implications) they allocate resources in ways that seem inconsistent with the stated homeland and national security concerns. To what degree should the assets of the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Attorneys, the federal courts, detention institutions, and limited fiscal resources be applied to the apprehension, detention, and prosecution of economic migrants for a class B misdemeanor? If the diversion of border-­ enforcement resources away from other operations is detrimental to the national and homeland security of the United States, as is argued during mass migrations, then why is the United States so heavily invested in the interdiction and prosecution of noncriminal migrants at a time when migration is relatively low and resources could be applied to more critical missions? A better approach, as lawmakers argue on occasion, might be to establish “a realistic immigration system that recognizes that we need these workers, that allows them to come to the United States legally, and that ensures that the Government knows who is entering the country. If we permit these workers to enter the country legally, border agents can then focus their efforts on terrorists and others who pose a genuine threat to the Nation.”14 Insofar as Dominican maritime migration is concerned, it is hardly convincing that yolas crossing the Mona Passage present a “threat to our national security” or, similarly, that “alien smuggling presents a persis-

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tent threat to the security of our Nation.” Such perceptions are the consequence of a paradigm shift after the 9/11 attacks, when the Coast Guard was integrated into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but they have little relevance in the reality of operations. This disparity between perceptions and rhetoric on the one hand and everyday operations on the other is apparent in a Coast Guard congressional testimony. First, in dutiful message discipline, the testifying rear admiral complied with the dominant discourse: Illegal migrants, like illegal drugs, are a “threat to our national security.” Having said that, however, he then described the actual events at sea, which have nothing to do with national security: Migrants travel on “dangerously overloaded, unseaworthy, or otherwise unsafe craft,” and consequently, “Coast Guard migrant interdiction operations are as much humanitarian efforts as they are law enforcement actions.”15 The same is true of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) discourse. The CBP website describes the agency’s “priority mission” as “keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S.” while it at once meets other obligations, and the boilerplate prose that concludes press releases similarly states that “CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.” If one considers CBP’s everyday activities, however, the priorities in discourse and in practice are inverted. The great majority of CBP’s operations concern not terrorism but rather international trade, customs and immigration, undocumented migration, and drug trafficking. Some of these encompass the possibility of terrorist activity, but that is hardly the priority. When the proponents of a homeland- or national-­security approach package undocumented migrants together with drug traffickers and terrorists, they tend to perceive smuggling routes rather than individual agents and events. In testimony during a congressional hearing on border security, for example, a deputy assistant director from ICE made this argument: “Terrorists and extremist organizations seeking to gain entry into the United States in order to carry out their own destructive schemes could just as easily exploit these pipelines.” A Coast Guard attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo similarly sought to close down the routes established by migrants in the Mona Passage because, he argued, drugs, guns, or other contraband could be trafficked along these same corridors.16 This strategy gives the impression of diligence and rigor, but ultimately its premises are flawed. Established migrant routes are closely surveilled and heavily patrolled—why would terrorists or contraband smugglers

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“exploit these pipelines”? If there are better options, then terrorists and smugglers will take advantage of them; and if there are not, then the issue is locked in a tautology. In addition, what is a route where maritime smuggling is concerned? The domain is an ocean, not a jungle with a path opened by a machete. Even yola migrants divert as widely as possible from established routes to avoid patrols. Why would a more sophisticated terrorist or smuggler robotically pursue the most established and perilous course? The same packaging of migrants, terrorists, and drug smugglers sometimes has them all in the same boat: the challenge is “detecting and intercepting the small vessels used for migrant and drug smuggling; such vessels can easily be used by terrorists seeking to do us harm.” The statement might have some validity in reference to sophisticated migrant or drug smuggling in go-­fast boats, but the idea of a terrorist on a yola seems ludicrous. Yolas are used by migrants who have no resources and no options, and international terrorists have resources and options that render slow, frequently interdicted boats a low priority. The 9/11 hijackers are often used to justify the link between terrorism and undocumented migration, but in fact all of those terrorists entered the United States with valid passports and visas (although some were fraudulently acquired), and none crossed or tried to cross a border between ports of entry. No terrorists have ever been detained on migrant vessels (or otherwise) in the Mona Passage.17 Criminality Lawmakers and border-­enforcement agencies generally regard migrant smuggling as a highly organized criminal enterprise, and this perception affects policy, strategy, deterrence, prosecution, and dissemination of information to the media and public. The “criminal gangs” that smuggle migrants are hyperbolically qualified as ruthless, violent, profiteering, and indifferent to the loss of human life. In some cases, such as the migrant smuggling done by Los Zetas in Mexico, these depictions are accurate.18 In the Dominican Republic, the large-­scale yola operations prevalent until 2006 involved a hierarchical organization in which organizers coordinated multiple teams of captains, crews, and recruiters and operated in complicity with Dominican navy officers and with accomplices in Puerto Rico who harbored and transported migrants. These cases clearly qualify as organized crime, as does any current continuity of this activity,

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although the allegations of ruthlessness and disregard for human life tend to use exceptions as the rule. Such extrapolation from exceptions occurs, in part, due to reliance on a biased sample. Migrants rarely denounce yola captains, and “smugglers who are especially abusive, incompetent, greedy, and/or have weak bonds of trust with their clients are those most likely to be identified and apprehended.”19 As described earlier, organized smuggling in the Dominican Republic is one of the three principal types of maritime migration (the other two are local-­captain voyages and migrant-­organized voyages). Some of my informants in the Coast Guard and Border Patrol argue that the recent prevalence of smaller vessels and fewer migrants is not indicative of voyages organized by migrants or local captains, but rather of organized smugglers’ adaptation to enhanced enforcement. The smaller vessels are used to compensate for the loss of yolas (because the Dominican navy is more actively locating and burning them) and to more easily evade detection during the crossing. “I think it’s the same people,” said an intelligence agent at Border Patrol. “When you’re a smuggler you’re a smuggler; it’s just that you’re going to get better at what you do. So instead of having a big boat I’m going to have a smaller boat, instead of building a boat, I can steal a boat, or I can rent it from you.” This position is not entirely inaccurate. Morena, for example, was on a small (and stolen) vessel during a voyage organized by a large-­scale smuggler. But by denying the prominence and even the existence of trips organized by migrants and freelance captains, border-­enforcement officials reduce all migrant activity to the same degree of criminality. The lack of distinction is particularly troublesome in regard to migrant-­organized voyages, which have no smuggler, because it equates flight from poverty with the felonious enterprises of organized crime. The hierarchical nature of Dominican migrant smuggling—with large-­ scale organizations at the top and one-­man freelancers at the bottom—is consistent with smuggling in other world regions. Despite the frequent counter-­claims, “the smuggling business is not always a highly organized criminal activity.” I stress the point with a catalog of quotations from scholars in the United States and abroad: “The assumption of centralized organized crime organizations does not fit with the available evidence”; and “smuggling organizations are often little more than loose networks linking largely independent clusters of practical competencies.” “Our research indicates that the market for human smuggling services is in most cases not dominated by overarching mafia-­like criminal structures.”

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“Many smuggling rings are more like small enterprises run by a group of relatives or acquaintances”; and “the criminal organizations which engage in the business of migrant trafficking cover a spectrum that ranges from individual operators to large enterprises.” And finally, “Most U.S. law enforcement activities are built on the outdated model that formal criminal syndicates are behind smuggling operations; thus they are ill-­suited to fighting the masses of entrepreneurs who form temporary alliances and engage in sporadic criminal activities.” Even a law-­enforcement training manual for combating migrant smuggling recognizes that in addition to organized smuggling there are “also many smaller, flexible criminal groups or individual criminals that conduct smuggling operations on the basis of demand.”20 The United States and the Dominican Republic are signatories to the 2000 United Nations conventions known as the Palermo Protocols, which include the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air. The smuggling protocol Articles 3a and 6a define smugglers as those who obtain “a financial or other material benefit” through payment, but this is not the case when migrants organize voyages themselves. Migrant-­organized voyages do not constitute smuggling as defined by the UN protocol. Furthermore, smuggling as described in Article 4 requires the involvement of “an organized criminal group,” which is defined elsewhere in the protocols (in the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, Article 2a) as “a structured group of three or more persons.” Many small-­ scale, captain-­organized voyages are simple one- or two-­man operations, and consequently these do not conform to the UN definition of smuggling either.21 By U.S. law, all migrants who enter the United States illegally are guilty of improper entry (8 U.S.C. § 1325) and sometimes of reentry after deportation (8 U.S.C. § 1326), but smuggling allegations (8 U.S.C. § 1324) are improperly applied to migrant-­organized ventures and awkwardly to the smaller-­scale voyages of local captains. Clinton’s Presidential Decision Directive 9, which established a basis for smuggling interdiction and prosecution, clearly limits the directive to “criminal syndicate alien smuggling.” It also specifies “disrupting and dismantling the criminal networks which traffic in illegal aliens” rather than targeting individual migrants and voyages. If one keeps a tight focus exclusively on enforcement, then it makes perfect sense to prosecute all migrants for Sections 1325 and 1326 of-

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fenses, because all of the migrants have broken the law. If one pulls back for a wider angle and greater depth of field, however, a different picture emerges. In the foreground is a yola loaded with migrants, and in the background is a global humanitarian crisis—epitomized by the boat migration of sub-­Saharan Africans through Libya to Lampedusa, Italy—that is largely the result of economic policies disadvantageous to less developed countries. There is something distorted and perverse about removing migration from its context, limiting the perspective to crime, and prosecuting migrants who risk and lose their lives to flee poverty. U.S. media and public discourse tend to represent undocumented immigrants as criminals, but unauthorized presence in the United States is a civil, not a criminal, offense, and simple unauthorized entry (8 U.S.C. § 1325, as discussed earlier) is a misdemeanor. (Unauthorized reentry after formal deportation is a felony under Section 1326.) The nature of immigration offenses is also different from that of violent or acquisitive crime. Americans who condemn the misdemeanor of entry without inspection spend $65 billion a year on illegal drugs, drive drunk, cheat on their taxes, use false IDs for underage drinking, defraud insurance companies, sleep with prostitutes, and pirate music and film, and these are the upstanding citizens. They also make an exception in usage of “illegal” when they apply it to immigrants. The adjective “illegal” is generally not applied to people who commit crimes. The act is illegal, not the person. The equivalent of “illegal immigrant” would be to call an executive who embezzles an “illegal executive,” a teenager who smokes pot an “illegal teenager,” and a housewife who cheats on her taxes an “illegal housewife.” The nuance is important because the “illegal” of “illegal immigrants” tends to be extended to social conduct, as though the misdemeanor of unauthorized entry were in itself sufficient to implicate a propensity to criminality. I understand that “illegal immigrant” is shorthand for “an immigrant who entered illegally,” but nevertheless it pairs the words in a way that fosters the generalization that all immigrants are criminals.22 The same impression is created by headlines and selective representations. As stated in a Human Rights Watch report, “For reasons that are unclear, regular press updates by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) always tout the deportations of violent criminals, but keep vague the other categories of immigrants deported.” One ICE operation, for example, deported 758 criminals, and the press release focuses on two of them who had violent and sexual offenses. CBP press releases often make the same impression in headlines—“Illegal Alien with Serious Criminal History”;

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“Illegal Aliens with Dangerous Criminal Histories”; “Agents Arrest Sex Offender”—by focusing on the few migrants who are detained for felony prosecutions.23 I regard this not as malice or intentional deception but rather as an effort to showcase the exceptional accomplishments that occur among thousands of routine incidents. The implicit discourse is something like: “Look, we’re catching bad guys; we’re doing our job.” The story is told, like any other, with the stresses and omissions corresponding to the narrator’s perspective, and in this case with the added belief that law-­enforcement news serves as a deterrent. The press releases also conform to the American idea of “newsworthy.” News media generally focus on the dark side of sensationalism, with air time and column inches less available to law abiders than to criminals, and in proportion to the magnitude and horror of the offenses.24 An unfortunate consequence is that the stress on criminality in border-­enforcement news reinforces the public equation of immigrants and criminals. The power of that invisible effect is more apparent if one inverts the emphasis to highlight noncriminals. Maria, Luz, and Juana, all mothers of multiple children, migrated in search of work because their consensual partners abandoned their families. Javier, Jorge, Pedro, and Amílcar lost their jobs at hotels when tourism declined after the economic crisis of 2008. Juanito and Manuel were left in the care of their grandmother when their mother migrated to Puerto Rico to support them, but the grandmother died and the children went in search of their mother. Edgar hoped for years to get a visa to join his parents in Washington Heights but, frustrated by the long delay, traveled by yola with his parents’ support. And Ronaldo, Yasmín, and Ariel, all twenty years old, imagined that life must be better somewhere else, so they took their chances. In addition, two migrants were detained for prosecution, one for attempted reentry and one on drug charges. If this type of press release were to circulate day after day, decade after decade, and to set the agenda for news media, then the public perspective on migrants would align more with reality and less with the inflation of criminality. From the inception of the Coast Guard’s biometrics-­at-­sea program in November 2006 until May 2010, there were 87 migrant-­vessel events, 2,643 migrants interdicted, 671 (25 percent) database hits for immigration and criminal violations, and 331 (13 percent) migrants brought

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ashore for prosecution. The great majority of the hits and prosecutions were immigration-­related (284 of 331 cases, 86 percent), primarily for improper entry (8 U.S.C. § 1325) and then entry after deportation (8 U.S.C. § 1326). If one considers the total number of migrants who were interdicted (2,643) in relation to the prosecutions that were not immigration-­related (47), fewer than 2 percent of the migrants were criminals.25 The negative representation of migrants is sometimes “a strategic portrayal for persuasion’s sake, and ultimately for policy’s sake.” This is clearest during the prosecution of smugglers, when migrants are needed as witnesses. Rather than the criminal stigma that migrants carry when they themselves are being prosecuted en masse for illegal entry, during smuggler trials they are represented as victims. Their illegal-­entry offenses are pardoned, and federal prosecutors describe them as abused, exploited, coerced, and endangered. The manipulation of identity is apparent: at one moment migrants are criminals and at another victims of crime, all in the context of the same federal courts and in reference to the same events. This inconsistency underscores the degree to which the perception of migrants is affected by vested interests.26 Migrant Interdiction in the Mona Passage In July 2006, Department of Homeland Security agencies in Puerto Rico formalized a collaboration known as the Caribbean Border Interagency Group (CBIG). Its purpose was to more effectively impede undocumented migration across the Mona Passage and, more broadly, to secure the borders of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The initial participants in CBIG were the Coast Guard, CBP’s Border Patrol and Caribbean Air and Marine Operations, and ICE. Added later were CBP’s Office of Field Operations, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico, and the Puerto Rico Police Joint Forces of Rapid Action (FURA, its Spanish acronym). The addition of the U.S. Attorney’s Office was particularly significant, because it integrated prosecution as a routine component of migrant interdiction operations. In October 2010, the CBIG model and CBIG operating procedures were extended to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Coast Guard uses forward deployment of its assets “to interdict and process illegal and undocumented migrants as far from U.S. shores as possible.” This is consonant with the more comprehensive strategy of the 2005 National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness: “to detect, deter, and defeat threats as early and distant from U.S. interests as pos-

180 Undocumented Dominican Migration

sible.” At the same time, CBIG border enforcement in Puerto Rico takes a layered (also called “multilayered”) approach. Cutters patrol the Mona Passage, planes and helicopters surveil from above, FURA and CBP boats are closer to shore, and Border Patrol is on land. If migrants pass one layer, they are likely to be detected by another. These layers are supplemented by land and maritime Dominican navy patrols, by intelligence operations within the Dominican Republic, and by the Office of Field Operations at seaports and airports. There is also an invisible layer of highly sophisticated surveillance technology.27 CBIG is a result of the current tendency among federal agencies (largely as a response to the lack of coordination on 9/11) to form partnerships and to supplement one another as force multipliers. Cooperative alliances similar to CBIG have been established across the United States and are similar in concept to the Joint Interagency Task Forces established earlier. The key principles are “unified command, control and communications; integrated intelligence, situational awareness, planning, and operation response; and common platforms, doctrine, tactics, and training.”28 CBIG forces are further multiplied by other assets, such as the state and municipal police who assist Border Patrol (an assistance eligible for federal funding under Operation Stonegarden) and the auxiliaries of the Coast Guard and Dominican navy. Other armed forces are involved during mass migrations and even in some routine operations (such as the U.S. Navy participating in maritime migrant interdiction off the California coast). Clinton’s Presidential Decision Directive 9 provides for Department of Defense support as necessary of Coast Guard migrant interdiction operations, and U.S. Marines were deployed to Navy ships and Coast Guard cutters during Operations Able Manner (1993–1994, concerning Haitian migrants) and Able Vigil (1994, concerning Cuban migrants).29 Currently the Coast Guard interdicts about 50 percent of the undocumented migrants crossing the Mona Passage. This percentage excludes the apprehensions by partner agencies (notably Border Patrol) and the Dominican navy. When these layers are included, the interdiction rate rises to about 70 or 80 percent. Migrants aboard overloaded, underpowered, leaky boats confront a multibillion dollar, multilayered, highly technological interagency enforcement apparatus; it is a David and Goliath scenario, except Goliath wins. If one factors in the lost voyages (due to capsize or sinking), failed and aborted voyages (due to engine, boat, or weather problems), and scams (voyages that never leave or return under pretexts), a 90 percent failure rate for Dominican migrants might be optimistic.30

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A typical scenario of interagency cooperation is illustrated by an April 2008 interdiction. A yola with ninety-­three migrants was spotted off the coast of Aguadilla by a CBP aircraft on patrol. The plane crew reported the location, a Coast Guard cutter was diverted to the scene, and in eight- to nine-­foot seas the passengers were embarked onto the cutter. Coast Guard and CBP helicopters flew rescue support overhead. Biometrics were taken of all passengers and run through a database on shore, which revealed that ten of the passengers had multiple entry attempts. The U.S. Attorney’s Office accepted the cases for prosecution, and these passengers were arrested and taken ashore by Border Patrol agents, who had also interviewed all of the migrants. The yola was destroyed as a hazard to navigation, and eighty-­three migrants were repatriated to the port of La Romana in the Dominican Republic. Agencies Dominican migrants are interdicted at sea primarily by the Coast Guard. This agency was created by Congress in 1790, under the control of the Treasury Department, to collect revenue from ships and to enforce U.S. customs laws. Today the Coast Guard is one of the five armed forces of the United States and at once a component of the Department of Homeland Security. It is unique among military forces in its multimission mandate and its statutory responsibility and authority to enforce domestic law “on the high seas and waters over which the U.S. has jurisdiction.” The Coast Guard is thus “the principal federal maritime law enforcement agency of the United States. It is in this role that the Coast Guard performs the mission of alien migration interdiction operations at sea.” The largest operation concerning Dominican migration, Operation Able Response, was sustained from April 1995 to October 1997 and interdicted or turned back more than 9,500 migrants. In fiscal year 1994 there were 232 interdictions of Dominicans in the Mona Passage; in 1995 there were 3,388, and in 1996 there were 6,273.31 The Coast Guard’s Sector San Juan, a unit of the Seventh Coast Guard District in Miami, has its headquarters in Old San Juan and an air station in Aguadilla on the west coast of the island. There are also Special Assistant United States Attorneys assigned by the Coast Guard to federal prosecutor offices in San Juan and Miami. The CBP assets in Puerto Rico include the Ramey Border Patrol Sector and Caribbean Air and Marine Operations, both on the former Ramey Air

182 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Force Base (closed in 1974) in Aguadilla; and the Office of Field Operations, based in Old San Juan and responsible for ports of entry. The Border Patrol station, established in 1987 in response to Dominican migration, operates in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and is the only Border Patrol sector located outside of the continental United States. It began with 10 agents, had 33 in 1992, and in 2012 between 50 and 60. (Nationally, Border Patrol had 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 and 20,558 in fiscal year 2010.) Like other Border Patrol sectors, Ramey has an intelligence unit that does pattern analysis and identifies leads for investigation.32 Of particular importance in migrant interdiction is CBP’s Air and Marine Operations, which has acquired two Bombardier Dash 8 maritime patrol aircrafts. The Dash 8’s surveillance technology, which includes Seavue radar and a Wescam MX-­15 infrared system, is well suited to detection of small wooden boats that are low in the water. CBP in Aguadilla also has two Blackhawk and two Astar helicopters. The U.S. border enforcement agencies are complemented for better or worse by the Dominican navy. In addition to the general challenges of international cooperation—cultural barriers, lack of trust, differences in law-­enforcement priorities, use and misuse of communication channels, resource disparity—the Dominican navy has a history of corruption that varies depending largely on who is in command and who is president of the republic. For long periods over the past decades, navy vessels rarely left port (due to lack of maintenance and fuel), patrols were limited to beaches, and some officers participated actively (organizing voyages) or passively (profiteering through payoffs) in migrant smuggling.33 The navy’s primary contributions to interdiction are locating and burning yolas (a permit is required to build a boat, and constructions without permits are generally for illegal purposes) and reporting known departures to the U.S. Coast Guard. Interdiction of departing voyages and of failed voyages returning to the Dominican Republic occurs intermittently. There is also occasional disruption of organized smuggling operations. Intelligence reports to the Coast Guard generally include the time and place of departure and, when known, the approximate number of passengers, a description of the vessel, and the identity of the captain. The navy reports are not always reliable—“It’s questionable how much of that you can trust,” as a Coast Guard intelligence analyst put it—because of the frequent complicity of navy officers in migrant smuggling. The navy is notified of the departures by paid informants and by others who report voyages of their own volition. Some are concerned citizens and others are

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Rescue of migrants after capsize. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

motivated by revenge or related interests (such as reporting the departures of a competing captain). Dominicans refer to the informants as chivatos (snitches). In some cases the Coast Guard receives very specific information, either directly or through the navy, from concerned family members of migrants on overdue yolas. These calls initiate search and rescue operations. In December 2009 the Dominican Republic received the first two of eight purchased Super Tucano light combat aircraft. These planes are primarily for operations concerning drug trafficking by air from South America but might play a minor role in migrant interdiction. More pertinent, at least in theory, are the fifty-­six navy beach stations, primarily on the north and east coasts of the Dominican Republic. I visited one of these at a remote location on Playa Limón, about an hour from Miches. The one-­room building, sparsely furnished with bunk beds, was staffed by two recruits in their early twenties. When I asked if they were trained for this assignment, they responded in the affirmative, enthusiastically, relating experiences at a three-­month endurance boot camp in the mountains to prepare for the extreme conditions of war.34

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In legal terms, the interdiction of yola migrants is greatly facilitated by a bilateral agreement between the United States and the Dominican Republic. The agreement entered into force on May 20, 2003, to combat “the unsafe transport and smuggling of migrants by sea” and “to facilitate the repatriation of certain migrants.” Among other provisions, the agreement gives the United States the right “to board, address inquiries, inspect the documents of and search the suspect vessel and the persons found on board.” U.S. law-­enforcement officers can detain the vessel and the passengers “if evidence of unsafe transportation of migrants by sea or smuggling of migrants is found.” The agreement gives the United States certain air patrol rights, the right to return all migrants to the Dominican Republic “regardless of their nationality or country of origin,” and the right to destroy migrant vessels as hazards to navigation. It also establishes a ship-­rider program through which U.S. and Dominican authorities may embark on one another’s law-­enforcement vessels and aircraft.35 Routine Interdiction

CBP’s Dash 8 aircraft fly crisscross patterns over the Mona Passage, Coast Guard cutters patrol, and other resources—CBP and Coast Guard helicopters and FURA boats and airplanes—are vigilant closer to shore. When a yola is detected the call goes out on a CBIG network and available resources respond. With rare exceptions, the response includes a cutter by virtue of the Coast Guard’s legal authority to board and process migrants. Many yolas are first detected by a Dash 8. This aircraft has two interfaced computer stations on board, one for radar on the left and one for digital imagery on the right. The radar operation scans a 360-­degree field, searching for targets of interest among countless other dots (representing boats) on the screen. Small targets, eastbound, with speeds between five and twelve knots, attract attention: “That’s a yola profile,” explained a Dash 8 pilot. A typical interdiction “starts off as a shiny dot on the radar.”36 The radar operator locks onto the target, tracking its course and speed, and reports the contact bearing to the camera operator and the pilot. The camera operator highlights that contact on his or her computer and slews the camera to where the radar is locked. The radar and camera thus align to pursue the target. The aircraft has daylight cameras with zoom and high-­power zoom lenses and an infrared or thermal-­imaging camera for nighttime use. The infrared camera senses the heat signatures of vessels and people in total

Border Enforcement 185 A small migrant boat photographed at night by a Dash 8’s infrared camera. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

darkness. It can be set to “black hot” or “white hot”; on the water black hot generally gives best results (the hot items, such as engines and people, are black against a lighter background), and on land white hot is generally used. Most yolas are detected at night, and when the Dash 8 gets within about ten miles of a yola the infrared camera shows the first indications in black and white: “a black shadow followed by the wake.” The boat and the wake are almost indistinguishable—a single solid black line—because the boat is so low in the water that the infrared detects only the small portion above the waterline. When the Dash 8 gets closer to the yola—a half-­ mile away at 1,500 feet, for example—the black heads of the passengers are already visible and countable. The Dash 8 also has two laser designators: a laser rangefinder, which calculates distance from the plane to a target; and a laser illuminator, which pulses infrared that lights up, in this case, a yola, so it can be located easily (using night-­vision glasses—the light is otherwise invisible) by other border-­enforcement aircraft and boats. After identifying a yola, the Dash 8 stays on site to take photographs and video and to track the yola’s course. The visuals and the course tracking are later useful for prosecution, particularly in identifying the captain and in proving that migrants in international waters were heading

186 Undocumented Dominican Migration

for Puerto Rico. The photographs also serve another purpose. “If we lose the target,” a CBP pilot explained, “we have a function on the computer where we can pull up the picture, double-­click on the picture, and it will put a little dot on the map where that picture was taken.” Under some circumstances the Dash 8 distances itself from a yola, flying out of sight, so captains and passengers believe they have evaded detection. This often occurs when yolas are far from Puerto Rico: “We go covert, because we want him [the yola captain] to close the distance so it’s not going to take all night for the cutter to get there. Because if we fly over him, he’s going to stop. And now the cutter’s got to come to him.” The plane continues to track the yola, sometimes for hours, which again helps to demonstrate course and intent. In 2001 a migrant convicted of reentry after deportation argued on appeal that the statute did not apply to him, because his yola was in international waters and consequently outside of the United States. The appeal was unsuccessful, however, because the trajectory of the yola had been established by surveillance.37 Upon arrival to the scene the Coast Guard cutter launches its small boat, which approaches the yola, assesses the situation for medical emergencies, and distributes life vests. In international waters the boarding authority is provided variously by the 2003 bilateral migration agreement between the United States and the Dominican Republic or by requesting permission from the district headquarters in Miami to declare the boat stateless. (The latter is a quick procedure done by checklist—Is there a flag? Is there a registration number? and so forth.) Technically a boarding request would be addressed to the master of the vessel, but, for obvious reasons, yola captains do not disclose their identities. Coast Guard questions regarding the captain receive evasive responses: “We all took turns; there is no captain” (which is true on migrant-­organized voyages but a pretext on others); “He jumped off and swam” (even when no land is in sight); or “Another boat came and got him.” Ultimately the passengers are asked, in Spanish, if they want to board the cutter, and—unless they are close to shore and try to make a run— they almost always respond in the affirmative. This occurs because the migrants are tired, frightened, hungry, dehydrated, and grateful to be rescued, but also because there is no escape. The cutter crew proceeds on the basis of safety of life at sea (as provided by the bilateral agreement)— rescuing the migrants from an unsafe vessel—and the event thus assumes a hybrid quality as an interdiction-­rescue. Once migrants are aboard the .

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FURA officers take charge of the yola while the migrants, boarded on the cutter, depart for return to the Dominican Republic. Photograph by Krystyna A. Hannum. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.

cutter, they are subject to U.S. law. The yola is doused with any remaining gasoline and destroyed by burning. The small boat transfers the migrants in groups to the cutter, and passengers are frisked for weapons and contraband. Food, water, and basic medical attention are provided. The migrants are asked routine boarding questions—name, date of birth, nationality, departure and destination points, and identity of the captain. The migrants always give false names, so each is assigned a numbered wristband (similar to a hospital bracelet) for official identification purposes. Personal possessions such as wallets and cell phones are taken and bagged individually and identified with the wristband number. With rare exceptions, migrants state that they were traveling to Puerto Rico. They are unaware that this admission is incriminating. Prosecutors must prove intent to enter the United States illegally, and migrant admissions (together with the radar tracking) have probative value. Migrants are not read Miranda rights, with the exception of those who are taken ashore for prosecution and transferred from immigration to criminal status.

Migrants are searched as they board the cutter. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.

Aboard a Coast Guard cutter after interdiction. Photograph by Krystyna A. Hannum. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.

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Biometric data (index fingerprints and a photograph) are collected from each passenger using a handheld device tolerant of ship movement and adverse weather conditions. The process, including the boarding interview, takes about five or ten minutes for each passenger. Encrypted biometric files are transmitted electronically as e-­mails, via satellite, from the cutter to US-­VISIT (a DHS biometric immigration management system) on shore, where the files are run in real time through a database known as IDENT. (Connectivity problems or equipment malfunctions sometimes cause delays, and in extreme cases the data are taken ashore by the cutter’s small boat.) Each record is returned to the cutter as a “hit” or “no hit”; the hits relate to multiple entry attempts, reentry of formally deported migrants, suspicion of smuggling, and criminal history. Migrants who are not in the database are automatically registered on first entry; if they are caught again anywhere in the United States, the prior entry attempt is on record. Before the biometrics program was implemented in 2006, the Coast Guard was unable to prove multiple entry attempts and simply repatriated all yola passengers. In April 2008 the biometrics-­at-­sea program was expanded to the Florida Straits. By the beginning of fiscal year 2010, there were eighteen cutters operating biometrics at sea. The Coast Guard Research and Development Center has been testing an upgrade of biometrics to a ten-­fingerprint system, with possible later addition of facial and iris-­recognition technology.38 When hits indicate that certain yola passengers may be prosecutable, a conference call is initiated among a regional concurrence team (RCT). An AUSA (on call by rotation for this purpose), Border Patrol agents, the Coast Guard’s legal division, and sometimes others participate, such as CBP officials, ICE for major cases, and the State Department if Cubans are involved. Decisions are made as to which migrants with hits will be brought ashore to Puerto Rico for criminal prosecution; much depends on whether the AUSA accepts the case. Practical considerations are also a factor: if a migrant group is interdicted in international waters far from Puerto Rico and has, for example, only a couple of migrants prosecutable for Section 1325 violations, the decision would likely be made not to prosecute. From the inception of the biometrics-­at-­sea program in the Mona Passage to the end of September 2011, there were 123 migrant-­vessel events, 2,973 migrants interdicted (with biometrics taken from 2,929), 744 hits for immigration and criminal violations, and 446 prosecutions.39 While the Coast Guard is processing the biometric hit results, Border Patrol agents are shuttled by boat to the cutter to interview all passengers

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This slide, from a Coast Guard PowerPoint presentation, illustrates how biometrics (and also publicity as a deterrent) are integrated into routine interdiction. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.

and take custody of any migrants who will be brought ashore for criminal prosecution. The interviews are done at sea rather than ashore or close to shore to avoid the possibility of chaotic escape attempts. The preferred location is three miles off the coast of Mayaguez. The purpose of the interviews is to gather information generally but also to determine if a captain can be identified and if there are sufficient material witnesses to initiate a smuggling prosecution. After interview and processing, the migrants who are taken ashore are transferred to criminal custody. Cases that are beyond routine (including greater scope or violence, migrant deaths, human trafficking, and migrants from special-­interest countries) are referred to the ICE Office of Investigation. Once the RCT has concluded and the migrants to be prosecuted are taken ashore, the cutter repatriates the remaining migrants to La Romana in the Dominican Republic. On occasion the migrants are transferred at sea to a Dominican navy ship. The migrants are interviewed and processed again in the Dominican Republic, but in accordance with the 2003 bilateral agreement they may not be prosecuted for leaving the country illegally. From interdiction to repatriation, the process takes twenty-­four to thirty-­six hours if there are no delays. Common delays include con-

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nectivity problems during biometrics and complications in the transfer of Border Patrol agents to a cutter, particularly when the cutter is far off shore. A cutter patrol report summarized a September 2008 interdiction event as follows: “Biometrics was collected and resulted in 16 hits. An RCT was held and it was concluded to prosecute 14 migrants for illegal entry (8USC1325) and 01 for illegal re-­entry (8USC1326). SNO [statement of no objection, meaning authorization] was approved by District 7 to bring 15 migrants ashore and to repatriate the remaining 45 migrants back to La Romana, DR.”40 Migration-­ related offenses are prosecuted by an immigration unit within the United States Attorney’s Office in San Juan. There are currently three prosecutors. In addition to the frequent cases of improper entry and reentry after deportation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutes migrant smuggling, fraudulent use of documents and false claims to citizenship, harboring and transporting aliens, failure to heave to (refusing a lawful order to stop at sea), worksite violations, and marriage fraud conspiracy. The migrants convicted of the improper-­entry misdemeanor are generally sentenced to time served while awaiting trial—usually under a

Migrants sometimes spend days aboard a cutter. Photograph by John Gaffney. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.

192 Undocumented Dominican Migration

month. They are also formally deported, however, so that a subsequent attempted entry is a felony that carries a more substantial sentence. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Juan offers a “fast-­track” or early disposition program for qualifying Section 1326 offenses (for reentry after deportation). “The benefit to the defendant who pleads guilty under this program consists of a downward departure from the defendant’s total offense level” (resulting in a lesser sentence); and the benefit to the system includes elimination of the need for grand jury appearances and reduction of “court appearances by prosecutors and defense attorneys.” The attorney general authorized fast-­track programs years earlier in many other districts, primarily in the U.S. Southwest.41 Prosecutions for migrant smuggling are difficult for many reasons, beginning with identification of the yola captain. When Coast Guard or CBP vessels and aircraft approach a cutter, the standard procedure of captains is to leave the engine and intermix with passengers. Captains disguise their identities as soon as they hear aircraft approaching in the distance, and the Dash 8 cannot take photographs from a distance far enough to remain covert. When a helicopter approached Miguelina’s yola, the captain wrapped his head with a shirt so that just his eyes were exposed, covered his hands, and eventually abandoned the helm. Cutters sometimes have to break contact with yolas in order to launch their small boats, and during that interim captains change shirts, caps, and positions to better conceal their identity. A related and greater problem in prosecution is the unwillingness of yola passengers to identify captains. Even when they have video of a captain at the tiller, prosecutors need corroborating witnesses in order to convict. Coast Guard and Border Patrol informants generally explain migrants’ refusal to identify captains as a fear of reprisals against the migrants themselves or their families. Fear is indeed a factor—“They’re people from right here,” “Everything is always found out,” and “You can have problems with the captain’s family,” as Altagracia put it. An AUSA related that in one of his cases a captain who was charged with smuggling intimidated a witness’s family in the Dominican Republic, and the witness withdrew out of fear. “One of the victims who died was her best friend, who she knew since she was a child. And she was not willing to cooperate.” For most migrants, however, the unwillingness to cooperate is an expression not of fear but of solidarity. “We never said who the captain was,” Morena reported, and when I asked her why, she responded: “To protect

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the captain, because they almost always imprison them, and for a long time.” Captains are viewed as members of the migrant group, not as criminals, and if the captain treats migrants well they reciprocate with gratitude and protection. Marta used the same words as Morena, “to protect the captain,” then illustrated the captain’s care of the migrants by describing his rescue of two delirious passengers who jumped overboard. Unsuccessful migrants usually make subsequent attempts, so it is also in their interest to keep their captains out of prison.42 When migrants are willing to serve as material witnesses, their testimony is generally inconsistent and unreliable. AUSAs stress the difficulty of smuggling prosecutions for this reason. One explained that witnesses are unreliable because of the personal factors mentioned above (solidarity and fear); because most migrants are uneducated, some are illiterate, and many are inarticulate; and because the situation is intimidating—a prison, a grand jury, a courtroom, lawyers with agendas. Another AUSA said that in addition to internal inconsistencies in depositions and testimonies, witnesses tend to contradict one another, so it is difficult to build a coherent account of the events. And finally, juries tend to sympathize with migrant and captain defendants who explain the circumstances that induced migration. When the evidence is insufficient to prosecute captains, plea bargains often result in lesser charges.43 U.S. law enforcement has access to the hired captains and crews of organized smuggling but not to the organizers themselves. Saúl pointed out that captains and crew members are at the bottom of the hierarchy and take all the risk. Moreno was more explicit: “They’re punishing the wrong people. The captains are just fishermen. They should be arresting the organizers and their partners in the navy.” The situation is analogous to drug trafficking: one can arrest a thousand mules at the border and distributors on the streets, but the trafficking will persist unless the cartels are dismantled and the root problems—at home and abroad—are resolved. As a result of legal access limited to low- or mid-­level operators, “the threat of apprehension and criminal prosecution does not pose much of a deterrent for smuggling enterprises as a whole, even if the risk rises substantially for certain participants within them.” Some Coast Guard and Border Patrol informants argue that, as one put it, “the expertise is drying up” due to criminal convictions, but there is always another captain. Valdesio explained how the expertise proliferates: “Any fisherman goes a first time with someone who has already gone. He [the experienced one] shows

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him how to do it, how the compass has to be, and he [the fisherman] goes the first time, learns it, and the second time goes alone. That is to say, he becomes one captain more.”44 United States v. Hilario-­Hilario et al. On the night of December 1, 2004, a yola prepared for departure from Cabeza de Toro on the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. The voyage was well organized and—at about $1,200 per passenger—relatively expensive. Migrants had been transported to the beach by minibus from various locations, an organizer or his representative was on site coordinating departure, parcels were prohibited and passengers were body-­ checked, modest food and water supplies were provided, passengers were transported by a small boat to the offshore yola, the crew navigated by GPS, transportation to San Juan upon arrival had been arranged, and during the journey the captain was in contact by cell phone with an organizer and with Puerto Rican collaborators. A total of ninety-­two people including captain and crew were on board the forty-­foot yola. The boat had two engines and several gas tanks; there were no benches for passenger seating. The voyage departed about 1 a.m. (on the morning of December 2) and arrived off the northern coast of Puerto Rico at around 11 o’clock that night. The passage was uneventful despite rough seas, but problems began upon the yola’s approach to the coast. Leonardo, the captain, attempted to coordinate the landing with his contacts on shore but had difficulty communicating with them. For hours the yola trolled along the coast to locate the transports. At one point Leonardo asked the contacts on shore to signal with their headlights, but the signal was never seen. The captain and crew waited, they searched, and, as one witness put it, “they never took us ashore because they were waiting for a call that never arrived.”45 Dawn was approaching and desperation was mounting; it was only a matter of time before the yola would be spotted by enforcement aircraft. The crew was reluctant to land the yola for fear of capsize, “because we were hitting such bad weather—they were trying to get us on land by many ways, but it was not possible. It was not possible.” Anxious passengers pressured the captain and crew to land the yola, but they resisted because “the sea was very rough and there were rocks,” drowning was probable, and “it was better for everyone there to be taken to jail because they didn’t want anything bad to happen to anyone.” The captain and

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crew were indecisive and many passengers “were revolting because they wanted to be taken ashore.” Some asked to be taken closer to a beach so they could swim.46 The fruitless search continued all night and then, at 6:45 a.m., the pressure was intensified when a Coast Guard aircraft located the yola. At 1,000 to 1,500 feet in clear skies, the plane was visible. One passenger testified that the captain and crew knew they were captured and wanted to stop, but the passengers protested. In response the captain and crew “said we were going to stay there anyway,” but a majority of passengers were demanding a run for the shore.47 At about that time or shortly before, Leonardo received a call from— presumably—the trip organizer. Leonardo told the caller that the passengers were desperate and wanted to jump off and swim, and he did not know what to do. “We are lost,” he said. “What are we going to do with these people?” Leonardo passed the phone to Fernando (who was a neighbor of the organizer and had worked for him as a fishermen), and Fernando apparently got the order to take the yola ashore. The captain and the crew were nevertheless reluctant. Leonardo said that if they entered the breaking surf, “what no one wants to happen is going to happen,” meaning capsize and drowning. Fernando and another crew member, Santiago, were of the same opinion. Under pressure from the passengers, under the stress of imminent interdiction, and apparently under orders from the organizer on the phone, the captain and crew took a chance and made a run for shore.48 The yola was a mile off the coast of Cerro Gordo Beach near Vega Alta, about fifteen miles west of San Juan. The Coast Guard plane tracked it for about fifteen minutes going west, and then the yola turned to make landfall at a small beach surrounded by jagged rocks. About a thousand yards off the coast, in five- to six-­foot breaking surf, the yola was caught broadside to a wave and rolled over.49 The Coast Guard mission switched instantly from interdiction to rescue. The airplane dropped an inflated raft and helicopters arrived shortly thereafter, dropping life vests. Coast Guard helicopters with rescue swimmers hoisted passengers one by one from the water, left them on shore, and then returned to rescue other passengers. A total of twenty-­nine (or thirty-­five; sources vary) passengers were rescued by the helicopters. Coast Guard cutters and small boats, a CBP helicopter, Border Patrol agents, ICE agents, and FURA rescuers were also on the scene. By the end of the ordeal, there were seven known deaths and a probable eighth.50

Coast Guard rescue swimmers, suspended from helicopters, hoisted migrants from the surf and transported them to shore. Harnesses were not used in order to expedite the process and save as many lives as possible. Photograph by Dennis A. Jones, courtesy of El Vocero de Puerto Rico.

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One of the passengers, Yadira, was saved from drowning by Fernando; they were neighbors in a Nagua village and had known one another since Yadira was a child. Yadira was holding onto a gas tank for flotation when a frantic man approached, said he could not swim, and grabbed the tank from her. She was wearing a life vest but was weak and unable to reach the shore. Fernando swam with Yadira to help her to shore, but eventually she told him to leave and save himself because she was too exhausted to continue. “And he told me if I was going to drown he was going to drown with me because he was going to take me out of there.” Yadira was saved by Fernando and later, when Fernando was prosecuted, she testified against him as a government witness.51 Five men were charged with migrant smuggling under Section 1324. After refusal of plea offers with twenty- to twenty-­five-­year sentences, they were tried before a jury. When deaths result from migrant smuggling, as in this case, the law provides that the defendants may “be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.” The prosecutor originally overreached dramatically by seeking the death penalty, but the Department of Justice disapproved. (This case was under federal jurisdiction but tried in Puerto Rico, where the death penalty was abolished in 1929. The last execution was in 1927, and the 1952 Puerto Rican constitution specifically prohibits capital punishment.) The defendants were found guilty and their original sentences ranged between ten and seventeen years. On appeal all of the convictions were affirmed, but three of the sentences were amended (one by a 50 percent reduction).52 The resentencing of Fernando illustrates how the sentences were determined. The court began with a base offense level of twelve, which with no criminal history brings a sentence of 10 to 16 months. Adjustments (or sentence enhancements) were then made due to aggravating circumstances: because many migrants (eighty-­seven) were smuggled, a six-­level increase; because a knife or machete was used to keep order, a four-­level increase; because the offense created a substantial risk of death or bodily injury, a two-­level increase; and because the voyage resulted in seven deaths, an eight-­level increase. These adjustments brought the total offense level to thirty-­two, which carries a sentence of 121 to 151 months. Fernando was resentenced to 127 months (approximately ten and a half years).53 The sentence of the captain, Leonardo, was not changed on appeal and remained at 204 months (seventeen years). In October 2008 Leonardo filed an appeal (known as a petition for writ of certiorari) asking the U.S.

Migrants climb ashore onto jagged and sharp coral rock. The yola righted itself after capsize and provided a safe shelter for migrants awaiting rescue. The circular raft was dropped by a Coast Guard aircraft immediately after the capsize. In the background, to the left, a rescue swimmer, capsized passengers, and life vests are visible. Photograph by Dennis A. Jones, courtesy of El Vocero de Puerto Rico.

Some of the migrants, including suspected smugglers, were detained shortly after the capsize. Photograph by Dennis A. Jones, courtesy of El Vocero de Puerto Rico.

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Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision, but the request was denied. The spectacular rescue, the deaths, and the extensive media coverage made this high-­profile case an attractive venue for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to “make an example” or “send a message.” In a statement to the press the prosecutor emphasized deterrence: “We hope that the verdict in this case serves as a deterrent for those who organize this type of voyage.” Together with the United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, she also echoed an unsubstantiated threat to homeland security: in migrant vessels “the unscrupulous smugglers may help terrorists enter national territory.”54 The judge who presided at the trial and the sentence hearings shared the prosecutor’s belief that aggressive sentencing serves as a deterrent. The court, he said, “must send a powerful message” through long sentences so others considering this offense will understand the gravity of the consequences. Elsewhere, after confusing human trafficking with migrant smuggling, the judge reiterated that “this is a very serious offense. And therefore the Court has a responsibility to send a message that this will not be tolerated in the future.”55 During the trial the prosecutor understated the culpability of the trip organizer, who holds primary responsibility for the smuggling, and to a certain degree loaded this culpability onto the defendants. She did this, for example, by calculating the total sum of smuggling fees and implying incorrectly that this was profit to the defendants rather than to the organizer. More immediately prejudicial to the defendants, however, was the conflation of captain and crew: all the defendants, regardless of their hierarchical stations, were regarded and prosecuted as captains.56 As discussed earlier, many migrants who are unable to raise the smuggling fees, or who have personal relations with organizers or captains, work on voyages in lieu of full or partial payment. In March 2004, for example, Fernando migrated without charge by working as a crew member on a yola; this group was caught upon arrival and repatriated. A few months later, Fernando was made an offer by a neighbor who was the organizer of the trip that capsized in December. “I didn’t think twice,” Fernando said, because the offer included free passage plus 50,000 pesos (about $1,500) to be paid to Fernando’s family. (The money, in fact, was never paid.) In a legal perspective Fernando is guilty; he accepted payment to participate in an illegal enterprise. In context, however, Fernando was a migrant, not a willful smuggler of migrants. His motive was migration,

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not profit from smuggling other migrants, and the money promised to his family was, in his view, a kind of advance on the remittances he planned to send once he was working in Puerto Rico.57 Even when crew members are more decidedly complicit, their levels of responsibility, culpability, and compensation are well beneath those of the captain. The prosecutor recognized the hierarchical relation between Leonardo and the other defendants when she distinguished Leonardo as the “head captain” or “lead captain,” but this designation maintained the limitation of crew members’ roles to a single “captain” category. Once the distinction between captain and crew is dismissed, all of the defendants— from the one who gave the orders to the one who cut the salami—are represented as equally guilty. The appeals court recognized the impropriety of this hierarchical collapse and restored the distinction between captain and crew: “Although generally referred to by the government as ‘captains,’ [Leonardo] Hilario turned out to be the man in charge and the others, although sometimes involved in piloting, were crew.”58 The conflation of captain and crew in smuggling prosecutions has been occurring for decades. In 1991 an appeals court took issue with this tendency: We pause momentarily to express our concern over a practice which has become increasingly common in cases involving illegal alien smuggling from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico and which must decisively come to an end. Recent cases have seen the government label as “captains” (and consequently push for upward departures at sentencing based on the defendant’s leading role in the offense) individuals whose sole participation in the illegal alien smuggling venture has been occasionally to steer the vessel in which the illegal aliens were brought . . . We instruct sentencing courts that, henceforth, whenever the government attempts to ascribe principal status to a defendant in an illegal alien smuggling case, special care must be taken to ensure that the defendant’s role was in fact as the government has alleged.59 These admonitions are often unknown or ignored, however, and prosecutors continue to presume that a person at the tiller is a captain. The presumption is particularly interesting in the Hilario case because the captain (Leonardo) never piloted the boat during the thirty-­hour voyage. He delegated that laborious task to his subordinates. (Hours at the tiller are exhausting and stress the arm, shoulder, and back. Captains also mention

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the effects of constant vibration.) Piloting the boat was used as evidence to elevate crew members to the status of captains, when in fact it demonstrates their subordination to the captain whose orders they followed.60 Piloting was one of the aggravating circumstances that resulted in sentence adjustments. During the original sentence hearing, the court accepted piloting as a “special skill” that significantly facilitated the commission of the offense. An exasperated defense attorney tried to convince the court that operating an outboard engine did not conform to the spirit of the law: “That’s no special skill,” and “It’s a common skill, if you want to call it ‘skill,’ but it’s not a special skill. It’s something I can do.” The argument was unsuccessful before the presiding judge, but later the appeals court adopted it: “Steering a simple sailing vessel along a course, as directed by another, does not appear to us to be a special skill.” The special skill in migrant smuggling is not the operation of an outboard engine but rather the seafaring skills needed to captain a boat across open seas, which was Leonardo’s domain. “By refocusing the skill from captaining to outboard motor operation, the prosecution made the enhancement broadly applicable to other defendants.” This maneuver was consistent with the prosecutor’s tendency to homogenize culpability and to generalize sentence adjustments.61 Another adjustment resulted from the use of a knife. Santiago cut salami with a long kitchen knife and at least once had it in his hand when he yelled to the passengers to keep order. “He would cut the salami in half to give it to the people using that knife and there was one time he was speaking to the people telling them to relax with that knife in his hands, but it wasn’t like he was doing anything with it.” The knife graduated to “machete” in the prosecutor’s discourse (by virtue of ambiguity in witness testimony), but the appeals court restored “knife.” All of the defendants, not just Santiago, were given a four-­point sentence enhancement because it was “reasonably foreseeable” that the captain and other crew members could have used the knife/machete as well. The prosecutor alleged that “a machete was used to threaten passengers and keep them seated to avoid detection,” and the appeals court upheld that view while at once acknowledging that “the knife was brought on board innocently and the smuggling of illegal aliens does not normally involve coercion or violence.” At the resentencing hearing, a baffled Fernando said, “We are being accused of threatening with a machete, and I never saw that threat. I never saw it. I could not say that that threat ever occurred.”62 The prosecutor’s most adventurous elaboration of the facts resulted

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in the theory that the passengers were kidnapped. The theory was based largely on a misunderstanding and literal translation of what migrants call a secuestro. The prosecutor restricted this term to its literal meaning, “kidnapping,” and represented the passengers as hostages held by force (in part by the knife) in order to extort additional payment. As discussed earlier, however, secuestro is used by migrants to describe a service they need and choose voluntarily. Puerto Ricans at landing areas shelter and transport migrants in exchange for payment, and the migrants are held— “kidnapped”—until their relatives in San Juan (to whom they are often delivered) pay the fee.63 The voyage in question, which offered land transportation at both ends, intended to link with the buses of “kidnappers” upon arrival. Most of the yola passengers understood that they would be charged additionally for this service. When the prosecutor asked a witness, “What do you mean by kidnappers?” the witness replied: “The people that were going to rescue us” and “who we were going to pay a certain amount of money . . . so that they would take us to our relatives.” Other witnesses testified similarly: “We were supposed to be picked up at a beach” and “they were going to take us to the place where we were going to go”; and “they do a sort of kidnapping and whoever is going to pick you up gets charged some money.” Some passengers planned to hit the beach and run on their own, without using the secuestro service. These passengers certainly did not consider themselves hostages or obligated to pay additional fees.64 The prosecutor maintained that the passengers were held hostage on the yola and not taken ashore because the buses could not be located and consequently the additional fee could not be charged. After arrival and before the attempted landing, the migrants “are held captive” and thus “they are no longer voluntary participants” “because what they wanted was for that yawl [yola] to be brought ashore and for them to be cut loose.” The responsible (if indecisive) actions of the captain—who was attempting to connect with the land transportation and who avoided landing through the surf for fear of capsize—was thus represented as profiteering. This resulted from “the oldest motive in history,” money, again incorrectly implying that such money would benefit the captain and crew rather than the trip organizer or bus-­service providers.65 Profiteering was the motive for holding the passengers hostage on the yola but then also for taking them ashore. The latter argument was based on an unsubstantiated claim made by a single witness: “They had told us that if they caught us in the water, half of the money would be lost, and

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that if they caught us on land, everything, all of it would be lost.” The prosecutor maintained that the yola was rushed to shore to avoid half-­ reimbursement to the passengers, and that this reckless, profit-­motivated act resulted in seven deaths. The claim is inconsistent with other witness testimony and with the events as they apparently transpired, but in any case reimbursement is highly unlikely, if not ludicrous, given the pattern of yola payment established over decades.66 The motivations of yola migrants as material witnesses are also cause for concern. In the overwhelming majority of smuggler prosecutions there are no migrants who are willing to testify, even when there are deaths. In this case, conversely, of the seventy-­nine survivors either forty-­nine or fifty-­one (the accounts vary) waived their rights and were available as material witnesses. Thirty were ultimately selected, and after defense objections the number was reduced to ten. An Associated Press article reported that the other twenty fled after they were granted bail, but the docket shows about seven arrest warrants for pretrial absconders. There were also revocations of pretrial release, which likewise suggest flight. For these potential witnesses, the pretext of testifying served as a means to complete the migration that failed on the yola.67 Material witnesses are generally given bail and work permits if they can provide approved third-­party custodians in the jurisdiction, usually family members with whom they will live. This is a temporary arrangement; the witnesses are subsequently repatriated. In the present case, all of the witnesses and some others who were not witnesses were given work permits and allowed to remain in the country legally for an indefinite period following the trial. After he testified, one witness was permitted to leave Puerto Rico and live and work in Boston. When asked by a defense attorney if he had been promised anything in exchange for his testimony, the witness responded that he had. “What have they promised you?” the lawyer asked, and the witness replied, “To keep me in the United States.” The prosecutor clarified that the witnesses were never promised permanent residency, but were told they would be kept in the Unites States “for sometime [sic] after the trial until things cool down,” meaning to avoid reprisals in the Dominican Republic for their testimony.68 Nevertheless, according to an AUSA, a federal public defender, a defense attorney in this case, and one of the incarcerated defendants, some or all of the witnesses were granted permanent lawful residency in the United States. The residency was perhaps granted under the S visa program, which is “for aliens who provide critical, reliable information nec-

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essary to the successful investigation or prosecution of a criminal organization” and “is particularly useful for witnesses or informants who would otherwise be in danger in their home countries.”69 For these witnesses, like the absconders, the justice system served as a means to fulfill the purpose of the failed yola voyage, with the exception that those who testified remain in the United States legally. Witness motives are mixed at best, and objectivity is compromised when residency is the reward for testimony. Some try hard to please. One witness apparently learned a new word, “negligence,” and, doing his best, explained that he cooperated with the prosecution due to “a lack of negligence” on the part of the smugglers. Another witness and now lawful permanent resident is the daughter of the trip organizer, which is to say the daughter of the person who is ultimately responsible for the voyage and the deaths, who fits the UN protocol’s definition of a participant in organized crime, and who profited from the voyage despite its failure. While the captain and crew are serving long sentences and then will be deported, the man responsible for this and other yola voyages is eligible for an immigrant visa to the United States through the sponsorship of his daughter.70 Deterrence If they were to put a giant wall right in the middle of the passage, people would still go. Boats would take them out to the wall. They’d climb over by ropes, down the other side, and other boats would take them on. A former yola captain

The dual strategy of interdiction and deterrence has been used in border enforcement at least since the Mariel boatlift, and “prevention through deterrence” has been policy since the early 1990s. Deterrence is built into CBIG procedures by a “publicize and deter” component that follows interdictions. Even a glance at migration statistics over the past twenty years indicates that the results have been mixed, however, not necessarily because of inherent flaws in the manner of deterrence (or interdiction) but rather because deterrents are only effective when the will to migrate is weak. Otherwise the inhibition caused by the deterrent is insufficient to the need (or compulsion) to migrate. The best one can say is that some prospective migrants who are aware of and can understand a deterrent may be sufficiently discouraged to defer migration.71

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Prosecution and harsh sentencing are intended to send a “powerful message” to smugglers, but the message is rarely received. Organizers are more or less indifferent to these consequences because they remain protected in the Dominican Republic and shielded behind degrees of anonymity and corruption in law enforcement. In order for the ostensibly powerful message to be an effective deterrent to prospective captains, they would need to be aware of harsh sentences. The captains and crew members I interviewed are aware of border enforcement but hardly to the degree of monitoring sentences. Their sense of consequences is less carefully quantified, and an extra measure of years added for deterrent effect goes unnoticed. Before and after the U.S. Attorney and courts send a message, prospective captains and crews know that “te dan muchos años”—they give you a lot of years—with little concern for details and with broad leeway for interpretation.72 The message is processed in manners favorable to the recipient, not the sender. With the same positive mindset and sense of invulnerability that emboldens migrants facing risks on yolas, prospective captains dismiss the failure of others to incompetence and bad luck. The threat— of three years or thirty—is deflected because that sentence happens to someone else. Captains regard themselves as smarter and more capable, and they “overestimate their own ability to avoid the mistakes that have led to others like them being caught.” Fernando, who himself received a send-­a-­message sentence, similarly said that his incarceration does not deter yola captains because they think, “I can do it better; I won’t get caught.” Even when the consequences are known in all of their ominous specificity, “potential offenders commonly cannot or will not bring such knowledge to bear to guide their conduct.”73 It is unlikely that prospective captains would be scared straight. Conformity to the law is conditioned by the probability of punishment, not the severity, and for this reason the deterrent effect of high-­profile, make-­ an-­example cases rarely outlasts a news cycle. “There is no way that any sentence would deter the illegal immigration,” a Dominican consul in Puerto Rico said after the Hilario trial. Many captains in the Dominican Republic are deferring yola voyages due to a fear of being caught, but that fear is earned over years of enforcement in the Mona Passage, not by courtroom sensationalism. The sensationalism has more of an impact on the prosecutor’s career than it does on the deterrence of migrant smuggling. The same is true among elected officials: immigrants are “generally a political liability as a cause,” and “the public perception of anarchy

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predictably leads risk averse politicians to endorse populist exclusionary sentiments and to call for draconian law enforcement responses.”74 The prosecution of migrants on a second attempt at improper entry is also considered a deterrent. The deputy chief patrol agent at Border Patrol in Puerto Rico maintains that the decrease in yola migration is due to this deterrent effect, because people know that after the first try they will be prosecuted.75 But which people know? All of my federal informants were aware of prosecution, but none of them knew if interdicted migrants were informed. That seemed important—prosecution cannot deter them if migrants are unaware—so I continued to pursue the point during interviews at federal agencies. The answer came finally from a cutter captain, in two parts: “We have our standard piece of paper, it’s written in Spanish, and we give that to them, basically, and it identifies the whole process. It identifies what biometrics is, how this data is going to be used, and the ramifications for legal actions.” When I asked if a copy of the paper was given to each migrant, he responded: “What we normally do is read it to them as a whole.” “Nobody is going to understand that” was the reaction of an AUSA to whom I told the story. The difficulties of hearing a public-­address message at sea, the unfamiliarity with key concepts (“biometrics”), the burial of the critical message (prosecution of recidivists) in bureaucratic-­process prose, and a general indifference to broadcast messages all make understanding unlikely. When I asked another AUSA if migrants know they will be prosecuted on a second entry attempt, she said, “No, they don’t know. I don’t think they do know.” Later, after conviction for improper-­entry offenses, magistrates do explain that subsequent return will result in felony charges, but even this face-­to-­face explanation has no deterrent effect on many migrants. Migrants who have been biometrically registered at sea and have seen recidivist passengers taken ashore for prosecution do not fully understand that they, too, will be arrested if they attempt reentry. The illegality remains abstract, beside the point, or someone else’s problem. Morena, who has been registered biometrically on a Coast Guard cutter (more than once), thought that only criminals and captains were arrested. Marta, who also was in the audience during an announcement on a Coast Guard cutter, learned nothing from the experience but heard from friends that one gets arrested on the second or third attempt. Marta was not sure if the sentence was served in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. Del-

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gadino thought captains were in danger but not migrants, and Amado had the same view: detention is “only for the captains, that’s all. The passengers are not guilty of any of this.” All of these perceptions illustrate that “potential offenders commonly do not know the legal rules, either directly or indirectly, even those rules that have been explicitly formulated to produce a behavioral effect.”76 Alberto was better informed: he had learned on television that they take your fingerprints, register you in a computer, and give you prison time if they catch you again. Chicho was well informed too, based on the experience of a friend who had been interdicted at sea. (“Those are our messengers,” as an AUSA put it.) “If they catch you a first time,” Chicho said, “they deport [repatriate] you. But if you return again and they catch you again, you have a problem.” How do they know if you went back? “If you go the first time, they put you in the computer. They take your fingerprints, they take everything, everything, everything. When you go again and they catch you, they’re going to look for you in the computer.” Chicho’s source of the information, Mario, was prosecuted for a second entry attempt and was deported. Mario subsequently tried to enter by air with fraudulent documents and was again caught and prosecuted. He exemplifies a model of recidivism: even when the law is understood and the consequences are known, the perceived benefits of migration and the force of compulsion overpower the deterrence of legal sanctions. When one means seems perilous (yola), another is attempted (fraudulent documents).77 Prosecution and harsh sentencing have little deterrent effect on captains and relatively none on migrants, but there is no doubt that enhanced border enforcement has deterred—or deferred—yola migration. It is the probability of failure rather than the risk of incarceration that deters migrants. Their primary concern is loss of the smuggling fee, and enforcement deters indirectly through that concern. The consequences of enforcement—failed voyages, loss of invested capital and possessions, and the inability to send remittances to dependent families—all deter and defer migration, or displace it to other channels.78 When I asked migrants why yola voyages had significantly decreased, a common response was “Hay más vigilancia,” which translates roughly to “There is more border enforcement.” “People don’t want to lose their money,” Claudia said, and Christian, along the same lines, explained: “Why am I going to risk thirty thousand pesos [about $875], mortgage or sell my house, if they are probably going to catch me?” Santiago focused

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on technology: “There aren’t a lot of trips because they look for you with radar; they find you quickly.” Saúl similarly explained that “there’s too much technology now” and that “there’s no opportunity for anything” because air surveillance sees you before you know it. When I asked Julio why there were fewer voyages, he responded, “More enforcement, on both sides” because the Dominican navy is active and not accepting payoffs. It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of enhanced security in itself because the inceptions of CBIG and biometrics at sea in July and December 2006, respectively, were followed by the U.S. recession that began in December 2007. There were precipitous drops in migration flows from fiscal years 2006 to 2007 (from 7,101 to 4,055) and again in 2008 (to 1,874). Migrants often mention border enforcement and economic conditions together as a compound reason for staying home. Their will to migrate diminishes in relation to the accumulation of factors that increase the probability of failure. Many migrants nevertheless specify the U.S. economic recession as the primary reason for the decrease in departures. They expressed this with such statements as “It’s not like it used to be,” “There’s not work any more,” and “It’s not worth it—it used to be but not any more.” Santiago, who traveled by yola to Puerto Rico in 2004 and returned in 2006, said migration has decreased because people “know that things are bad here and there too, in both places.” Some refer to the economic situation as global: why leave if it is bad everywhere? The general sentiment is that the goal of migration—economic advancement—would probably be impeded, so the expense and dangers of the journey are not risked. Olivario, a captain who stopped organizing yola trips when the demand fell after 2004, joked that “pretty soon the Puerto Ricans will be coming here.” The dramatic decline in Dominican migrant flow is largely attributable to these two factors, border enforcement and a lack of employment abroad, within the context of the supporting factors—global, cultural, psychological—described in previous chapters. Border enforcement continues to be a deterrent insofar as the situation of prospective migrants is not desperate. A major economic or political crisis in the Dominican Republic would trigger massive migration with little regard for enforcement. Such an exodus would overwhelm current federal assets in Puerto Rico and test the viability of biometrics at sea and routine prosecution. Coast Guard cutters would be taken out of service to process one or two yolas— transferring the passengers, taking biometrics, awaiting instructions, and ferrying passengers to shore for prosecution and/or to La Romana for re-

Border Enforcement 209

Maritime Migrant Flow from the Dominican Republic Year

Number of migrants

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

4,171 2,257 4,199 6,382 11,958 10,053

Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 (through April 30)

Number of migrants 7,101 4,055 1,874 1,268 281 371 351

Source: U.S. Coast Guard, Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations. Coast Guard migration statistics are based on interdictions by the Coast Guard and other agencies (such as the Border Patrol and the Dominican navy), intelligence estimates of successful landings, detected turnaround (aborted) voyages, and known migrant deaths. The numbers correlate to federal fiscal years, which begin on October 1, end on September 30, and are designated by the ending years.

patriation—while other yolas landed successfully. Border Patrol would be stressed, federal courts and prosecutors would be backlogged, immigration detention and jails would be filled, and the migrant flow would continue as long as the will to migrate overpowered the impediments. The effectiveness of enforcement as a deterrent is also contingent on how much the government is willing to invest, and for how long. After major crises, such as the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, surge enforcements prevent mass exodus. Shoreline flights and forward deployment of cutters off the coast make it clear to migrants that they would likely be caught soon after departure. The surge ends when the threat of mass migration seems alleviated, and the limited assets are redeployed to other operations. The same was true when the Carter administration attempted to end the Mariel boatlift by prohibiting southbound departures to transport more Cubans. The effort was successful as long as the route was blocked. “I am sure a lot of Cuban exiles in Miami are just waiting for the Coast Guard to get out of their way,” a Coast Guard spokesman explained.79 Unlike these events, Dominican migration is an ongoing phenomenon, so a high enforcement presence as a deterrent must be maintained indefinitely. Presuming limited resources allocated judiciously and strate-

210 Undocumented Dominican Migration

gically, to what degree is that maintenance feasible or desirable? Some of my informants among captains and migrants described their current inaction as a “pause” or “rest”; they are waiting until the situation changes. If it never changes and their will to migrate increases, they will likely adapt to the new threshold of risk. When I asked a Coast Guard intelligence analyst why migrants would be deterred by interdiction if they are not by death at sea, his answer was remarkably on target: “I look at the threat to their life because of the dangers of the sea as a constant—that never changes. The Coast Guard interdiction part of it changes; it fluctuates. So what they would do in times when the presence is high and there is more danger to them, they would choose not to pick that time to make their move; they would try to pick a time when the Coast Guard was focused somewhere else.” Border enforcement “is a variable that they can track and pick the best time when the Coast Guard is least a threat to them.” Deterrence by enforcement was well illustrated by Operation Monkey Wrench, which effectively stopped the smuggling of Cubans from the Dominican Republic to Mona Island. A 2006 Coast Guard after-­action report states that “it is evident that high profile enforcement operation has a deterring effect” but also that “during the duration of the operation, smugglers were denied the use of Mona Island as an incursion site.” The smugglers were deterred because the island was constantly guarded, with cutters stationed around the clock and a Border Patrol contingent on the island, at times with land-­based radar.80 But that is not deterrence. The smugglers were deprived access, not deterred. The border-­enforcement resources would have to be committed permanently in order to prevent the resurgence of smuggling to Mona Island, which indeed occurred after Monkey Wrench ended. The Mona example illustrates how intense border enforcement is an overcompensation for misguided policy. Even in the absence of any enforcement whatsoever, no smuggler would again transport any Cuban to Mona Island if the wet foot/dry foot privileges were terminated by Congress. There would be no purpose; the migrants, stranded on the island, would be repatriated upon rescue rather than paroled into the United States. Extrapolating from this specific example to the broader context, the strategy, intensity, objectives, and targets of border enforcement would change dramatically if the United States had sensible and coherent immigration policies. Chasing yolas, in the last analysis, is a compensatory measure with an unfavorable cost/benefit ratio. It is not a structural solution.

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In some respects Dominican migration is an anomaly, particularly when compared to migration across the U.S.-­Mexico border. In the latter case, “as more restrictive policies increase the obstacles to crossing borders, migrants turn to smugglers rather than pay the increased costs of unaided attempts that prove unsuccessful.” Dominican yola migrants, conversely, have responded to border enforcement (together with captain scams) by depending less on smugglers. The open seas between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico were initially favorable to the emergence of professional smugglers because vessels and navigational expertise were required to make the crossing, but Dominicans later began to combine their resources for independent, migrant-­organized voyages.81 At the U.S.-­Mexico border, in addition, “there is little evidence that tighter border controls have been successful in stopping the smuggling of people across borders,” and “the expensive post-­IRCA [Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986] enforcement regime has had no detectable effect either in deterring undocumented migrants or in raising the probability of their apprehension.” Dominican migration to Puerto Rico again contrasts with these assertions because border enforcement, together with a lack of employment in the United States, has dramatically reduced migrant flow.82 Ironically, despite the U.S. arsenal of enforcement and deterrence, the migrants I interviewed were most immediately deterred by a myth that was circulating among them. This myth, which conjectures that yolas are being attacked by submarines, is an effective deterrent because it addresses the specific concerns of migrants (death at sea and being victimized by unscrupulous captains) rather than the concerns (such as prosecution) that law enforcement officials assume are deterrent. As one scholar put it, “Knowing how rational people think [arationally], rather than imagining how they ought to think, should help analysts better understand persuasion.”83 The myth is an expression of the fear and vulnerability caused by inexplicable deaths at sea, and, unlike abstract prosecution and incarceration, it has an immediacy and emotive power that effectively deter. It is also exempt from the general dismissive idea that “it can’t happen to me.”84

212 Undocumented Dominican Migration

Migrant Knowledge Migrants and captains have limited access to accurate information concerning border enforcement, and consequently their knowledge is fragmentary and often erroneous. This is particularly apparent in regard to technology. The lack of specific information does not preclude an understanding, however, that “radar” (all surveillance technology is generally called “radar”) on cutters and aircraft has the capacity to detect yolas, even at night, and that thereafter interdiction is probable. As a countermeasure the captain turns off the engine because “radar is something that at so many kilometers can hear the motor.” Amado added that a twenty-­ horsepower engine is quiet enough to go undetected, and some captains cover engines with clothes to muffle the noise. Others believe that radar detects the engine cover, so it is removed and thrown overboard. Afterward, as Valdesio explained, “they hear the motor but can’t figure out where it is coming from.” Turning off the engine is pointless in regard to radar evasion, but the tactic is accidentally effective because the yola stops generating a wake. During daylight the long, white wake trailing behind a yola is more easily visible from the air than the yola itself, and at night the infrared camera detects the heat signature of the wake, which elongates the profile of the yola and likewise enhances its visibility. (This detection occurs because infrared senses contrast, and the wake water is moderately warmer than the ocean around it.) Moreno had the clearest understanding of infrared technology, although he underestimated the sensitivity. “Body heat is projected to a computer. If there are twenty dots there are twenty people. At night body warmth is cooler—they can’t detect it with the computer—but the motor is detected, because it’s hotter.” As a countermeasure, Moreno turns off the engine and cools it with a wrap of wet towels. A Dash 8 pilot said this tactic is common: “They put their T-­shirts in the water to cool them down and wrap the top of the engine with wet T-­shirts, because they think we can’t see.” Despite the cooling, however, the engine is still hot enough to detect. Many captains believe cell phones are detected. “It’s the same as the motor,” Delgadino said, so one must keep a cell phone turned off during voyages. Amado took out his phone, opened it up, and explained that the battery has to be removed to avoid detection. Diego’s yola left from Miches in 2005, and Border Patrol was on the beach awaiting its arrival; he

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thought this occurred because a passenger called her family on approach. When I asked at Border Patrol and Coast Guard if yolas were located by call monitoring or GPS satellite tracking of cell phones, a spooky quiet was followed by versions of “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” The closest I came to an answer was “I know that technology is out there.” Another common belief among captains and migrants is that the Puerto Rican coast is not guarded or is less guarded on holidays. This is derived largely from projection of Dominican norms into a foreign context where they do not apply. When I met Emilio, for example, he was planning a trip to depart on May 16, 2008, the day of presidential elections, because the navy would be taking the day off. That idea gets extended to Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Fourth of July, and other U.S. holidays, which could in fact have more patrols if historically those days showed more traffic. Similarly, some captains believe the Coast Guard does not patrol during bad weather, so they take their chances in storms. Dominican norms also contribute to the idea that U.S. patrols have fixed schedules. “We know when the captain goes home on weekends; he comes back on Monday,” Valdesio said, in reference to a Dominican navy officer. Delgadino said the patrols come at 7 p.m. and leave at 7 a.m.; yolas can depart freely after that. When these ideas are projected to the U.S. Coast Guard, migrants and captains report variations of fixed patrol schedules that make evasion a question of proper timing. Javier explained that there were air patrols at 9 a.m. and at 4:00 p.m. Olivario thought “there are no patrols on Saturdays.” Gordito said, “on Sundays they make a check a little after 1 p.m. and then go home.” I asked Francisco if his 2005 trip ran into any patrols, and he replied that they arrived at 4 a.m.: “There’s no border enforcement that late.” Another timing tactic, pausing en route, is perhaps more effective. When the Dominican navy informs the Coast Guard of a departure, the migrant vessel is anticipated within a particular time frame. Some captains depart and then delay en route in order to disrupt the timing and evade the heightened vigilance. This is especially the case when migrants travel in boats that are reported stolen. Yola captains have devised a number of other tactics to evade detection. These are all simple and, in comparison to the high-­tech sophistication of the adversary, even primitive, but they evidence a moneyless ingenuity against the odds.85 Quiet departure and arrival, for example, usually occur under the cover of darkness. Yolas that approach Puerto Rico in daylight generally wait

214 Undocumented Dominican Migration

until nightfall to land. Whenever possible, the smaller engine is used to minimize wake and noise on approach. Víctor’s trip arrived with plenty of time before nightfall, so the captain and crew turned off the engine (“so it wouldn’t be detected”) and, using boards, rowed slowly to shore from a distance. Travel by night without navigation lights is the preference of yola captains for the obvious reasons, but it might be counterproductive. A vessel without lights fits the yola profile and invites greater scrutiny. Another common tactic is covering yolas with blue tarps, particularly when detection seems imminent. Yolas themselves are usually painted blue, and the intent of the tarp is camouflage. When surveillance aircraft or cutters are nearby, the yola engine is turned off, the passengers crouch or lie down, the tarp covers everything, and the yola drifts until the danger of detection passes. On occasion the tarp is used in motion, during a slow approach to the coast, with just the captain’s head sticking out. Some captains tarp the yola during the day and travel at night.86 The effectiveness of these “blue tarp ops,” as the Coast Guard calls them, is largely a matter of perspective. At sea level, a cutter captain explained, a tarped yola hiding in waves is effectively camouflaged. From the air, however, “it kind of makes me giggle,” a pilot said, and I understood why when I saw the photographs. “The ocean is purple, black, black, so blue that it is purple,” as Delgadino put it, and from above the bright blue tarp is conspicuous. At night the Dash 8 infrared camera is sensitive enough to reveal heads—black from their heat signature—even when covered by a tarp. Route innovation is another means of evading border enforcement. Rather than heading due east to cross the Mona Passage, a common diversion from the Samaná Peninsula area is to first head northeast and then turn southeast to Puerto Rico. Many of these voyages land on the north coast rather than on the more commonly used west coast. The same occurs in reverse with southern voyages; they first go south and then north. A secondary advantage of these diversions is that they blend in better with north-­south or south-­north traffic, which is less scrutinized than the east-­west trajectory of most migrant voyages. Diversionary maneuvers are also improvised en route to try to evade cutters seen in the distance or to escape an anticipated cutter after the yola is reported by aircraft. And finally, countersurveillance helps yola captains to choose their moments. “They are watching us, but we are also watching them,” Delgadino said. On the Dominican side captains are relatively competent and confident—“We can take care of ourselves here”—but on the Puerto Rican

Border Enforcement 215

side most captains have little support. Large-­scale smuggling organizations have more resources. A Border Patrol agent explained, “You have people who will sit on the beach and call on the phone. ‘Hey, Border Patrol passed by. Hey, the aircraft just left. We see the Coast Guard. We see CBP, their boat, they’re over here in Cabo Rojo, they’re over here in Aguadilla.” There is a parking area at the end of the Ramey runway in Aguadilla that makes it simple to monitor Dash 8 patrols. “The smugglers say to someone, I’ll pay you fifty bucks to watch the aircraft come and go.” Also to migrants’ advantage are the limitations of border-­enforcement equipment. The Coast Guard’s fleet of 110-­foot and 123-­foot patrol boats, acquired between 1986 and 1992, is nearing the end of its service life. In 2006 Coast Guard cutters nationally were fully mission-­capable only 56 percent of the time. Of the twelve cutters sent to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, ten had mission-­affecting problems, including two that were forced to return to port for repair and one to emergency dry dock. When I was last at Sector San Juan in June 2010, the cutter Cushing had just returned from a nine-­month overhaul. The Cushing was being double-­ crewed (when one crew is off, the other is on) to compensate for the dry dock of two other cutters likewise being overhauled. Of the five cutters in the sector’s fleet, three were operational. The situation was similar regarding CBP’s two Dash 8 airplanes. One was down for service, and the other was flying two-­hour (instead of four-­hour) patrols to extend the period before its scheduled maintenance. Even when everything is working, a pilot said, “we can’t be out there 24/7.”87 In the end, yolas have a measure of success because the ocean is vast, the coastline is long, the resources are limited, and the radar screen is covered with dots. Captain ingenuity combines with a thousand uncontrollable variables, including luck, to determine which migrants make it through.

Saúl

The paved roads turn to dirt and then to improvised trails that get smaller and smaller until the last wet stretch—you do that on foot—descends steeply to the house. I had seen Saúl a few times during previous trips but the mood now seemed different. The shacks inhabited by his extended family were vacant, and even his wife and two kids were gone because the wife—suffering through a difficult pregnancy—returned to her family in La Vega to give birth. The day before, when I set up the meeting with Saúl, we found him on a day-­labor job at an apartment complex, digging a well that would be lined with rocks. His clothes were covered with mud but his face was clean. The pants were torn at the knees. Saúl walks funny, kind of lumbering as though he were heavy, maybe a little hunched, with his brooding head downward. He tried to seem happy to see me. Saúl’s house is a depressing shack cheered up with blue paint, and on the inside the only signs of life are a school plaque and snapshots from a two-­year residence in San Juan. The photos hang on nails banged through from outside. Saúl poses in the image of the man he hoped to be, the man he was becoming, with an ideal of attitude conveyed through style. “Look at that chain,” he says, pointing. All of his pride is invested in these glimpes, in this testimony, of a lost life that he longs to recover. Saúl’s beleaguered self-­identity—who I am, who I was, who I could be—is painfully registered in the juxtaposition of these photos and the context that gives them such importance. Saúl came out brushing his teeth—we had woken him—then left to

Photographs on the wall of Saúl’s house

“Look at that chain.”

Saúl 219

look for a migrant who was supposed to meet me for an interview. A couple of menacing guys approached a few minutes later, and the timing was such that the departure and the arrival seemed related. Chencho, my assistant, sat on my camera. The two guys hovered without clear purpose, Chencho gave a mild display of machismo, and I hid my anxiety beneath a façade, neither assertive nor deferent, right in their faces, because fear is their best entry. When the two guys finally left without incident, Chencho produced a knife that opened to a five-­inch blade: “I carry it just in case.” It didn’t seem like something that big could fit in his pocket. Saúl eventually returned with his friend—the migrant for the interview—and we continued with business as usual. Saúl, now twenty-­seven, has been involved with yola trips since he was fifteen. In 2003 he worked as crew (for a captain who is now incarcerated in the United States) on a voyage with 135 people. He made it safely to Puerto Rico, settled in San Juan, found work, and thrived in his new life abroad. But the thought of his wife alone in the Dominican Republic eventually began to haunt and overwhelm him—Where was she, what was she doing, who was she with? His frequent calls could no longer alleviate the tension, “until I made the decision between money and her. And instead of money I chose her.” He was relieved upon his return: “I found my wife normal, without any story,” meaning that she hadn’t had an affair. Many people aren’t that lucky, Saúl explained: they forfeit everything in Puerto Rico for love and then discover that their spouses love someone else. However difficult the situation in the Dominican Republic, Saúl said, he would rather be at home with his family. At least in theory. He made a good-­faith effort to earn a living—underpaid odd jobs, construction—but eventually despaired and resolved to return to Puerto Rico. This voyage, in September 2008, nearly cost him his life. Saúl was one of three crew members who departed with a captain en route to a beach in Cabrera, where about thirty migrants were awaiting departure. The captain and crew were apparently unaware of Tropical Storm Hanna (August 28–September 8, 2008) and their yola—caught in it—capsized before picking up the passengers. According to a Coast Guard report, one of the crew members managed to call his wife twice and advise her of the yola’s location. Saúl and the three others tied a rope lengthwise and crosswise on the overturned boat; they held onto that rope for a day and a night while the waves crashed over them and the storm blew them out to sea. To warm

220 Undocumented Dominican Migration

themselves they went in turns beneath the boat, with their bodies in the water (which was warmer than the air) while breathing in an air space inside the overturned hull. One of the four—the one who had called his wife—submerged to warm himself and never resurfaced. That was the last time Saúl and the others saw him. After the storm passed the three survivors drifted for days without food or water. Early in the ordeal they found a floating coconut; thereafter, in desperation, they drank salt water. On the sixth day their quasi-­comatose inertia was adrenalized by the vague apparition, almost a hallucination, hazy, of a tiny airplane in the distance. A muffled image, something like a voice you think you hear through a wall. They waved but the plane turned away. Then it circled around, approached, and shot out a smoke flare. “I cried,” Saúl said. “When I saw that smoke I saw God.” I responded that the rescue seemed almost a miracle, and Saúl corrected me: “Not almost; it was a miracle. There is no ‘almost’ in that.” Saúl’s rescue well exemplifies the disparity between migrants’ improvised, budgetless voyages—broken boats, exhausted engines, no forecast—and the billion-­dollar, supertechnological enforcement apparatus that impedes their illegal entry but also—as in this case—locates them and saves their lives. Trapped in abject poverty, grateful to God, and hanging onto his overturned yola, Saúl could scarcely imagine that the newly installed Selex Seaspray 7500E radar system on a Coast Guard HC-­130H Hercules long-­range surveillance aircraft from Air Station Clearwater, Florida, on deployment to the Coast Guard’s Aguadilla air station and dispatched at Dominican navy request, would detect his fifteen-­foot boat in choppy waters and vector in an HH-­65C helicopter from Aguadilla for the rescue, or that the plane’s onboard automatic identification system, which is integrated into the radar system, would locate a nearby Good Samaritan vessel, a cruise ship, to assist if needed (ultimately the assistance was not needed). Nor could he imagine that later his rescue would illustrate the successes of high-­tech platforms and interagency cooperation during a Coast Guard report to the U.S. House of Representatives. Saúl: poster boy for appropriations.1 Techno-­jargon and prearticulate moans converged surreally as the rescue swimmer hoisted the three defeated migrants from one world into another. The helicopter transported Saúl and his companions to the Puerto Plata airport in the Dominican Republic, where they received emergency medical care before transfer to a hospital.

Saúl 221

Twelve days after his release from the hospital, Saúl was on another yola heading for Puerto Rico. This attempt was interdicted at sea by the Coast Guard; Saúl was repatriated. He was running out of hope. “I struggled and struggled and have remained in the same place because I haven’t had a little luck.” His adult life had been organized by “the same illusion as everyone—to get out of here,” but now he was capitulating reluctantly to a less hospitable version of his future. Saúl was suffering the awareness of his own insignificance, succumbing to a humility—a futility—that he recognized but could not remedy. His post-­capsize fearlessness had yielded to apprehension and his knowledge of border enforcement to prudence: yola trips, at least for the moment, were out. The dream was dissipating. Saúl had dead-­ended. He had always thought that God would deliver him by yola to a paradise abroad; now he thanks God for being alive.2

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Notes

Preface 1. Regarding the word “smuggler” as it relates to migrant agency, see Ilse van Liempt and Veronika Bilger, “Methodological and Ethical Dilemmas in Research among Smuggled Migrants,” in The Ethics of Migration Research Methodology: Dealing with Vulnerable Immigrants, ed. Ilse van Liempt and Veronika Bilger (Sussex, England: Academic Press, 2009), 119. These scholars effort “to nuance the stereotypical image of ‘the smuggler’ and ‘the smuggled migrant’ and to understand their roles in irregular migration processes” met with resistance; see 118–120. 2. For discussion of “undocumented” and related terms, see Khalid Koser, “Irregular Migration, State Security, and Human Security,” paper presented for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration (Geneva, 2005), 5. “Undocumented” is appropriate in reference to Dominican boat migrants because they travel, precisely, without documents, as opposed to migrants who arrive through ports of entry and overstay their visas. 3. The first and fourth quoted passages are from Douglas S. Massey, Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor, Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium, International Studies in Democracy (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1998), 15; also see 9. The second and third quoted passages are from Douglas S. Massey, Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor, “An Evaluation of International Migration Theory: The North American Case,” Population and Development Re-

224 Notes to Pages xiii–xiv view 20/4 (1994): 700–701. The last quoted passage is from Douglas S. Massey, “Social Structure, Household Strategies, and the Cumulative Causation of Migration,” Population Index 56 (1990): 17; on 19, “the fragmented way social scientists have pursued the study of human migration in the past is not likely to bear much additional fruit.” For definition and discussion of the terms “micro” and “macro,” see Richard Münch and Neil J. Smelser, “Relating the Micro and Macro,” in The Micro-­Macro Link, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Münch, and Neil J. Smelser (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 356–357. For other statements regarding the integration of micro and macro levels, see Gordon F. De Jong and James T. Fawcett, “Motivations for Migration: An Assessment and a Value-­Expectancy Research Model,” in Migration Decision Making: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Microlevel Studies in Developed and Developing Countries, ed. Gordon F. De Jong and Robert W. Gardner (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), 13; and, in the same volume, Ricardo G. Abad, “The Utility of Microlevel Approaches to Migration: A Philippine Perspective,” 300. Another scholar expressed “a need to somehow marry quantitative data sources and basic economic or demographic analysis of migration, with an ethnographic or oral historical sense of the lives and experiences of the migrants themselves.” Adrian Favell, “Rebooting Migration Theory,” in Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines, ed. Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield (New York: Routledge, 2007), 260. See also Joseba Achotegui, “Migración y salud mental. El síndrome del inmigrante con estrés crónico y múltiple (síndrome de Ulises),” Zerbitzuan 46 (2009): 167; and León Grinberg and Rebeca Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 19. 4. The quoted passages are from Douglas S. Massey, “A Brief History of Human Society: The Origin and Role of Emotion in Social Life: 2001 Presidential Address,” American Sociological Review 67/1 (2002): 2 and 21, respectively. On the structural, global, and policy concerns, see Aristide R. Zolberg, “The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World,” International Migration Review 23/3 (1989): 404; and van Liempt and Bilger’s introduction to Ethics of Migration Research Methodology, 2. See also Stephen Castles, “The Factors that Make and Unmake Migration Policies,” in Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, ed. Alejandro Portes and Josh DeWind (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 37, where migrants “are not isolated individuals who react to market stimuli and bureaucratic rules.” 5. Regarding method, see Rowland Atkinson and John Flint, “Accessing Hidden and Hard-­to-­Reach Populations: Snowball Research Strategies,” Social Research Update 33 (2001): n.p.

Notes to Pages 2–3 225 Introduction 1. The quoted phrase is from Peter M. Blau, “Contrasting Theoretical Perspectives,” in The Micro-­Macro Link, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Münch, and Neil J. Smelser (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 89; see 88–89. In the same volume see Hans Haferkamp, “Complexity and Behavioral Structure, Planned Associations and Creation of Structure,” 39, where “agency and structure, and micro/macro, are not opposite natural kind but variations along a continuum.” See also the discussions of agency and structure in Mustafa Emirbayer and Anne Mische, “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103/4 (1998): 970, 1005, and 1011; William H. Sewell Jr., “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Sociological Review 98/1 (1992): 2–3; Sharon Hays, “Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture,” Sociological Theory 12/1 (1994): 58 and 63–64 (“structures are both the source and the outcome of human action,” 63); and Ilse van Liempt and Jeroen Doomernik, “Migrant’s Agency in the Smuggling Process: The Perspectives of Smuggled Migrants in the Netherlands,” International Migration 44/4 (2006): 166 and 185–186. On interactions of motivational factors, see Elizabeth Thomas-­Hope, “Irregular Migration and Asylum Seekers in the Caribbean,” Discussion Paper 2003/48 (Helsinki: United Nations University, World Institute for Development and Economics Research, 2003), 4. 2. The first quoted passage is from Douglas S. Massey, Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor, “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal,” Population and Development Review 19/3 (1993): 451. The second quoted passage is from Massey et al. “Evaluation,” 729; see 728 and 733–734. The third quoted passage is from Massey, “Social Structure,” 5. See Abdelmalek Sayad, The Suffering of the Immigrant, trans. David Macey (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2004), 298. Regarding Myrdal’s theory, see Gunnar Myrdal, Rich Lands and Poor: The Road to World Prosperity (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957). There are summary comments on 13 and 18. Regarding networks, see Massey et al., “Theories,” 448–450; and Ralph R. Sell and Gordon F. De Jong, “Toward a Motivational Theory of Migration Decision Making,” Journal of Population 1/4 (1978): 327. For other insights regarding cumulative causation see Douglas S. Massey and Fernando Riosmena, “Undocumented Migration from Latin America in an Era of Rising U.S. Enforcement,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 630 (July 2010), particularly 298–299; Elizabeth Fussell and Douglas S. Massey, “The Limits to Cumulative Causation: International Migration from Mexican Urban Areas,” Demography 41/1 (2004): 152–153; Estela Rivero-­Fuentes, “Cumulative Causation among Internal and International Mexican Migrants,” in Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Mi-

226 Notes to Pages 3–5 gration Project, ed. Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage, 2004), 202–205; and Massey, “Social Structure,” 3–26. 3. Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 733. 4. The best one can say about rational choice is that “within the limits of their information and understanding, restricted by available options, guided by their preferences and tastes, humans attempt to make rational choices.” Rodney Stark, “Micro Foundations of Religion: A Revised Theory,” Sociological Theory 17/3 (1999): 266. 5. For discussion of household decision making as it pertains to Dominican migration, see Eugenia Georges, The Making of a Transnational Community: Migration, Development, and Cultural Change in the Dominican Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 93–97. 6. See William Kandel and Douglas S. Massey, “The Culture of Mexican Migration: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,” Social Forces 80:3 (2002): 983, where “the essence of the culture-­of-­migration argument is that nonmigrants observe migrants to whom they are socially connected and seek to emulate their migratory behavior.” See Achotegui, “Migración y salud mental,” 166, where individual actions affect the collective. 7. The quoted passage is from Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 733. Recent studies in cumulative causation have recognized its regional limitations and that obstacles can reduce the migrant flows induced by networks. See Elizabeth Fussell, “The Cumulative Causation of International Migration in Latin America,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 630 (July 2010): 175 and 163–164; and Fussell and Massey, “Limits,” 168. 8. A 1990 study reported that “a domestic servant in Puerto Rico can easily earn the equivalent of the monthly minimum wage in the Dominican Republic in less than four labor days.” María del Carmen Baerga and Lanny Thompson, “Migration in a Small Semiperiphery: The Movement of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans,” International Migration Review 24/4 (1990): 676. In this paragraph of text I am following the summaries of economic theories in Massey et al., “Theories,” 433–442; and Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 710–711. See also Massey and Riosmena, 298; Alejandro Portes, “Migration and Development: Reconciling Opposite Views,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32/1 (2009): 7–8; and Oded Stark, The Migration of Labor (Cambridge, England: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 24–28. 9. The mother is quoted in Luisa Hernández Angueira, “En yola y al margen: reflexión teórica y metodológica en torno al género y migración,” Caribbean Studies 28/1 (1995): 229. For early insights regarding rationality, see R. Paul Shaw, “A Note on Cost-­Return Calculations and Decisions to Migrate,” Population Studies 28/1 (1974): 167–169; and C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 76, where “everyone is not so rational as social scientists often believe themselves to be.”

Notes to Pages 6–7 227 10. The first two quoted passages are from Saskia Sassen, The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 52. The third quoted passage is from Zolberg, “Next Waves,” 404. I am also following Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 722 and 725; and Massey et al. “Theories,” 447 and 459. For an understanding of these factors in law-­enforcement literature, see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Basic Training Manual on Investigating and Prosecuting the Smuggling of Migrants (New York: United Nations, 2010), “Overview of Modules,” 1, where migration “is one of the great by-­products of globalization.” 11. See Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 316–317. See also Massey et al., “Theories,” 447; and, regarding low occupational rivalry between Puerto Ricans and Dominican immigrants, Baerga and Thompson, 678–679. Regarding population growth, see Portes, “Migration and Development,” 7. On 18–19, Portes adds that “international migration could be transformed into a win-­win process if sending and receiving governments would take active steps in organizing it as a managed labour-­transfer programme.” 12. The points in this paragraph are well developed in Alejandro Portes and Josh DeWind, “A Cross-­Atlantic Dialogue: The Progress of Research and Theory in the Study of International Migration,” in Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, ed. Alejandro Portes and Josh DeWind (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 3–28. 13. The two quoted passages are from National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC, 2008), vii and 23, respectively; see 8. The poverty statistics are in Claire Brolan, “An Analysis of the Human Smuggling Trade and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air, and Sea (2000) from a Refugee Protection Perspective,” International Journal of Refugee Law 14/4 (2003): 567; Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee, “Introduction and Overview,” in Understanding Poverty, ed. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), xiii; and Terry Lynn Karl, “The Vicious Cycle of Inequality in Latin America,” in What Justice? Whose Justice? Fighting for Fairness in Latin America, ed. Susan Eva Eckstein and Timothy P. Wickham-­Crowley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 133. See Douglas S. Massey, Magaly Sanchez R., and Jere R. Behrman, “Of Myths and Markets,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 606 (2006): 8 and 26; Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe nacional de desarrollo humano: hacia una inserción mundial incluyente y renovada (Santo Domingo, 2005), 119; Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006),

228 Notes to Pages 7–8 456; and Douglas S. Massey, “The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-­First Century,” Demography 33/4 (1996): 395–412. Reuters, “Crisis Has Not Halted Migration Hope of Poor: Gallup,” November 2, 2009, reported that 165 million people wanted to emigrate to the United States. Unlike many Americans who tend to stress individual responsibility and to minimize (or even ridicule) structural causes, some poor Dominicans maintain “that structural, and not personal or individual, factors are to blame for their impoverishment.” Each group, or course, has an interest in its perception. Wilfredo Lozano, “Dominican Republic: Informal Economy, the State, and the Urban Poor,” in The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy, ed. Alejandro Portes, Carlos Dore Cabral, and Patricia Landolt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 177. On Americans’ “weak grasp on structural forces,” see Howard S. Becker, Herbert J. Gans, Katherine S. Newman, and Diane Vaughan, “On the Value of Ethnography: Sociology and Public Policy, a Dialogue,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 595 (2004): 270. 14. The Gini figure is from 2007. See Karl, 133 and 135; Massey, Sanchez R., and Behrman, “Of Myths and Markets,” 9; Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 1; and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008. Desarrollo humano, una cuestion de poder (Santo Domingo: UNDP, 2008), 7, 19, 44, and, on 59, “The greatest challenge facing Dominican society is equity.” 15. See Georges, 30–36; Sherri Grasmuck and Patricia R. Pessar, Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 48–49; Ramona Hernández, The Mobility of Workers under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 90; Baerga and Thompson, 676; Lozano, 155–156; Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 120–122; and Clare M. Ribando, “Dominican Republic: Political and Economic Conditions and Relations with the United States” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005), 4. Dominican Law 8–90, Article 2, defines free trade zones as “a geographic area of the country under the special customs and tax regulations established in the law, in which companies are allowed to set up operations whose output or services are for the external market, by granting the incentives needed to foster their development.” Quoted in Organization of American States (OAS), Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic (Washington, DC, October 7, 1999), paragraph 398. 16. The quoted passage is from Human Rights Watch, “The United States–Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement Falls Short on Workers’ Rights,” written testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives

Notes to Pages 8–9 229 Committee on Ways and Means, April 21, 2005, 2. In 1987 the hourly compensation for semiskilled workers in the free trade zones was $0.79, as opposed to $13.66 in the United States. Jean-­Marie Burgaud and Thomas Farole, “When Trade Preferences and Tax Breaks Are No Longer Enough: The Challenge of Adjustment in the Dominican Republic’s Free Zones,” in Special Economic Zones: Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions, ed. Thomas Farole and Gokhan Akinci (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011), 163; see 160– 166 regarding decline in the free trade zones. For an analysis of the report produced under the auspices of the Inter-­American Development Bank by the vice ministers of trade and labor of the DR-­CAFTA countries, see Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), “DR-­CAFTA and Worker’s Rights: Moving from Paper to Practice” (Washington, DC: WOLA), May 2009. Regarding DR-­ CAFTA’s effects on Dominican sugar producers, see Ribando, 6. See also J. F. Hornbeck, “The Dominican Republic–Central America–United States Free Trade Agreement (DR-­CAFTA)” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, January 3, 2005). For an alternate view of DR-­CAFTA as “expanding economic freedom in the Dominican Republic,” see P. Robert Fannin, “A Common Vision for the Future: US-­Dominican Relations in the 21st Century,” Ambassadors Review (Spring 2008), 27. Philip Martin and others theorize that an initial increase in migration following free trade agreements such as NAFTA will subsequently decrease over a period of decades. For a brief summary see Ruth Ellen Wasem, “Immigration Issues in Trade Agreements” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, July 11, 2005), 14–15. On the relation between DR-­CAFTA and the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, see Christopher Mitchell, “The Impact of 9/11 on Migration Relations between the Caribbean and the United States,” in Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror: Challenge and Change, ed. Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2004), 362. 17. The quoted passage is from UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 19; see 51. See also Karl, 136. Regarding values and (in this case internal) migration, see the Roberto Cassá interview in Erasmo Lara, Diálogo sobre el futuro dominicano (Santo Domingo: Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales [FLACSO], 2004), 161, where he refers to the disintegration of traditional rural values without the emergence of a modernist substitute system. 18. The first quoted passage is from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and International Organization for Migration, Foreign Direct Investment, Trade, Aid, and Migration (Geneva: United Nations, 1996), 65. The second quoted passage is from Nicholas P. De Genova, “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 429. For similar statements see Jacqueline Bhabha, “Human Smuggling, Migration and Human Rights,” working paper, International Council on Human Rights

230 Notes to Page 10 Policy, July 2005, 5 and 32; and Jeroen Doomernik and David Kyle, introduction to special issue, Journal of International Migration and Integration 5/3 (2004): 267. The last quoted passage is from Sassen, Mobility of Labor, 36–37. For an example of borders as a means to maintain inequality, see Zolberg, “Next Waves,” 406. For policy options regarding migration and free trade, see Wasem, “Immigration Issues,” 19–21. 19. The quoted phrase is from Castles, 37. See Max J. Castro and Thomas D. Boswell, “The Dominican Diaspora Revisited: Dominicans and Dominican-­ Americans in a New Century,” North-­South Agenda, Paper 53 (Miami: North-­ South Center, University of Miami, 2002), 9. 20. The quoted passage is from Fernando Riosmena, “Policy Shocks: On the Legal Auspices of Latin American Migration to the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 630 (2010): 288. I am following Grasmuck and Pessar, 33–44; and Christopher Mitchell, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Dominican Migration to the United States,” in Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy, ed. Christopher Mitchell (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 101–113. See Sherri Grasmuck, “Immigration, Ethnic Stratification, and Native Working Class Discipline: Comparisons of Documented and Undocumented Dominicans,” International Migration Review 18/3 (1984): 693; Luis E. Guarnizo, “Los Dominicanyorks: The Making of a Binational Society,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 533 (1994): 83; Castro and Boswell, 6; and Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), 24. See also Jorge Duany, Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 231, where “U.S. policy toward the Dominican exodus has been increasingly restrictive.” Regarding consequences of U.S. immigration acts, see Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 225; Zolberg, Nation by Design, 383; and Jesse Hoffnung-­Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 69. For the high cost of passports as a deterrent to legal migration, see United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2009. Superando barreras: movilidad y desarrollo humanos (Santo Domingo: UNDP, 2009), 5. Legal residence and naturalization are also impeded by fee increases that went into effect on July 30, 2007. The application fee to become a U.S. citizen increased 66 percent, from $405 to $675; the application fee for legal permanent residence (green card) increased 155 percent, from $395 to $1,050; and work permits increased 89 percent, from $180 to $340. Family-­ reunification visas are based on the U.S. and not the Dominican concept of

Notes to Pages 10–11 231 family; see Vivian Garrison and Carol I. Weiss, “Dominican Family Networks and United States Immigration Policy: A Case Study,” International Migration Review 13/2 (1979): 264–283. A report published by the European Union in 2001 suggested that enhanced opportunity for legal migration might reduce the demand for smuggling services. See Frank Laczko, “Opening up Legal Channels for Temporary Migration: A Way to Reduce Human Smuggling?” Journal of International Migration and Integration 5/3 (2004): 344–345. Senator John Cornyn made a similar point in U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Alien Smuggling/Human Trafficking: Sending a Meaningful Message of Deterrence. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime, Corrections, and Victims’ Rights, 108th Congress, first session, July 25, 2003, 15–16. 21. The quoted passage is from U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “The Caribbean: Sources of Illegal Migration,” May 1, 1978. See Mitchell, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Dominican Migration,” 104–107; Georges, 249; and Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 127. On global perspectives, see Doomernik and Kyle, 266, where governments with high unemployment may “have good reasons to encourage their young people to emigrate.” See also Koser, “Irregular Migration,” 3. For a brief summary and bibliography regarding the role of African and Asian countries in exporting their youth, see Daphné Bouteillet-­Paquet, Smuggling of Migrants: A Global Review and Annotated Bibliography of Recent Publications (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010), 46. 22. The Dominican central bank statistics are from “Valor mensual de remesas familiares,” in the “Sector externo” section of the bank’s website. The 2004 statistics are from Inter-­American Development Bank (IDB), Multilateral Investment Fund, “Sending Money Home: Remittance Recipients in the Dominican Republic and Remittance Senders from the US,” Columbia University, New York, November 23, 2004, 2. The central bank shows $2.23 billion for 2004. The quoted passage is from Luis Guarnizo, “The Emergence of a Transnational Social Formation and the Mirage of Return Migration among Dominican Transmigrants,” Identities 4/2 (1997): 282–322. As a “free social subsidy,” remittances “transform social dissatisfaction among a significant segment of the population into reliance on relatives’ support from overseas” (283). See Jorge Duany, “Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico: A Transnational Perspective,” (CUNY) Centro Journal 17/1 (2005): 261, where in 2003 Dominicans in Puerto Rico remitted an estimated $540 million, which is 20 percent of all remittances to the Dominican Republic. See also Sandra R. Garcia, “Migration, Remittances, and Gender in the Dominican Republic: Women’s Contribution to Development,” in New Voices, Perspectives, United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), Santo Domingo, March 2006. 23. The Santo Domingo statistics are from Lozano, 159.

232 Notes to Pages 11–13 24. The quoted passage is from Portes, “Migration and Development,” 6; see 2 and 11. See also Fernando Lozano Ascencio et al., “Declaración de Cuernavaca,” Cuernavaca, Mexico, May 2005, 2. 25. Guarnizo, “Emergence,” 282; and Greta A. Gilbertson, “Regulating Transnational Citizens in the Post-­1996 Welfare Reform Era: Dominican Immigrants in New York City,” in Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging, ed. Suzanne Oboler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 101. For discussion of the politics concerning the constitutional reform that made dual nationality possible, see Pamela M. Graham, “Reimagining the Nation and Defining the District,” in Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration, ed. Patricia R. Pessar (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1997), 98–107. About 35,000 Dominicans abroad voted in 2004; a turnout of 67 percent of registered voters. Luis Arias Núñez, “The Dominican Republic: Political Agreements in Response to Demands to the Right to Vote from Abroad,” in Voting from Abroad: The International IDEA Handbook, Andrew Ellis et al. (Stockholm: International IDEA, and Mexico City: Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico, 2007), 187. 26. Quoted passages are in Shanny Spraus, “The Domestic Impact of International Remittances: The Role of Dominican Remittances in Washington Heights, New York” (master’s thesis, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006), 53. See 38 and 55. See also the Jorge Cela interview in Lara, Diálogo, 177. 27. The survey data are from, respectively, Julio A. Cross Beras, Cultura política dominicana (Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, 1985), 71–72 and 124; Isis Duarte and Ramonina Brea, ¿Hacia dónde la democracia dominicana? 1994–2001. Resumen. Resultados de la III encuesta nacional de cultural política y democrática (Santo Domingo: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra and Asociación Dominicana Pro-­Bienestar de la Familia, 2002), 43; Ramonina Brea, Isis Duarte, and Mitchell Seligson, La democracia vulnerable: insatisfacción y desconfianza (1994–2004) (Santo Domingo: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, Centro Universitario de Estudios Políticos y Sociales, and Centro de Estudios Sociales y Demográficas, 2005), 60; and UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 52 and 28. See 25, where only 10 percent sought the help of an institution to solve a problem. See also Karl, 149. 28. The “comfortably poor” quote is from Jocelyn Santana, Americanization: A Dominican Immigrant’s Autobiographical Study of Cultural and Linguistic Learning (New York: New York University, School of Education, 1999), 79. According to World Bank statistics for 2008, approximately 50 percent of Dominicans live below the national poverty line. For a range of views on Haitians in the Dominican Republic, see Gonzalo Ramírez de Haro, Efectos de la migración internacional en las comunidades

Notes to Pages 15–23 233 de origen del suroeste de la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Sección Nacional de República Dominicana, 2009), 197 and 200; Joaquín Balaguer, La isla al revés: Haití y el destino dominicano (Santo Domingo: Fundación José Antonio Caro, 1983), 45; Rafael R. Ramírez Ferreira, En carne viva: meditación de un soldado sobre la dominicanidad (Santo Domingo: Edita-­Libros, 2007), 56, 64, 115–116, 140, 166–167, 174–175, 221; United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, Doudou Diène, and the Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay McDougall. Addendum. Mission to Dominican Republic,” New York, March 18, 2008, 2, 17–18, 22, 29. For a review of Dominican migration and discussion of its relation to identity, see Samuel Martínez, “Identities at the Dominican and Puerto Rican International Migrant Crossroads,” in Marginal Migrations: The Circulation of Cultures within the Caribbean, ed. Shalini Puri (Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean, 2007), 141–164. 29. According to the Dominican Office of Human Development, 50 percent of Dominicans work in the informal economy; Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 9. The percentage is much higher among yola migrants. Even stable employment at tourist hotels is often seasonal, and the etiquette of all-­inclusive resorts does not require tipping that might supplement poor salaries. See Amalia Lucia Cabezas, “Tourism, Sex Work, and Women’s Rights in the Dominican Republic,” in Globalization and Human Rights, ed. Alison Brysk (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 47. 30. The purchase or construction of a home is a primary migrant motivator and goal worldwide. See Massey and Riosmena, 303. 31. The statistics were provided by the Coast Guard. In 2004, 5,014 of these migrants were interdicted at sea. The quoted passage is from World Bank, Dominican Republic Poverty Assessment: Achieving More Pro-­Poor Growth (Washington, DC: World Bank, Inter-­American Bank, and Government of the Dominican Republic, 2006), i; see viii and 1–11. See also Fausto Rosario Adames, Alfonso Abreu Collado, Isidoro Santana, Francisco Alvarez Valdez, and Marina Hilario, Veinte años de impunidad: investigación de casos de corrupción en la justicia dominicana, 1983–2003 (Santo Domingo: Participación Ciudadana, 2004), 105– 113. Regarding economic performance and migration, see Baerga and Thompson, 676; Mitchell, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Dominican Migration,” 116–118; Frank Moya Pons, Breve historia contemporánea de la República Dominicana. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999, 245; Duany, “Dominican Migration,” 248; and Ernesto Sagás and Sintia E. Molina, introduction to Dominican Migration: Transnational Perspectives, ed. Ernesto Sagás and Sintia E. Molina (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 13–15. 32. The quoted phrase on demobilization is from Lozano, 176. On 181, “They have been rendered immobile, passive, and dependent on handouts from above”;

234 Notes to Pages 24–28 and on 186, “their response to a corrupt and ineffective political system is apathy and withdrawal.” Regarding migration instead of activism, see Milagros Ricourt, “Reaching the Promised Land: Undocumented Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico,” Centro Journal 19/5 (2007): 230; Guarnizo, “Emergence,” 283 and 305; and James Ferguson, The Dominican Republic: Beyond the Lighthouse (London: Latin American Bureau, 1992), 4. See also Milagros Iturrondo, Voces quisqueyanas en Borinquen (San Juan: Ediciones Camila, 2000), 59, where a migrant who left the Dominican Republic in the 1990s said, “The country entered into chaos and our generation lost hope.” See also Duarte and Brea, 31, where 86 percent of Dominicans expressed little or no interest in politics. 33. Regarding labor migration and saturation, see Hernández, 5 and 149–171. 34. Relatives sometimes resent or refuse requests for migration-­related money, including bail. See Iturrondo, 52. 35. When given the option of self-­employment or being an employee, 72 percent of respondents in a 2005 survey chose self-­employment. See Carlos Dore Cabral, Leopoldo Artiles, Francisco Cáceres, and Pedro Ortega, Actitudes hacia el trabajo en la República Dominicana. Reflexión sobre las percepciones y orientaciones en el mundo laboral. Informe sobre la Encuesta de Opinión Pública Nacional, 2005 (Santo Domingo: Fundación Global Democracía y Desarrollo and Instituto Nacional de Opinión Pública, 2007). See also Georges, 250: “rather than innovation, this pattern often leads to investments that imitate the successful decisions made by others,” which “results in a sometimes self-­ defeating proliferation of certain kinds of small enterprises.” 36. See Thomas-­Hope, 4; and Bhabha, 36. 37. The quoted passage is from John T. Jost, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek, “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo,” Political Psychology 25/6 (2004): 912; see 906. See Irving Tallman and Louis N. Gray, “Choices, Decisions, and Problem-­Solving,” Annual Review of Sociology 16 (1990): 405– 406; Hays, 64–65, where choices are limited by “structurally provided possibilities”; Gerald Haberkorn, “The Migration Decision-­Making Process: Some Social-­Psychological Considerations,” in Migration Decision Making: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Microlevel Studies in Developed and Developing Countries, ed. Gordon F. De Jong and Robert W. Gardner (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), 277; Jack Katz, “On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Methodology,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 595 (September 2004): 302; and Arthur B. Markman and Dedre Gentner, “Nonintentional Similarity Processing,” in The New Unconscious, ed. Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Bargh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 125. Regarding forced free choice as it concerns migrant crime, see Brolan, 579. 38. See Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 11; and UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 7.

Notes to Pages 29–39 235 39. The quoted passage is from Lozano Ascencio, 4. See Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 18; Mills, 174; Emirbayer and Mische, 1001 and 1009; and Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 8: “Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place.” See also 14–15. In a Catholic view, the Second Vatican Council recognized that human dignity requires free choice rather than compulsion under external pressure. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2 (London: Sheed and Ward, and Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1078 and 1115–1119.

Across the Mona Passage 1. For a typology of personnel in global perspective, see Bouteillet-­Paquet, 80–82. 2. Regarding small-­ scale, self-­ employed smugglers elsewhere, see Matthias Neske and Jeroen Doomernik, “Comparing Notes: Perspectives on Human Smuggling in Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands,” International Migration 44/4 (2006): 48–51; David Spener, “Mexican Migrant-­Smuggling: A Cross-­Border Cottage Industry,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 5/2 (2004): 303–308; David Kyle and Marc Scarcelli, “Migrant Smuggling and the Violence Question: Evolving Illicit Migration Markets for Cuban and Haitian Refugees,” Crime, Law, and Social Change 52 (2009): 308; and Andreas Schloenhardt, “Organised Crime and the Business of Migrant Trafficking: An Economic Analysis,” Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Occasional Seminar, Canberra, November 10, 1999, 14. 3. For a European example of a trusted smuggler hired to transport family members, see van Liempt and Doomernik, 176. 4. I am following Doomernik and Kyle, 269. See Bhabha, 8–9. Regarding positive perceptions of small-­scale smugglers in other regions, see Bouteillet-­Paquet, 3, 9–11, 74, and 76–77; Neske and Doomernik, 53; Veronika Bilger, Martin Hofmann, and Michael Jandl, “Human Smuggling as a Transnational Service Industry: Evidence from Austria,” International Migration 44/4 (2006): 77 and 84–85; Sheldon X. Zhang, Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings: All Roads Lead to America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), 89; and van Liempt and Doomernik, 173–174, where “he was not a smuggler; he was just an ordinary man.” For the range of perceptions regarding smugglers in Iraq, see Ilse van Liempt, Navigating Borders: Inside Perspectives on the Process of Human Smuggling into the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 129–131: “He just helped us, that is something you do in our culture” (130) versus “They are criminals; they do everything for money” (131). For types of smugglers in Mexico, see Spener, “Mexican Migrant-­Smuggling,” 300; and Byron Roberts, Gordon Hanson, Derrick Cornwall, and Scott Borger, “An Analysis of Migrant Smuggling Costs along the Southwest Border,” working

236 Notes to Pages 39–43 paper (Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, November 2010), 7. As worded by Charles Tilly, “Trust Networks in Transnational Migration,” Sociological Forum 22/1 (2007): 7, “Trust consists of placing valued outcomes at risk to others’ malfeasance, mistakes, or failures.” 5. In an unusual event in August 2011, a deportee attempting to return to the United States crossed the Mona Passage alone. He was interdicted off the western coast of Puerto Rico. 6. Migrant-­organized voyages are now more prevalent, but migrants have been doing them for decades. Orlando made one of these trips in the 1970s. For other examples, see Iturrondo, 60–62. For a summary of migrant-­organized trips from Haiti, see Kyle and Scarcelli, 302; and Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, Immigration during the Carter Administration: Records of the Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, Carter Administration documents, 1977–1981, National Archives, UPA Collection from LexisNexis, 2009, microfilmed from Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Georgia (hereinafter cited as Cuban-­Haitian Task Force), “State Department Study Team on Haitian Returnees,” reel 26, p. 9, where many migrants “depicted their voyage as largely a collective effort, with individuals contributing as they could toward gathering the provisions needed to make the trip. These people described the organizer as simply a community member who happened to be the focus of activities.” 7. For another example of this tactic, see Iturrondo, 60. 8. U.S. law requires that all arriving boats report to CBP after visiting any foreign place or after having contact with any hovering vessel. See U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Vessel Inspection Guide: Procedures, Regulations, and Documentation for the Processing of Crew and Passengers Arriving in the United States (Washington, DC: CBP, December 2009). 9. See the website text supplement, “Alternatives to Yola Migration.” Types of illegal maritime migration are summarized in the statement of Rear Admiral David P. Pekoske, Assistant Commandant for Operations, U.S. Coast Guard, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Homeland Security, Border Security— Infrastructure, Technology, and the Human Element: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism, February 14, 2007, 3. 10. For an enforcement perception of overloading, see Brian W. Robinson, “Smuggled Masses: The Need for a Maritime Alien Smuggling Law Enforcement Act,” in The Army Lawyer, Department of Army pamphlet 27–50–447 (August 2010): 21. 11. For an example of migrants forcibly boarding a yola, see Raúl Martínez Rosario, La travesía en yola: odiseas a Puerto Rico; La testigo y otros cuentos (Scott Depot, WV: Ediciones El Salvaje Refinado, 2006), 38–39. This overloaded yola, on the verge of sinking, returned shortly after departure.

Notes to Pages 44–53 237 12. See Carol A. Heimer, “Social Structure, Psychology, and the Estimation of Risk,” Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988): 510 (“what seems dangerous varies with social location”); and James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1990), 18 (“Much or what is ordinarily described as nonrational or irrational is merely so because observers have not discovered the point of view of the actor, from which the action is rational”). 13. For a description of the rough waters near Desecheo, see Martínez Rosario, 105. For a narrative of a dangerous journey elsewhere (from Morocco to the Canary Islands), see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Toolkit to Combat Smuggling of Migrants (New York: United Nations, 2010), tool 2, pp. 7–8. 14. For an example of criminal charges for transporting migrants, see U.S. District Court, District of Puerto Rico, United States v. Jesus Paredes-­Badillo, June 15, 2005. Regarding penalties for holding smuggled aliens after arrival, see U.S. Sentencing Commission, “Interim Staff Report on Immigration Reform and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines” (Washington, DC, January 20, 2006), 13. Some migrants who cross the U.S.-­Mexico border are held until their relatives pay ransom, but this practice more closely resembles criminal kidnapping or extortion. 15. Regarding the neighborhoods, see Duany, “Dominican Migration,” 262–263. 16. Regarding the reception of migrants, see Iturrondo, 51 and 66–68; and Emma Herman, “Migration as a Family Business: The Role of Personal Networks in the Mobility Phase of Migration,” International Migration 44/4 (2006): 201–202. 17. For an example of charges for harboring illegal aliens, see U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, Angel Eladio Sena v. Alberto R. González (November 2, 2005). 18. Exploitation also occurs in the other direction when Dominican-­owned businesses take advantage of desperate new arrivals. For an example see Iturrondo, 72. 19. The limits of hospitality are captured in the lyrics of a 1994 song, “Nueva York no es como antes,” by La Banda Loca: the protocol lasts a couple of weeks, and then you are on your own. 20. Regarding smuggling fees, see Iturrondo, 59; and Vanessa Pascual Morán and Delia Ivette Figueroa, Islas sin fronteras: los dominicanos indocumentados y la agricultura en Puerto Rico (San Germán, Puerto Rico: CISCLA/Revista Interamericana, 2000), 26. Regarding fees in Mexico, see Massey and Riosmena, 297, where coyote fees tripled between 1986 and 2002 (from $400 to $1,200); and Roberts et al., 5, where the average smuggling costs for Mexican nationals range between approximately $1,200 and $2,000. 21. The quoted passage is in Frances Robles, “Isla de la Mona es esperanza y riesgos,” Nuevo Herald, March 18, 2006.

238 Notes to Pages 53–55 22. In the documentary film Dominicans, an informal loan against a house brought $500. Carmen Sarmiento García, Dominicans, video (Women of Latin America Series, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2004). For an example of proceeds from a mortgaged house used for air travel with fraudulent documents, see Comisión Argentina para los Refugiados, Migración, prostitución y trata de mujeres dominicanas en Argentina (Santo Domingo: Organización Internacional para las Migraciones, 2003), 99–100. 23. Regarding the 10 percent payment, see Máximo Laureano, “Organizadores del viaje en yola bajaron comida y agua para subir más pasajeros” (Santo Domingo), Clave Digital, November 6, 2008. 24. The quoted passages are from Khalid Koser, “Why Migrant Smuggling Pays,” International Migration 46/2 (2008): 13–14. Regarding the Haitians, see Cuban-­ Haitian Task Force, “State Department Study Team,” 11. For payment arrangements and fees in other areas, see Bilger, Hofmann, and Jandl, 66, 85–86; Khalid Koser, International Migration: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 68; Bouteillet-­Paquet, 104–107, 111–112, 114, and 117–118; van Liempt and Doomernik, 176; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Toolkit, tool 2, pp. 28–31; and van Liempt, Navigating Borders, 117–118 and 133–135. 25. The first quoted passage is from Antonio Ugalde, Frank D. Bean, and Gilbert Cardenas, “International Migration from the Dominican Republic: Findings from a National Survey,” International Migration Review 13/2 (1979): 242; see 243, 244, and 253. The second quoted passage is from Grasmuck, 711. The third and fourth quoted passages are from Ricourt, “Reaching the Promised Land,” 231 and 241. See Duany, “Dominican Migration,” 248. For a statement on the poorest Dominicans not migrating, see Georges, 87 and 90. Not all yola migrants are uneducated; among my informants, for example, Raúl, Santiago, Morena, and Betty had some university education. For examples of educated Dominicans and unemployed professionals migrating by yola, see Iturrondo, 233; and Ana Teresa Ortiz, “Healers in the Storm: Dominican Health Practitioners Confront the Debt Crisis” (dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 1994), 228. 26. For an example of feminization, see Alejandro J. Salicrup, Uncharted Migration: OAS Rapid Assessment Report of Trafficking in Persons from the Dominican Republic into Puerto Rico (Washington, DC: Organization of American States, 2006), 17–19. Regarding predominantly male migrants, see Iturrondo, 51 and 64; and Jorge Duany, Luisa Hernández Angueira, and César A. Rey, El Barrio Gandul: economia subterránea y migración indocumentada en Puerto Rico (Santurce, Puerto Rico: Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, and Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1995), 112, where yola passengers are primarily men and the undocumented population in this San Juan neighborhood is primarily “young, male, and mulatto.” Regarding migration nationally, see Lesley

Notes to Pages 55–63 239 Sapp, “Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol: 2005–2010,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics (July 2011), 2, where “nearly 86 percent of persons apprehended in 2010 were male, up from 82 percent in 2005.” On migration of Dominican women, see Mar García Domínguez, Gender, Remittances, and Development: The Case of Women Migrants from Vicente Noble, Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo: United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, 2006); Ramírez de Haro; Francisca Ferreira, “La migración femenina desde la República Dominicana,” Encuentros INSTRAW 2 (February 2006): 10; Antonio De Moya and Santo Rosario Ramírez, Ni color de rosa . . . ni color de hormiga: mujeres migrantes cuentan su historia (Santo Domingo: Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral, 2002): 25, 41, 44; Elisabeth Robert and Diana López, “Mujeres migrantes en el nuevo orden internacional. Cómo las mujeres se ven especialmente afectadas por la crisis?” (United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women [INSTRAW], 2008), 2; and Elisabeth Robert, “Mujeres, migración, remesas y relaciones de género” (United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women [INSTRAW], n.d.), 2–3. 27. See the website text supplement “Cuban Migration to Mona and Monito Islands.” 28. There is an example of a yola towed underwater in Jorge Lendeborg’s documentary film 60 Miles East (Dominican Republic, 2008). Raúl’s experience is in Martínez Rosario, 120. 29. Another Núñez yola fell apart in 1992 shortly after interdiction. U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. Antonio Trinidad-­Lopez (November 6, 1992). 30. For an example of a near-­capsize during the rescue of an overboard passenger, see Iturrondo, 61. A news report posted on YouTube, “Viaje sin regreso,” showed a capsize during a Coast Guard distribution of life vests. 31. The first quoted passage is from Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-­Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77/6 (1999): 1122. 32. The toothpaste passage is in Simon Romero, “Nightmare at Sea Shatters Dreams in a Dominican Town,” New York Times, August 16, 2004. See also “Una odisea de terror en alta mar,” La Nación, August 12, 2004; and “Dominicans Saved from Sea Tell of Attacks and Deaths of Thirst,” New York Times, August 12, 2004; both articles are anonymous. For examples of cannibalism, see “Dominican Castaways Ate Human Flesh,” BBC News, March 21, 2001; “Guardia Costera PR busca yola con unos 40 indocumentados,” EFE/Listindiario.com, November 18, 2008; Jonathan M. Katz, “Dominican Migrant: We

240 Notes to Pages 63–69 Ate Flesh to Survive at Sea,” USA Today, November 4, 2008; and Danica Coto, “2 Survivors Bring Relief to Family, but 49 Missing,” Associated Press, December 6, 2008. 33. For an example, see Ricourt, “Reaching the Promised Land,” 239. Regarding situational ethics, see Alan Blum, “Panic and Fear: On the Phenomenology of Desperation,” Sociological Quarterly 37/4 (1996): 681. 34. Regarding drunken men fighting, see Iturrondo, 64. 35. See 60 Miles East for another example: the captain wants to turn back, and after an argument and fight the passenger is thrown overboard and then retrieved. 36. For an example of drownings resulting from passengers forced overboard with a pistol, see U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. Ramon Hernández Coplin (March 31, 1994). Regarding passengers thrown overboard in other areas, see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Basic Training Manual, annex 2, p. 11. 37. The quoted passage is in Romero, “Nightmare at Sea,” New York Times. Regarding menstruating women and sharks, see Iturrondo, 64. 38. For a description of a shark attack, see William R. Doerner, “Dominican Republic Horror off Death’s Head Beach,” Time, October 19, 1987. 39. The respondents to a 2008 survey said that only 37 percent of others would not take advantage of them if the opportunity presented itself. The level of trust was significantly higher for people in their own communities: 68 percent were thought to be trustworthy. UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 25. Gancho means “hook” and implies a deception. Graffiti in the Cristo Rey neighborhood of Santo Domingo shows a $100 bill on a hook in front of a yola, with the caption “El gancho del dólar.” The image is reproduced in Karin Weyland, Negociando la aldea global con un pie “aquí” y otro “allá”: la diáspora femenina dominicana y la transculturalidad como alternativa descolonizadora (Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnólogico de Santo Domingo, 2006), 212. 40. For another example see Ricourt, “Reaching the Promised Land,” 236. For an example of similar deception in Turkish smuggling, see van Liempt, Navigating Borders, 48–49. For con men during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, see Cuban-­ Haitian Task Force, Department of Justice, memorandum, August 19, 1980, reel 4, p. 1. 41. See Duany, “Dominican Migration,” 249, where undocumented migrants are “increasingly likely to stay in Puerto Rico.” See also Duany, Blurred Borders, 194; and Rebecca Dowd, “Trapped in Transit: The Plight and Human Rights of Stranded Migrants” (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, June 2008), 12, where due to tightened border controls “migrants find themselves stuck in transit countries.” 42. For another example see Iturrondo, 67. For examples of smuggling with fraudu-

Notes to Pages 70–73 241 lent documents from San Juan airport, see U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit. United States v. Altagracia Ramos-­Paulino (May 23, 2007); and U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit. United States v. Jose A. Medina-­Garcia (November 5, 1990). 43. Dominican federal agents do preflight inspections in the jetways of departing international flights to enforce Dominican laws and might detect emigration violations (such as fraudulent documents) in that process. 44. On occasion migrants attempt surreptitious return to the Dominican Republic. See U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, United States v. Dajer Cuevas-­ Reyes (July 10, 2009). 45. Regarding the training of airline personnel, see the U.S. Customs and Border Protection handbook Carrier Information Guide: United States Documentary Requirements for Travel (Washington, DC: CBP, 2009). Article 11, paragraph 3, of the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air, and Sea requires commercial carriers to check passenger documents on international flights. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto (New York: United Nations, 2004). 46. Robert James McWhirter, The Criminal Lawyer’s Guide to Immigration Law: Questions and Answers (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2005), 203. See Marcel De Armas, “For Richer or Poorer or Any Other Reason: Adjudicating Immigration Marriage Fraud Cases within the Scope of the Constitution,” Journal Of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law 15/4 (2006): 746. 47. Jennifer M. Chacón, “Loving across Borders: Immigration Law and the Limits of Loving,” Wisconsin Law Review 2 (2007): 363–365. For illegal residence of six months to one year there is a three-­year bar, and for more than a year there is a ten-­year bar. For an example (in this case of a legitimate marriage), see Mireya Navarro, “Immigration, a Love Story,” New York Times, November 12, 2006. 48. Regarding the inspections, see De Armas, 763. A list of the typical questions is on the immihelp.com website page “Fraud Interview for Marriage Based Green Card.” For the legal and immigration consequences of marriage fraud, see David Weissbrodt and Laura Danielson, Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell (Eagan, MN: Thomson/West, 2005), 20–21; see 116–119 and 577. The two-­year period of conditional residency sometimes traps noncitizen spouses in a powerless situation conducive to control and abuse because they are subject to deportation if they leave the marriage. The 1994 Violence Against Women Act (known as VAWA) was promulgated partially in response to these circumstances and provides a path to lawful permanent residency for domestically abused noncitizens. 49. The originals are in Spanish on the website http://www.mundoanuncio.com .do. 50. Regarding the evidence, see De Armas, 765.

242 Notes to Pages 73–88 51. The quoted passage is in Iturrondo, 77–78. On matrimonio por amor/negocio in the 1970s and 1980s, see Georges, 87–89. See also the examples and discussion in Iturrondo 76–78, 187–189, and 226–231. For a discussion of U.S. marriage-­ fraud prosecution, see De Armas. 52. See Zhang, 27–33. 53. The first quoted passage is from McWhirter, 203. See De Armas, 746. The second quoted passage is from Iturrondo, 30; see 219. 54. The quoted passage is from Cabezas, 49. The motivations for sexual relations with tourists and expatriates are detailed in Denise Brennan, What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic (Durham. NC: Duke University Press, 2004); for an example see 1–9. 55. The first two quoted passages are from Iturrondo, 20 and 228, respectively. 56. The quoted passages are in Iturrondo, 76. 57. The example is from Sharon Utakis and Nelson Reynoso, “‘No Tengo Otra Opción—Ya Me Voy’: Stories of Family Separation Told by Dominican Immigrants,” Oral History Forum d’Histoire Orale 29 (2009): 13–14. For another example, see Iturrondo, 236. 58. The example is in Garrison and Weiss, 267–272.

Orlando 1. The procedures for processing and monitoring returning deportees are itemized on the Dominican National Police website; see “Departamento de Regis­ tro, Control y Seguimiento para Deportados.”

The Culture of Migration 1. See Jonathan H. Turner and Jan E. Stets, The Sociology of Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 294, where positive emotions are “one more resource distributed unequally.” 2. For a return migrant propagating a “fiction of success,” see Patricia R. Pessar, A Visa for a Dream: Dominicans in the United States (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995), 15–16. See also Iturrondo, 53–54; and Guarnizo, “Emergence,” 291. For ostentation that generates migrant illusions in other world areas, see Bilger, Hofmann, and Jandl, 73; Kandel and Massey, 983; and Zeev Ben-­Sira, Immigration, Stress, and Readjustment (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1977), 10. 3. The quoted sentence is from David Kyle and Rey Koslowski’s introduction to Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives, ed. David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 22. The quoted phrase is from Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach, “Climbing the Goal Ladder: How Upcoming Actions Increase Level of Aspiration,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99/1 (2010): 11. See Massey et al., “Theories,” 451; Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 714; Stephen C. Wright and Linda R. Tropp, “Collective

Notes to Pages 88–92 243 Action in Response to Disadvantage: Intergroup Perceptions, Social Identification, and Social Change,” in Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration, ed. Iain Walker and Heather J. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 208. 4. Regarding downward comparisons, see John T. Jost, “Negative Illusions: Conceptual Clarification and Psychological Evidence Concerning False Consciousness,” Political Psychology 16/2 (1995): 405; and Ronnie Janoff-­Bulman, “Rebuilding Shattered Assumptions after Traumatic Life Events,” in Coping: The Psychology of What Works, ed. C. R. Snyder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 315. See also C. David Gartrell, “The Embeddedness of Social Comparison,” in Relative Deprivation, ed. Iain Walker and Heather J. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 166, where people “‘mentally undo’ the comparisons by discounting their relevance”; Joanne Martin, “The Tolerance of Injustice,” in Relative Deprivation and Social Comparison: The Ontario Symposium, vol. 4, ed. James M. Olson, C. Peter Herman, and Mark P. Zanna (Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986), 237, where “people do not become upset by wide disparities in wealth because they restrict their comparisons to similar others”; and, in the same volume, James M. Olson, “Resentment about Deprivation: Entitlement and Hopefulness as Mediators of the Effects of Qualifications,” 57–58. 5. See Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 134, where human development is positively affected when Dominicans abroad “internalize more open and flexible cultural elements.” 6. Regarding familiarity through media and the social meaning of products, see Leo Bogart, Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 276 and 65, respectively. Regarding consumer culture as it affects Dominican migration, see Silvio Torres-­ Saillant and Ramona Hernández, The Dominican Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 10–11 and 28–29; Frank Moya Pons, El pasado dominicano (Santo Domingo: Fundación J. A. Caro Alvarez, 1986), 360–361; Hoffnung-­ Garskof, 68 and 80–82; and Grasmuck and Pessar, 6–7. For an example of a Mexican mother motivated by American television commercials (seen on a neighbor’s television bought with remittances), see Sarah Horton, “Consuming Childhood: ‘Lost’ and ‘Ideal’ Childhoods as a Motivation for Migration,” Anthropological Quarterly 81/4 (2008): 933. 7. The quoted passage is from Shelley E. Taylor, Positive Illusions: Creative Self-­ Deception and the Healthy Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 33. 8. The quoted passage is in U.S. District Court, District of Puerto Rico, Criminal Docket for Case No. 3:04–cr-­00405–JAG, United States of America v. Leonardo Hilario-­Hilario et al., transcript (hereinafter cited as Hilario), trial day 3, p. 136. 9. The first quoted passage is in Hilario, trial day 12, p. 11. The second is in Utakis and Reynoso, 25. 10. The same disillusionment is true of women who discover too late that they

244 Notes to Pages 92–94 are being trafficked into prostitution: “It’s not like people paint it, as a paradise”; it is “a world of illusion.” See De Moya and Rosario Ramírez, 45. See also Gina Gallardo Rivas, Tráfico de mujeres desde la República Dominicana con fines de explotación sexual (Santo Domingo: Organización Internacional Para las Migraciones and Secretaría de Estado de la Mujer, 2001), 10. For examples of Algerian migrants’ illusions as they confront hard realities in France, see Sayad, 15–20. 11. The quoted phrase is from Henrik Vigh, “Wayward Migration: On Imagined Futures and Technological Voids,” Ethnos 74/1 (2009): 106. See Charles Negy, Shari Schwartz, and Abilio Reig-­Ferrer, “Violated Expectations and Acculturative Stress among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 15/3 (2009): 255–264. 12. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States” (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, April 14, 2009), iv. See Massey, “Age of Extremes,” 400–402; on 402, uneducated immigrants in U.S. cities face “the strong possibility of an enduring place at the bottom of the income distribution.” 13. See Hernández, 5, 14, and 117–119; and James Ferguson, Migration in the Caribbean: Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Beyond (London: Minority Rights Group International, 2003), 26. 14. The first study is Anette Bernhardt, Siobhán McGrath, and James DeFilippis, Unregulated Work in the Global City: Employment and Labor Law Violations in New York City (New York: Brennan Center for Justice, New York University, 2007), 47, 55, 59, 63, and 75. The second study is Spraus, 46. Regarding Puerto Rico, see Pascual Morán and Figueroa, 37; and Vanessa Pascual Morán, “Al fondear la yola: ¿Lloverá café?” Caribbean Institute and Study Center for Latin America, working paper 88 (August 1999), 6–7. On 5, an undocumented plantation worker says, “They treated me like a slave,” and the author comments: “He never imagined that those dreams of well-­being and great triumphs would become a cruel nightmare because of the insensitivity of a hacienda owner who deprived him of his freedom and his dignity and exploited him like a beast of burden only to pay him, after a month, a miserable $100.” 15. The quoted passage is from Bernhardt, McGrath, and DeFilippis, iii; see iii–iv. Regarding the family members, see 36. 16. The quoted passages are from Linda K. Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 70. All people in the United States, even those who are in the country illegally, are protected by and subject to U.S. laws. 17. The quoted passage is from Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 715. Regarding the plantations, see Pascual Morán and Figueroa, 41. 18. The first quoted passage is in Utakis and Reynoso, 13. The second quoted passage is from Julia Preston, “A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force,” New York

Notes to Pages 95–100 245 Times, March 22, 2009. Regarding reverse transfers, see Margot Adler, “Cash-­ Strapped Immigrants Rely on Family Abroad,” National Public Radio, May 16, 2009, transcript. 19. All quoted passages are in Spraus, 38 and 53; see 60. 20. Spraus, 38. The name was changed from “Manuel” to avoid confusion with the migrant by that name mentioned earlier. See the website text supplement, “A Note on Remittances.” 21. The quoted phrase on austerity is in Lourdes Bueno, “Dominican Women’s Experiences of Return Migration: The Life Stories of Five Women,” in Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration, ed. Patricia R. Pessar (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1997), 71. 22. For expressions of illusion and disillusion among Mexican migrants, see Larry Siems, ed. and trans., Between the Lines: Letters between Undocumented Mexican and Central Americans and Their Families and Friends (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), 2, 16, and 20. 23. See the website text supplement, “Counter-­Illusion: The Dominican Republic as a Lost Paradise.” 24. The quoted passage is from Kandel and Massey, 982; see 996. See also Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 738. Regarding “the tendency of patterns of relations to be reproduced,” see Sewell, 3. 25. The first quoted passage is from Massey et al., “Theories,” 452–453. See Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 741; and Kandel and Massey, 982. The second quoted passage is from Sayad, 4; and the third is from Gallardo Rivas, 11. See Oliver C. Schultheiss and Joachim C. Brunstein’s introduction to Implicit Motives, ed. Oliver C. Schultheiss and Joachim C. Brunstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xviii, where “motives interact with situational incentives to shape behavior.” 26. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 5, p. 77; translation modified. In a study of migrants to Austria, making contact with a smuggler was described as “very easy” and “not difficult at all.” Bilger, Hofmann, and Jandl, 76. 27. The last quoted passage is in Iturrondo, 57. Regarding precedents, I am adapting an insight from James S. Uleman, Steven L. Blader, and Alexander Todorov, “Implicit Impressions,” in The New Unconscious, ed. Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Bargh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 383. See De Jong and Fawcett, “Motivations for Migration,” 42, where “migration may become a ‘fever.’” 28. See Glynis M. Breakwell, The Psychology of Risk (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 80. 29. The quoted phrase is from Hays, 64. Regarding the infrastructure, I am following Massey et al., “Theories,” 450. 30. The migration of sub-­Saharan Africans departing from Libya en route to Lampe‑ dusa, Italy, is quantitatively far more tragic than yola migration. In May 2011, about 600 migrants died on a single voyage when the vessel broke apart at sea.

246 Notes to Pages 100–102 31. For another example see Iturrondo, 223. See also United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Basic Training Manual, module 1, p. 12, where a man from a West African country says, “That journey was quite possibly the most frightening experience of my life and had we not been picked up by the authorities, we would all have died. Despite this, I am on my way back, to try again, a second time.” 32. Brea, Duarte, and Seligson, 37 and 78; and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Toolkit, tool 2, p. 24. On the role of corruption in smuggling generally, see 22–27. For examples of official corruption relating to migration through Mexico, see Kyle and Scarcelli, 297–298 and 305–307. For illustration of corruption, abuse, and forced payoffs on the Haiti–Dominican Republic border, see SCEREN-­CNDP, Frontiers: Haiti and the Dominican Republic, video (Filmmakers Library, 2004). For discussion of corruption in judicial systems, see section 3 of Francisco J. Laporta and Silvina Alvarez, eds., La corrupción política (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1997). See also Juan Bosch, The Unfinished Experiment: Democracy in the Dominican Republic (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 191–202; Jana Morgan and Rosario Espinal, Cultura política de la democracia en la República Dominicana, 2008 (Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo and USAID, 2009), 44; Pedro Encarnación, La revolución de la pobreza: el uso de la pobreza como chantaje político (Santo Domingo: Editora Manatí, 2004), 51; and Iturrondo, 54–55. 33. World Bank, i, viii, and 1–11; Rosario Adames et al., 105–113; and Ramonina Brea, Isis Duarte, Jorge Vargas Cullel, and Juan J. Polanco, La pequeña corrupción en los servicios públicos dominicanos. Resumen ejecutivo (Santo Domingo: Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, Centro Universitario de Estudios Políticos y Sociales, and Centro de Estudios Sociales y Demográficas, 2006), 58. Regarding the fourteen-­year embezzlement, see a document appended to Miguel Guerrero, Tocando fondo: la crisis económica del 2003 (Santo Domingo: Editorial Corripio, 2006), 401–408. For other examples of corruption as a cause of poverty, see Miguel Angel Velázquez Mainardi, Corrupción e impunidad (Santo Domingo: Editora Tele-­3, 1993), 365; and César Pina Toribio and Jaime Martínez Durán, eds., La lucha permanente contra la corrupción en la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Procuraduría General de la República, 2000), 16. The 2000 presidential candidates signed an anticorruption pledge that describes corruption as “the most brutal form of robbing the poor”; Pina Toribio and Martínez Durán, 99–100. 34. Regarding the pardons, see U.S. Department of State, 2009 Human Rights Report (March 11, 2010), section 4, “Official Corruption and Government Transparency,” n.p. Regarding payments to government officials, see Ribando, 4. In November 2005, Álvarez Renta, who had dual U.S. and Dominican residency and several U.S. properties, was tried and convicted of racketeering and money

Notes to Pages 102–107 247 laundering in the United States. He was the Dominican ambassador to France when indicted. 35. The last statistics are from Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2009,” n.p. The Dominican survey statistics are from Duarte and Brea, 48–51; see 36. For data from the early 1980s, see Cross Beras, 95. The 94 percent corruption perception dropped 10 points in 2004; see Brea, Duarte, and Seligson, 96. For other perceptions of the extent of corruption, see Carlos Dore Cabral, Leopoldo Artiles, Francisco Cáceres, and Pedro Ortega, Ciudadanía y democracia en la República Dominicana. Informe sobre la encuesta de opinión pública nacional, 2004 (Santo Domingo: Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo and Instituto Nacional de Opinión Pública, 2006), 51. 36. Regarding Balaguer, see Moya Pons, Breve historia, 231. See Iturrondo, 54–55; Rosario Adames, 114–116; Pina Toribio and Martínez Durán, 38–39; and Encarnación, 46. The first and second sets of statistics are from Brea et al., La pequeña corrupción, 46 and 23, respectively. 37. UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 31 and 27, respectively. Articles 177–183 of the Dominican penal code specify criminal penalties for bribery, but the law is rarely enforced. See Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 10, where there was only one corruption conviction in twenty years. 38. The first two quoted passages are from Ambassador Otto J. Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, International Relations Committee, Threats to Democratic Stability in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, testimony before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, October 10, 2002. The third quoted passage is from U.S. Department of State, 2009 Human Rights Report, section 4, n.p. The fourth quoted passage is from U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, vol. 1 (March 2010), 239; see 242. 39. See the website text supplement “Dominican Navy Corruption.” 40. The 2004 General Migration Law, 285–04, Article 143, paragraph 2, prohibits migrant smuggling, and paragraph 4 prohibits undocumented migration. Article 128 provides criminal penalties for migrant smuggling. See Articles 129 and 144. Smugglers are prosecuted under Law 137–03, “On Illicit Smuggling of Migrants and Human Trafficking.” See Juan Manuel Rosario, Nueva ley de migración no. 285–04. Incluye comentarios y notas explicativas (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Jurídicas Trajano Potentini, 2004), 20. For migrant attitudes toward smuggling law in other areas, see Doomernik and Kyle, 268. 41. The quoted passage is from Brea, Duarte, and Seligson, 79. Regarding family abandonment, see Dominican Republic, Código Penal de la República Dominicana (1998), paragraph 5, “Abandono de familia,” Articles 357–3 through 357–5. The 2010 Dominican constitution, Article 55, paragraph 10, requires mothers

248 Notes to Pages 107–112 and fathers to support and care for their children even after separation or divorce. Regarding prostitution, see OAS, Inter-­ American Commission on Human Rights, n.p.: “Prostitution in the Dominican Republic is not prohibited by law; nonetheless, the Criminal Code establishes in its Article 334 a punishment for persons who favor or facilitate the license or corruption of persons under 18 years of either sex.” One Dominican family went through a series of illegal actions to reunite in the United States—fraudulent documents, arranged marriages, overstayed visas, illegal border crossings—and suffered every hardship of deprivation and family separation, but they “recount their trials and tribulations in the immigration process without rancor, without self-­pity, and without guilt.” Garrison and Weiss, 273; see 279. See also Iturrondo, 188. 42. The first quoted passage is from Paul H. Robinson and John M. Darley, “Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioural Science Investigation,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 24/2 (2004): 177. The second quoted passage is from John M. Darley and Dena M. Gromet, “The Psychology of Punishment: Intuition and Reason, Retribution and Restoration,” in The Psychology of Justice and Legitimacy: The Ontario Symposium, vol. 11, ed. D. Ramona Bobocel, Aaron C. Key, Mark P. Zanna, and James M. Olson (New York: Psychology Press, 2010), 235. In the same volume see Tom R. Tyler, “Legitimacy and Rule Adherence: A Psychological Perspective on the Antecedents and Consequences of Legitimacy,” 252. Regarding values, see Sayad, 52, and Isaac Prilleltensky, “Poverty and Power,” in Poverty and Psychology: From Global Perspectives to Local Practice, ed. Stuart A. Carr and Tod S. Sloan (New York: Kluwer Academic, Plenum, 2003), 31, where one should consider the “fit of particular values with the nature of the problems that are faced.” 43. The quoted passages are from “Las yolas, un viaje a la desesperación,” Clave Digital, January 21, 2009. 44. See Zolberg, “Next Waves,” 406, where migration entails “not only physical relocation, but a change of jurisdiction and membership.” 45. The quoted passage from Pepe is in Peggy Levitt, “Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-­Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion,” International Migration Review 32/4 (1998): 933. 46. The incarceration rates are from 2008. Significantly higher rates are given in Loїc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), xv. See also Darley and Gromet, 231. 47. The study is Cross Beras, 124. 48. See Jack Katz, “Seductions and Repulsions of Crime,” in Decision Making: Alternatives to Rational Choice Models, ed. Mary Zey (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992), 142. 49. See Ricardo Morán, ed., Escaping the Poverty Trap: Investing in Children in Latin America (Washington, DC: Inter-­ American Development Bank,

Notes to Pages 113–114 249 2003), “Summary: Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty,” 1, 9–10, and 37; Robert D. Crutchfield and David Pettinicchio, “‘Cultures of Inequality’: Ethnicity, Immigration, Social Welfare, and Imprisonment,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 623 (2009); 135–136; Wacquant, 1–3; Mayra Buvinić and Geeta Rao Gupta, “Female-­Headed Households and Female-­Maintained Families: Are They Worth Targeting to Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?” Economic Development and Cultural Change 45/2 (1997): 269; and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Acting on the Future: Breaking the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality, Regional Human Development Report for Latin America and the Caribbean 2010 (New York: United Nations, 2010). 50. In the first sentence I am following Denise Paiewonsky, “Modelo familiar y cuerpo femenino,” in Desde la orilla: hacia una nacionalidad sin desalojos, ed. Silvio Torres-­Saillant, Ramona Hernández, and Blas Jiménez (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Librería La Trinitaria and Editora Manatí, 2004), 334. 51. On consensual union, see Elizabeth Fussell and Albert Palloni, “Persistent Marriage Regimes in Changing Times,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66/5 (2004): 1202 and 1206–1207; Ramón Tejada Holguín, “La juventud dominicana: ¿divino tesoro o infernal problema?” Revista Población y Desarrollo 5 (1995): 14–15; Isis Duarte, Clara Báez, Carmen Julia Gómez, and Marina Ariza C., Población y condición de la mujer en República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Instituto de Estudios de Población y Desarrollo, 1989), 30 and 34; Iturrondo, 220–221; Greta A. Gilbertson and Douglas T. Gurak, “Household Transitions in the Migrations of Dominicans and Colombians to New York,” International Migration Review 26/1 (1992): 23 and 25; Hernández Angueira, “En yola y al margen,” 234; and José Alcántara in an interview in Lara, 142. Regarding the feminist views, see Evelyn Blackwood, “Wedding Bell Blues: Marriage, Missing Men, and Matrifocal Follies,” American Ethnologist 32/1 (2005): 8–10; Helen Safa, “The Matrifocal Family and Patriarchal Ideology in Cuba and the Caribbean,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 10/2 (2005): 317; and Robert, 11. Consensual union is common in other Latin American countries, often for economic reasons. An oral history done in one of the Cuban refugee camps in 1980 summarized that many Cubans chose consensual union rather than marriage “basically because it cost a certain amount of money to get legal permission” and “many people could not afford that.” Conversely, “many of those who did get married did so because as a married couple they qualified to buy more things in the ration book.” Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, “Teaching Oral English to Cuban Refugees, Report 4, Cuba: As told by Cuban Refugees,” reel 25, p. 7. 52. Regarding the “good-­enough mother,” see, for example, “Mind and Its Relation to the Psyche-­Soma,” in D. W. Winnicott, Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-­Analysis (New York: Basic Books, 1958), 245.

250 Notes to Pages 114–117 53. See Moya Pons, El pasado, 352–354. Glenn Hendricks, The Dominican Diaspora: From the Dominican Republic to New York City—Villagers in Transition (New York: Teachers College Press, 1974), 95, reported “a life-­cycle pattern of early free unions, with more people entering into formal unions in their mature years.” 54. See Safa, 333–334; and Mar García, “Género, remesas y desarrollo: el caso de la migración dominicana a España,” paper presented at the seminar Género y Migración Internacional, Bogotá, November 28, 2006, on the website of United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women [INSTRAW], 2006), 10–11. 55. Population Council, “The Adolescent Experience In-­Depth: Using Data to Identify and Reach the Most Vulnerable Young People: Dominican Republic 2007” (New York: Population Council, 2009), 38. In the United States in 2007, “nearly 4 in 10 births were to unmarried women.” This was 80 percent higher than the rate for 1980. The rate for Hispanic women (106 births per 1,000 unmarried women in 2006) was more than three times that of non-­Hispanic white women. Stephanie J. Ventura, “Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States,” NCSC Data Brief 18 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2009), 2–3. 56. Population Council, 40. 57. See Clara Báez and Ginny Taulé, “Posición socio-­cultural y económica de la mujer en la República Dominicana,” Género y sociedad 1/2 (1993): 89–91. See also Iturrondo, 76, where a man who had two wives, one in the Dominican Republic and the other in Puerto Rico, said: “I don’t consider what I am doing immoral because it is common.” For an example of a wife and another woman, see Bueno, 78. 58. Among poor Dominicans participating in a study published in 1997, only 2.5 percent cited “too many children” as a cause of urban poverty, and none cited “too many children” as a cause of their own families’ poverty. Lozano, 180. 59. The percentages are from Population Council, 15. The quoted passage is from Hernández Angueira, “En yola y al margen,” 234. According to a Profamilia study conducted in 2006, about 42 percent of Dominican children under fourteen (almost 1.2 million children) lived in single-­ parent or no-­ parent households. The study also noted an increase since 1991 in the proportion of single mothers. Francisco I. Cáceres Ureña and Antonio Morillo Pérez, Situación de la niñez en la República Dominicana: tendencias 1986–2006 (Santo Domingo: Asociación Dominicana Pro Bienestar de la Familia, 2008), 55–56. See Centro de Estudios Sociales y Demográficos (CESDEM), Encuesta demográfica y de salud, República Dominicana, 2007 (Santo Domingo: CESDEM and Macro International, 2008), 15 and 18. See also Banco Central de la República Dominicana, Encuesta nacional de gastos e in-

Notes to Pages 117–130 251 gresos de los hogares, octubre 1997–septiembre 1998, vol. 3 (Santo Domingo: Banco Central de la República Dominicana, 1999), 20 and 51. 60. In a 1997 study based on interviews with Dominican migrant women, “responsible fatherhood was perceived [by the women] more as a voluntary or optional behavior on the part of the men.” Hernández and López, 64. 61. See Garrison and Weiss, 281; and Brennan, 129–130. 62. The first quoted passage is from Cabezas, 49. The second and third quoted passages are in De Moya and Rosario Ramírez, 45 and 44, respectively. 63. In other cases, children who are left behind, including hijos de crianza (foster children), are exploited for their unpaid labor. For an example see Iturrondo, 245. 64. The first quoted phrase is from Buvinić and Gupta, 268; on 269, “the absence of fathers may transmit social as well as economic disadvantages to the next generation.” The second quoted phrase is from UNDP, Acting on the Future, n.p. The longer quoted passage is from Population Council, 15; see 14–15. Regarding greater poverty in female-­headed households, see Banco Central de la República Dominicana, vol. 5, 32. 65. See the website text supplement, “Migration and Education.” 66. See Encarnación, 80–81. I trust that readers recall the multiple causality discussed in this book and the structural factors described in the introduction and consequently will not mistake these observations on consensual union and procreation as an indictment of the poor for their poverty. Nor am I suggesting that all Dominicans or all poor Dominicans have been neglected in childhood.

The Psychology of Migrant Motivation 1. The quoted passage is from Hilario, resentencing hearing (February 13, 2009), 35. Earlier, another convicted crew member apologized to the judge for bailing water from the leaky vessel because (somehow) that task stood out in proving his complicity in migrant smuggling; Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 21, 2005), 22–24. 2. Hilario, trial day 5, p. 7. 3. Regarding a “lack of individual and social agency” among Dominicans, see Dominican Republic, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, 7. 4. In Iturrondo, 222. 5. See Richard P. Larrick, Chip Heath, and George Wu, “Goal-­Induced Risk Taking in Negotiation and Decision Making,” Social Cognition 27/3 (2009): 342. Regarding goal aspirations, see Koo and Fishbach. 6. For an example of impulsive decision making elsewhere, see Anita Khashu, “Children in Transit: Results of Interviews with Central American Unaccompanied Minors Encountered in Mexico,” working paper (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios y Programas Interamericanos, 2010), 18.

252 Notes to Pages 131–134 7. The first quoted passage is from R. B. Zajonc, “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences,” American Psychologist 35/2 (1980): 172; I am also following 157. The second quoted passage is from Jonathan Mercer, “Emotional Beliefs,” International Organization 64 (2010): 17; I am also following 1. See also Sidney Hook, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 62–63; and Haberkorn, 277. 8. The first quoted passage is from John T. Jost, Ido Liviatan, Jojanneke Van der Toom, Alison Ledgerwood, Anesu Mandisodza, and Brian A. Nosek, “System Justification. How Do We Know It’s Motivated?” in The Psychology of Justice and Legitimacy: The Ontario Symposium, vol. 11, ed. D. Ramona Bobocel, Aaron C. Key, Mark P. Zanna, and James M. Olson (New York: Psychology Press, 2010), 186. The second quoted passage is from Rodney Stark, 266. Regarding implemental and deliberative cognition, see Ziva Kunda, Social Cognition: Making Sense of People (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 240. See also Gerald L. Clore and Karen Gasper, “Feeling Is Believing: Some Affective Influences on Belief,” in Emotions and Beliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts, ed. Nico H. Frijda, Anthony S. Manstead, and Sacha Bem (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25; James T. Fawcett, “Migration Psychology: New Behavioral Models,” Population and Environment 8/1–2 (1985–1986): 7–8; Breakwell, 110; and Steven L. Neuberg, “Social Motives and Expectancy-­ Tinged Social Interactions,” in Handbook of Motivation and Cognition, vol. 3, The Interpersonal Context, ed. Richard M. Sorrentino and E. Tory Higgins (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 232–234. 9. Regarding the sleeper effect, see Kunda, 205–207. 10. The first quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 9, p. 133. See Mercer, 9–10; and Breakwell, 83. See also Heimer, 499; John T. Jost, “The End of the End of Ideology,” American Psychologist 61/7 (2006): 657; Joseba Achotegui, “Emigrar en situación extrema: el síndrome del inmigrante con estrés crónico y múltiple (Síndrome de Ulises),” Norte de Salud Mental 21 (2004): 45; and Sell and De Jong, 331. 11. For an example of leaving in secret, see Martínez Rosario, 108. Many unaccompanied minors from Central America also leave in secret. See Khashu, 2, 4, and 17. 12. The quoted passage is from UNDP, Oficina de Desarrollo Humano, Informe sobre desarrollo humano 2008, 70n4. See Janoff-­Bulman, 307; and David M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 2002), 145–146. Upholding values that one violates in practice is not an exclusively Dominican trait but rather seems universal among humans and varies in prevalence from culture to culture and from person to person. 13. See Cross Beras, 124, where more than 80 percent of the respondents agreed that “these days you don’t know who you can count on” and that “to a majority of people it doesn’t matter what happens to one’s neighbor.”

Notes to Pages 135–140 253 14. The first quoted phrase is from Richard E. Nisbett and Timothy DeCamp Wilson, “Telling More than We Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes,” Psychological Review 84/3 (1977): 249; see 247–249. See also Darley and Gromet, 237. In Jorge Lendeborg’s 2008 film 60 Miles East there is a vivid example of such an automatic response when a deported drug dealer is asked about plans to return to the United States. 15. See Spraus, 52, where remitters hoped to extricate themselves “from a responsibility they knew they could not fulfill.” For examples and discussion of the resultant guilt, see Dinesh Bhugra and Matthew A. Becker, “Migration, Cultural Bereavement, and Cultural Identity,” World Psychiatry 4/1 (2005): 19; and Utakis and Reynoso, 22. See also Andrea Smith, Richard N. Lalonde, and Simone Johnson, “Serial Migration and Its Implications for the Parent-­Child Relationship: A Retrospective Analysis of the Experiences of the Children of Caribbean Immigrants,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 10/2 (2004): 119. 16. The heading “Living in a Prayer” is borrowed from a song by the same title on Greg Brown’s Covenant (Red House Records, 2000). 17. See Tallman and Gray, 415: “Moral acts do not involve choice but are driven by some inner compulsion or value.” 18. For a summary of locus of control, see Bernard Spilka, Ralph W. Hood Jr., Bruce Hunsberger, and Richard Gorsuch, The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (New York: Guilford Press, 2003), 46–47. The tendency toward fatalism in broader context was registered in a study published in 2002: 74 percent of the respondents believed that the problems of the Dominican Republic would be resolved only if God intervened; and 70 percent of the respondents in lower socioeconomic conditions believed that abstract external factors—luck, divine will—determined the outcome of events. Duarte and Brea, 20 and 26, respectively. 19. For other examples of migrant prayer, see Utakis and Reynoso, 25; and Iturrondo, 67 and 69. Some yolas are blessed with holy water, and family prayer groups hold vigils when migrants are lost at sea. For examples of prayer, beliefs, and divine interventions in other world regions, see Jacqueline Hagan and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Calling upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process,” International Migration Review 37/4 (2003): 1146 and 1149–1154; Siems, 6, 12, and 180; and Jacqueline Maria Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 20. Regarding “foresight after the event” (“I knew that was going to happen”), see Breakwell, 87. 21. For reproductions of prayers and related imagery, see Geo Ripley, Imágenes de posesión: vudú dominicano (Santo Domingo: Cocolo Editorial, 2002). 22. The first quoted passage is from Suzanne C. Thompson, “The Role of Personal

254 Notes to Pages 140–146 Control in Adaptive Functioning,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology, ed. C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 203. The second quoted passage is from Jack W. Brehm, “Control, Its Loss, and Psychological Reactance,” in Control Motivation and Social Cognition, ed. Gifford Weary, Faith Gleicher, and Kerry L. Marsh (New York: Springer-­Verlag, 1993), 3. See Kenneth I. Pargament and June Hahn, “God and the Just World: Causal and Coping Attributions to God in Health Situations,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25/2 (1986): 195 and 201; Taylor, 29–30; and Jerry M. Burger, “Individual Differences in Control Motivation and Social Information Processing,” in Control Motivation and Social Cognition, ed. Gifford Weary, et al. (New York: Springer-­Verlag, 1993), 210. 23. The quoted passage is from David Morgan, “Materiality, Social Analysis, and the Study of Religions,” Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, ed. David Morgan (London: Routledge, 2010), 60. 24. The first quoted passage is from U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “A Pastoral Letter Concerning Migration from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States” (Washington, DC, January 22, 2003), paragraph 35. The quoted passages from the Vatican Council are in Tanner, 1115–1116. 25. See Doomernik and Kyle, 272, where immigration increased following a proposed amnesty announcement in early 2004. 26. The first quoted passage is from Kruger and Dunning, 1131. 27. The quoted passages are from Janoff-­Bulman, 308 and 310, respectively; see 307. See also Kenneth I. Pargament, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 289, where “emotional reassurance” (“God will not let anything terrible happen to me”) is a type of spiritual support. 28. In a 1985 survey, 82 percent of the respondents were in agreement with this phrase: “At times one asks oneself if there is still something for which it is worth fighting/struggling [luchar].” Cross Beras, 124. 29. The quoted passage is from Phyllis Moen, Glenn H. Elder Jr., and Kurt Luscher, eds., Examining Lives in Context: Perspectives on the Ecology of Human Development (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1996), 533. 30. Ana Martínez, a nineteen-­year-­old Dominican interviewee in Washington, DC, said that a majority of Latinos in the United States lose motivation when they are in a comfortable situation. Beacon College, Celebración de la Mujer Latina, Oral History Project 2, District of Columbia Public Library, Martin Luther King, Junior, Memorial Library, Washingtoniana Collection, OHP 02–08, transcript of interview, 10. Regarding achievement motivation, see Haberkorn, 263–265. 31. The first quoted phrase is from Mills, 11. 32. The first quoted passage is from Haberkorn, 262; and the second is in Ricourt, 232. Regarding “perceptions of what significant others think about the behav-

Notes to Pages 147–151 255 ior,” see Gordon F. De Jong, “Expectations, Gender, and Norms in Migration Decision-­Making,” Population Studies 54/3 (2000): 309. Migration is often described as a rite of passage through which people demonstrate their worthiness, but this was an insignificant theme in the responses of my informants. For information on this topic, see Sayad, 24; Kandel and Massey, 982 (“For young men, especially, migration becomes a rite of passage, and those who do not attempt it are seen as lazy, unenterprising, and undesirable as potential mates”); Massey et al., “Evaluation,” 738; and Haberkorn, 267. 33. For discussion of the estimation of risk and assessment of risk attractiveness, see Heimer, 493–498; and Larrick, Heath, and Wu, 358–359. See also Grinberg and Grinberg, 21, where those more inclined to migrate “will seek out situations which satisfy three basic conditions: a goal that involves a certain degree of risk-­taking; voluntary action to expose oneself to such a risk; and the expectation (sometimes omnipotent in nature) that they will overcome the danger.” 34. Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 18, 2005), 9. See Janoff-­Bulman, 317, where interpretations focusing on benefits emphasize “benevolence over malevolence, meaning over meaninglessness.” 35. The last two quoted passages are from Breakwell, 58. Regarding control, see 79. 36. The quoted passages are from Margo Gardner and Laurence Steinberg, “Peer Influence on Risk Taking, Risk Preference, and Risky Decision Making in Adolescence and Adulthood: An Experimental Study,” Developmental Psychology 41/4 (2005): 632. See Breakwell, 99; and Grinberg and Grinberg, 62. 37. The “resolve” phrase is from Mercer, 22. See the website text supplement, “The U.S. Embassy Campaigns.” 38. Taylor, 64. 39. The first quoted phrase is from Peter Drahos, “Trading in Public Hope,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592 (March 2004): 23; the second and third are from Emirbayer and Mische, 984. The quoted passages in the next sentence are from Philip Pettit, “Hope and Its Place in the Mind,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592 (March 2004), 159. At the end of the paragraph I am following Taylor, 59; and C. R. Snyder, “Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind,” Psychological Inquiry 13/4 (2002): 250–257. 40. The quoted passage is from Emirbayer and Mische, 984. See Drahos, 20 and 24–36. See also Valerie Braithwaite, “The Hope and Process of Social Inclusion,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592 (March 2004): 128–151. 41. See Kunda, 233–234; Taylor, 42; and Drahos, 31. 42. Regarding flight, see Grinberg and Grinberg, 58–59. Regarding return migration, see Hendricks, 122. 43. The quoted passage and the concluding insight are from Robert, 11.

256 Notes to Pages 153–155 44. For another example of a home lost as result of failed migration, see Ricourt, 232; see also 236. 45. The theme of migrants—in this case Mexican and Central American unaccompanied minors—literally stuck in transit is well treated in Rebecca Cammisa’s documentary film Which Way Home (Documentress Films, 2009). 46. For an example concerning internal migration, see Chad R. Maxwell, “Waxing Exodus: An Exploration of Material Culture, Development, and Migration in Rancho de Los Plátanos, Dominican Republic” (master’s thesis, University of Florida, 2004), 10. For an example elsewhere (reminiscent of “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”), see Sayad, 11–12; on 12, “It’s as though we were possessed.” 47. Regarding possible selves, see Nancy Cantor, Hazel Markus, Paula Niedenthal, and Paula Nurius, “On Motivation and the Self-­Concept,” in Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior, vol. 1, ed. Richard M. Sorrentino and E. Tory Higgins (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 97–101. 48. The quoted passage is from James P. Fleissner and James A. Shapiro, “Sentencing Illegal Aliens Convicted of Reentry after Deportation: A Proposal for Simplified and Principled Sentencing,” Federal Sentencing Reporter 8/5 (1996): 267. See Michael John Garcia and Larry M. Eig, “Immigration Consequences of Criminal Activity” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, October 23, 2005), 10–11. 49. The quoted passage is from Human Rights Watch, Forced Apart: Families Separated and Immigrants Harmed by United States Deportation Policy (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2007), 5. Human rights violations resulting from enforcement of the 1996 laws are detailed in United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante. Addendum. Mission to the United States of America,” March 5, 2008. See also U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Deportees in Latin America and the Caribbean: Hearing and Briefing before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, 110th Congress (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 24, 2007), particularly 1–2 and 35; Kanstroom, 135 and 243; Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Deportado, Dominicano, y Humano: The Realities of Dominican Deportations and Related Policy Recommendations (New York: Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, with New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, 2009); and Gilbertson. 50. In N. C. Aizenman, “A Long Flight of No Return,” Washington Post, July 25, 2006. I changed the original name, Rafael, to avoid confusion with an informant by that name. 51. The quoted passage is from Brehm, 15. Regarding effects of deportation on non-­ Mexican migrants, see Massey and Riosmena, 314; see 317. 52. See Russell King, “Generalizing from the History of Return Migration,” Re-

Notes to Pages 156–161 257 turn Migration: Journey of Hope or Despair? ed. Bimal Ghosh (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, and New York: United Nations, 2000), 41, where “most return takes place for personal and social reasons rather than economic or political ones.” The principal reasons for return to the Dominican Republic in the early 1990s were “of a sentimental nature.” See Nelson Ramírez, La emigración dominicana hacia el exterior (Santo Domingo: Instituto de Estudios de Población y Desarrollo, 1993), 34 and 40. 53. Iturrondo, 100–101; see 80. 54. Regarding presence and absence, see Guarnizo, “Emergence,” 312. Regarding the solution as a problem, see Achotegui, “Migración y salud mental,” 163. 55. For a summary of “migratory mourning,” see Valentín González Calvo, “El duelo migratorio,” PsicologiaCientifica.com (October 10, 2006), 5–7. See also Bhugra and Becker, 19–21. 56. I am following Grinberg and Grinberg, 26; Achotegui, “Migración y salud mental,” 168; and Achotegui, “Emigrar en situación extrema,” 40–47; Dinesh Bhugra, “Migration, Distress, and Cultural Identity,” British Medical Bulletin 69 (2004): 132–134 and, for “contextual dissonance,” 138; and Haberkorn, 271. 57. The quoted passage is from Grinberg and Grinberg, 133. 58. See Haberkorn, 261; and Grinberg and Grinberg, 133. 59. Grinberg and Grinberg, 81. 60. The quoted passage is from Duany, Hernández Angueira, and Rey, 55. See Ricourt, 231. See the website text supplement “Toa Baja.” 61. See Grinberg and Grinberg, 69; and Guarnizo, “Los Dominicanyorks,” 76. 62. The nonmigrant quoted passages are from, respectively, Haberkorn, 271, and Tallman and Gray, 422. For migrant statements regarding shame and obligation, see Vigh, 105; González Calvo, 8; and Spraus, 54. 63. The quoted passage is from King, 30; see 28–32 and 41, where “the propensity to return is greatest soon after migration” and “return migration is more likely from short-­distance migrations.” Regarding spontaneous regret, see Haberkorn, 270. Regarding the Cuban letters, see Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, “Communication from Miguel Angel Perdueles Díaz, July 2, 1980,” reel 42; and “Communication from Aurora Reyes, May 12, 1980,” reel 42. See this reel and reel 36 for additional letters. Regarding the flights, see, for example, “Cuban Refugees Hijack Jetliner for Trip from Florida to Havana,” New York Times, August 14, 1980. There were about ten hijackings. Only about 90 Cubans among some 10,000 queried in two major refugee centers indicated a desire to return to Cuba, and many of these were forced by Cuban officials to leave Mariel against their will. But in Cuba, “returnees face three-­year prison sentences under current, and enforced, law.” Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, Mario A. Rivera, “The Cuban and Haitian Influxes of 1980 and the American Response: Retrospect and Prospect,” 1980, reel 9, A-­15 and A-­23.

258 Notes to Pages 161–168 64. For another example of spontaneous regret, see Iturrondo, 52. Still in Rincón a week after arrival and without money or options, a yola migrant said, “I was desperate . . . There were only two days until Christmas and I thought about how much fun it is in Samaná.” Together with two other migrants on the same voyage, he said, “we made plans and walked along the main highway, resigned to being caught and sent to our country.”

Raúl 1. Martínez Rosario, 152–156. The quoted passages are on 152, 152, 155, and 156, respectively. 2. A fictionalized version of this incident is described in Martínez Rosario, 181–190.

Border Enforcement 1. The quoted passage is from Ronald Reagan, in U.S. President, Proclamation 4,865, High Seas Interdiction of Illegal Aliens (Washington, DC, September 29, 1981). See Joanne van Selm and Betsy Cooper, The New “Boat People”: Ensuring Safety and Determining Status, Migration Policy Institute (January 2006), 72; Alison Siskin and Ruth Ellen Wasem, “Immigration Policy on Expedited Removal of Aliens” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, May 15, 2006), 3; Lory Diana Rosenberg, “The Courts and Interception: The Unites States’ Interdiction Experience and Its Impact on Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 17 (2003): 199–202; B. Robinson, 30–34; and Patricia Mallia, Migrant Smuggling by Sea: Combating a Current Threat to Maritime Security through the Creation of a Cooperative Framework (Leiden, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010), 190. For a definition of interdiction at sea, see Douglas Guilfoyle, Shipping Interdiction and the Law of the Sea (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 4. The Reagan documents followed a bilateral agreement signed with Haiti. See United States of America and Haiti, Exchange of Notes Constituting an Agreement Concerning the Interdiction of and Return of Haitian Migrants, no. 26676 (Port-­au-­Prince, September 23, 1981). Regarding the effect on refugees, see Rosenberg, 203n25; Christopher Mitchell, “U.S. Policy toward Haitian Boat People, 1972–93,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 534 (July 1994): 73; and U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Cuban and Haitian Migration: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Law, Immigration, and Refugees, statement of Rear Admiral William P. Leahy Jr., Chief, Office of Law Enforcement and Defense Operations, U.S. Coast Guard, November 20, 1991, 4.

Notes to Pages 169–171 259 2. George Bush, in U.S. President, Executive Order 12,807, Interdiction of Illegal Aliens, Washington, DC, May 24, 1992. 3. The quoted passage is in Rosenberg, 214–215; see 211. See also Mitchell, “U.S. Policy toward Haitian Boat People,” 76. 4. The first quoted passage is in U.S. Coast Guard, Maritime Law Enforcement Manual, chapter 6, “Immigration Law Enforcement,” n.d., 6–7. The second quoted passage is from U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, “Immigration Consequences of Undocumented Aliens’ Arrival in the United States Territorial Waters” (Washington, DC, October 13, 1993). 5. The quoted passage is from William J. Clinton, in U.S. President, Presidential Decision Directive 9, Washington, DC, June 18, 1993. For a brief summary of the wet foot/dry foot policy, see Ruth Ellen Wasem, “Cuban Migration Policy and Issues” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, January 22, 2007). See the website text supplement, “Cuban Migration to Mona and Monito Islands.” 6. U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Notice Designating Aliens Subject to Expedited Removal under Section 235(b) (1)(a)(iii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (Washington, DC, November 13, 2002) (hereinafter cited as INS Notice). For an example of this argument elsewhere, see Mitchell, “Impact of 9/11,” 364. 7. The quoted passages are from George W. Bush, in U.S. President, Executive Order 13,276, Delegation of Responsibilities Concerning Undocumented Aliens Interdicted or Intercepted in the Caribbean Region, November 15, 2002. See the website text supplement, “Operation Plan Vigilant Sentry.” 8. See van Selm and Cooper, 78. For a summary of executive orders and proclamations concerning maritime migration in the Caribbean, see Mallia, 190–199. For a recent review of U.S. immigration law, see Riosmena. 9. Ted Henken, “Of Rafters and Refugees,” in Cuba Today: Continuity and Change since the “Periodo Especial,” ed. Mauricio A. Font, with Scott Larson and Danielle Xuereb (New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, City University of New York, 2004), 150. 10. See, for example, Fidel Castro Ruz, “Días que no pueden ser olvidados,” Diario Granma (Havana, April 14, 2009): “the migratory privileges used to combat the Cuban Revolution and deprive it of human resources”; and Andrés Gómez, “La Ley de Ajuste Cubano: Arma de Washington para crear una crisis migratoria,” Diario Granma (Havana, December 21, 2005). Regarding Mexico, see Kyle and Scarcelli, 305. See also Donald L. Brown, “Crooked Straits: Maritime Smuggling of Humans from Cuba to the United States,” University of Miami Inter-­ American Law Review 33/2–3 (2002): 292: “The United States should acknowledge that its deferential policy toward landed Cuban aliens provides incentive for Cubans to seek passage from smugglers.”

260 Notes to Pages 171–174 11. Cuba has had that designation since March 1, 1982. See U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Country Reports on Terrorism 2009 (Washington, DC, August 2010), 191–192. 12. Dennis Smith, “Program Streamlining Immigration Enforcement” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection), Frontline (Fall 2010): 24–27. 13. The percentage is from U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “CBIG: Caribbean Border Agency Group,” PowerPoint presentation, 2009 (provided by CBP, San Juan, June 2010). See the website text supplement, “Prosecution Thresholds.” 14. The quoted passage is from Senator Russell D. Feingold, U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Hearing, July 26, 2005, p. 10. In contrast, during a congressional hearing, Representative Jeff Flake asked a Department of Homeland Security witness a woefully misguided question: Can the United States “win this war of [migrant] smuggling?” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Pushing the Border Out on Alien Smuggling: New Tools and Intelligence Initiatives. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, May 18, 2004, p. 36. Other class B misdemeanor offenses include driving under the influence (DUI) first offense, disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, and indecent exposure. 15. The first two quoted passages are from testimony of Thad W. Allen, Commandant, on Coast Guard authorization, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Coast Guard Authorization: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, July 7, 2009 (hereinafter cited as U.S. Senate, Allen testimony, 2009), 5. The other quoted passages are from testimony of Rear Admiral Vincent Atkins, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Appropriations Committee, Department of Homeland Security Air and Marine Operations and Investments: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, April 19, 2010 (hereinafter cited as U.S. House of Representatives, Atkins testimony), n.p. See also testimony of Rear Admiral Wayne E. Justice, Assistant Commandant for Capabilities, in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Overview of Coast Guard Drug and Migrant Interdiction: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, March 11, 2009 (hereinafter cited as U.S. House of Representatives, Justice testimony), 6. 16. The quoted passage is from the testimony of John P. Torres in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Pushing the Border, 17. 17. The quoted passage is from the statement of Rear Admiral David P. Pekoske, Assistant Commandant for Operations, in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Homeland Security, Border Security: Infrastructure, Technology, and the Human Element. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Border,

Notes to Pages 174–178 261 Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism, February 14, 2007 (hereinafter cited as U.S. House of Representatives, Pekoske statement), 7. Regarding the terrorists, see National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission), “Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers into the United States,” Staff Statement No. 1. 18. For examples of smuggling represented as organized crime, see B. Robinson, 21 (“well-­organized criminal syndicates”); and “Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations” on the Coast Guard website (“smuggled by highly organized gangs”). For a description of Los Zetas migrant smuggling, see Tim Johnson, “Violent Mexican Drug Gang Taking Control of Migrant Smuggling,” McClatchy Newspapers, August 14, 2001. 19. The quoted passage is from Spener, “Mexican Migrant-­Smuggling,” 315. For an example of a yola captain with a criminal history, see U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. Amado de la Rosa-­Ramos (February 17, 2010). 20. The first quoted passage is from van Liempt and Doomernik, 186. The second and third quoted passages are from Ferruccio Pastore, Paola Monzini, and Giuseppe Sciortino, “Schengen’s Soft Underbelly? Irregular Migration and Human Smuggling across Land and Sea Borders to Italy,” International Migration 44/4 (2006): 97 and 114, respectively. The fourth quoted passage is from Bilger, Hofmann, and Jandl, 64. The fifth quoted passage is from Raimo Väyrynen, “Illegal Immigration, Human Smuggling, and Organized Crime,” Discussion Paper 2003/72 (Helsinki: United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research, October 2003), 7. The sixth quoted passage is from Schloenhardt, 14. The seventh quoted passage is from Zhang, 164. The last quoted passage is from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Toolkit, tool 2, p. 11; see p. 14. See also Doomernik and Kyle, 270; Rey Koslowski, “Economic Globalization, Human Smuggling, and Global Governance,” Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives, ed. David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 348; and Brolan, 589. In the Dominican Republic, smuggling requires “coordination and organization, but contrary to popular perception is most often not controlled by large transnational crime syndicates.” Salicrup, 21. 21. See the indicated articles in United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. See also Brolan, 583–584. 22. 8 U.S.C. § 1227 (a)(1)(b) makes unlawful presence a deportable civil offense, and 8 U.S.C. § 1325, Improper Entry by Alien, carries a maximum six-­month sentence for the first offense. Regarding “illegal immigrant,” see Yolanda Martínez-­San Miguel, Caribe Two Ways: cultura de la migración en el Caribe insular hispánico (San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2003), 151, where the extension of “illegal” is a “semantic contamination” from juridical to social-­moral usage. 23. The quoted passage is from Allison Parker, Human Rights Watch, in U.S.

262 Notes to Pages 178–181 House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Deportees in Latin America and the Caribbean, 54. 24. See Spener, “Mexican Migrant-­Smuggling,” 315. For a summary of the overrepresentation of crime in media, see Massey, “Brief History,” 22–23. 25. The biometrics data are from an untitled briefing to Rear Admiral Baumgartner, Commander, Seventh Coast Guard District, on January 14, 2010. Acquired through Freedom of Information Act request number SSJ FOIA 1020, submitted on June 29, 2010; documents provided on July 19, 2010. 26. The quoted passage is from Herman, 193. 27. The first quoted passage is from “Detailed Information on the Coast Guard Migrant Interdiction Program Assessment,” expectmore.gov, 2004; U.S. House of Representatives, Pekoske statement, 5; and U.S. House of Representatives, Justice testimony, 7. The second quoted passage is from U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Strategy for Maritime Security: National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness (October 2005), 2. FURA vessels have jurisdiction within three miles of the coast. This is extended when a Border Patrol agent rides with FURA and when FURA agents train and are deputized with Code of Federal Regulations Title 19 customs authority. 28. The quoted passage is from U.S. House of Representatives, Atkins testimony. 29. Regarding the Marines, see Nicholas E. Reynolds, A Skillful Show of Strength: U.S. Marines in the Caribbean, 1991–1996 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 2003), 29. 30. Regarding the interdiction percentage, see U.S. House of Representatives, Justice testimony, 6; and U.S. House of Representatives, Atkins testimony. The Coast Guard interdicts about 40 percent of Cubans. Prior to fiscal year 2008, Coast Guard statistics calculated migrants who were “interdicted or deterred,” which included “intelligence estimates of the number of migrants who would attempt entrance, via maritime routes, into the United States if there were no enforcement.” The percentages were consequently much higher (around 88 percent). The current measure includes only the migrants who are actually interdicted. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, Annual Review of Mission Performance: United States Coast Guard (FY 2006) (Washington, DC, February 2008), 25. 31. Statistics are from U.S. Coast Guard website, “Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations, Total Interdictions—Fiscal Year 1982 to Present.” The quoted passages are from Title 14 of U.S. Code Section 89a and commentary, in Gary W. Palmer, “Guarding the Coast: Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations at Sea,” Connecticut Law Review, 29/4 (1997): 1566; see 1567. See also U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Report of the Judge Advocate General of the United States Coast Guard, presented to the American Bar Association, Washington, DC, August 2008, p. 2.

Notes to Pages 182–189 263 Regarding the Able Response statistics, see the statement of Captain Anthony S. Tangeman in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Coast Guard Migrant Interdiction Operations: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, May 18, 1999, 2–3. 32. Regarding the intelligence units, see U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Combating Alien Smuggling: Opportunities Exist to Improve the Federal Response” (Washington, DC, May 2005), 14. 33. Regarding the general challenges of international cooperation, see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Basic Training Manual, module 8. Some Dominican navy officers are trained by the Coast Guard in the Advanced Maritime Law Enforcement Boarding Officer Course. See the website text supplement, “Dominican Navy Corruption.” 34. Regarding the planes, see U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, 240. Regarding the naval stations, see Dominican Republic, Marina de Guerra, La Marina de Guerra del nuevo milenio. Memoria 2009 (Santo Domingo, 2010). 35. United States of America and Dominican Republic, Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Dominican Republic Concerning Cooperation in Maritime Migration Law Enforcement (Washington, DC, May 20, 2003). See Guilfoyle, 195–197; Joseph E. Kramek, “Bilateral Maritime Counter-­Drug and Immigrant Interdiction Agreements: Is This the World of the Future?” University of Miami Inter-­American Law Review 31/1 (2000), 127–134; Palmer, 1569; and International Maritime Organization, “Interim Measures for Combating Unsafe Practices Associated with the Trafficking or Transport of Migrants by Sea” (London, 2001), annex, 3. 36. In its 2010 budget, the Coast Guard requested funding for marine patrol aircraft with capabilities similar to those of the Dash 8. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security, United States Coast Guard, Fiscal Year 2010, Congressional Budget Submission (Washington, DC, 2009), AC&I-­30. The new national security cutters, offshore patrol cutters, and fast-­response cutters are also well equipped technologically; AC&I-­57, 64, and 69. 37. U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. Alberto De León (November 2, 2001). 38. Regarding the cutters, see U.S. Senate, Allen testimony, 2009, 9. A “biometric” is a unique, measurable physical attribute, such as a fingerprint; “biometrics” is used more broadly as the identification of a person based on such attributes. Other examples of biometrics include retina scans and voice recognition. The legal basis for collecting fingerprints was studied by the Coast Guard Operations Law Group, which determined that biometrics at sea constituted a routine border search. Regarding US-­V ISIT, see U.S. House of Representatives, Appropriations Committee, Biometric Identification: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary for

264 Notes to Pages 189–195 Policy Kathleen Kraninger, Screening Coordination, and Director Robert A. Mocny, US-­V ISIT, National Protection and Programs Directorate, March 19, 2009. Regarding biometrics and routine interview on the U.S.-­Mexico border, see Roberts et al., 20. 39. The statistics were provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, Office of Law Enforcement. A breakdown between immigration-­related and other criminal offenses was not available. 40. Coast Guard Sector San Juan patrol summary from the cutter Chincoteague, September 1, 2008. Acquired through Freedom of Information Act request no. 08-­051 (USCG reference no. 5720), submitted on July 24, 2008; documents provided on November 4, 2008. 41. The quoted passages are from U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Puerto Rico, 8 U.S.C. § 1326, “Fast Track” Program Manual, San Juan, 2008. Regarding fast-­ track programs, see U.S. Sentencing Commission. 42. Regarding unwillingness to cooperate, see Iturrondo, 62 (“an implicit commitment of all passengers to not denounce the captain”); and Georges, 86. A Mexican coyote (migrant smuggler) said, “No one has any reason to finger a coyote who deals honestly with his customers.” Quoted in Judith Adler Hellman, Mexican Lives (New York, New Press, 1995), 177. See also Spener, “Mexican Migrant-­Smuggling,” 317. 43. Sympathies with defendants also occurred during prosecutions after the Mariel boatlift. See Cuban-­Haitian Task Force, Department of Justice memorandum, August 19, 1980, reel 4, p. 1; and Department of Justice memorandum, September 9, 1980, reel 9, n.p. 44. The first quoted passage is from David Spener, “The Logic and Contradictions of Intensified Border Enforcement in Texas,” in The Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe, ed. Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 127. The Coast Guard proposed a Maritime Alien Smuggling Law Enforcement Act 2007 recommending a minimum three-­year sentence. The text of the proposed law is appended to B. Robinson, 42–44; see 22. See the website photograph sequence “Migrant Interdiction in the Mona Passage.” 45. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 6, p. 71. See trial day 12, pp. 7–8. 46. The first quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 5, pp. 37–38; see 47. The second and third quoted passages are from Hilario, trial day 7, pp. 39–40. The fourth quoted passage is from trial day 6, p. 85. See trial day 12, p. 9; and trial day 9, p. 148. 47. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 7, p. 47. See trial day 3, pp. 93 and 96. On trial day 7, p. 50, “most of the people wanted to do this [run for shore], and as they say, the majority wins.” A defense attorney also argued that passengers wanted to be taken to the beach and captains complied; Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 21, 2005), 45. For the minority view (the passengers

Notes to Pages 195–200 265 wanted to get caught, and crew insisted on going ashore), see Hilario, trial day 6, p. 87. 48. The first two quoted phrases are from Hilario, trial day 5, p. 44. See trial day 6, pp. 79–80. The third quoted phrase is from Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 21, 2005), 39; see the variation on 56. See also trial day 7, p. 41; trial day 9, p. 149; sentencing hearing, 40; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memorandum, “Interviews Yadira NOLBERTO, December 9, 2004” (January 25, 2005), 3. See sentencing hearing, 40, where the prosecutor uses these crew statements to other purposes. 49. U.S. Coast Guard, Sector San Juan, situation report to Coast Guard District 7 (December 4, 2004). Acquired through Freedom of Information Act request no. 2011-­0172, submitted on October 13, 2010; documents provided on April 7, 2011. According to a Coast Guard public affairs article, waves first broke over the stern, “washing migrants overboard and swamping the boat.” Anastasia M. Burns, “Let’s Get as Many as We Can!” (U.S. Coast Guard), Coastline, October-­ December 2004. At the resentencing hearing, the judge erroneously blamed the capsize on pilot error. Hilario, resentencing hearing (February 13, 2009), 33. 50. See Hilario, trial day 6, pp. 25–43. 51. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 7, pp. 51–52. 52. Regarding the sentence range, see 8 U.S.C. § 1324, Bringing in and Harboring Certain Aliens, (a)(1)(B)(iv). See also GAO, “Combating Alien Smuggling,” 6. Regarding the plea offers, see Hilario, docket entry 196. 53. Hilario, resentencing hearing (February 13, 2009), pp. 38–40. 54. The first quoted passage is in EFE, “Culpables por tráfico de personas,” El Caribe, August 10, 2005; the second is in Xavier Neggers Crescioni, “Authorities: Verdict Will Help Deter Illegal Crossings,” San Juan Star, August 15, 2005. 55. The quoted passages are from Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 21, 2005), 119 and 78, respectively. The prosecutor also confused human trafficking with migrant smuggling; Hilario, trial day 3, p. 31. 56. For an example of the prosecutor recognizing the distinction between organizers and captains, see Hilario, trial day 15, p. 5. 57. During interrogation without counsel present, Fernando broke down in tears and confessed to the payment. His lawyer argued that his Miranda waivers were not knowing and intelligent because of his limited education (he was illiterate), his experience with Dominican police, and his mental state—sleep-­ deprived and traumatized—at the time of the interrogations. See Hilario, trial day 3, p. 43; trial day 2, p. 18; and trial day 9, p. 34; and U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit (Puerto Rico), United States of America v. Leonardo Hilario-­Hilario et al. (June 20, 2008), Nos. 06–1007 to 06–1013 (hereinafter cited as Hilario appeal), 14–15. 58. The quoted passage is from Hilario appeal, 4. The injustice was partially remedied during sentencing: Leonardo received seventeen years, Santiago (who cut

266 Notes to Pages 200–203 the salami) five, and the others around ten. Regarding “head captain,” see Hilario, trial day 15, p. 12: “Leonardo Hilario Hilario not only was the captain,” she says, with the definite article—the captain—seemingly implying exclusivity, but then adds that most witnesses “also identified him as the head captain, the person giving instructions on board the boat.” A witness takes the same approach: “four captains and a commander.” Hilario, trial day 15, p. 19. 59. U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. José Enrique Reyes, March 7, 1991. For another example of the conflation and then sorting of captain and crew see U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, United States v. Bartolo Trinidad de la Rosa, October 5, 1990. 60. Regarding piloting the vessel, see, for example, Hilario, trial day 6, p. 61. 61. The first quoted passage is from Hilario, sentencing hearing (November 21, 2005), 96; see 77. The second quoted passage is from Hilario appeal, 27. 62. The first quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 7, p. 62. The “machete” passage is from the Hilario sentencing hearing, 77; see 28. The appeals court view is from Hilario appeal, 24. The last quoted passage is from the Hilario resentencing hearing, 36. 63. The defense also offered adventurous theories; see, for example, Hilario, trial day 15, pp. 30–55. 64. The first quoted dialogue is from Hilario, trial day 5, pp. 32–33. The second and third quoted passages are from trial day 7, p. 30, and the fourth is from trial day 7, p. 33. See trial day 6, pp. 75 and 81. Regarding secuestro, see Hilario, trial day 6, pp. 79–80; trial day 5, pp. 7–8; trial day 3, p. 170; and trial day 9, p. 147 (witness interprets secuestro literally). Regarding passengers who would run, see Hilario, trial day 6, p. 69; and Hilario, sentencing hearing, 93–94. 65. The first quoted passages are from Hilario, sentencing hearing, 28 and 37–38; see trial day 15, p. 5. The last quoted phrase is from trial day 15, p. 4. 66. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 9, p. 152. See trial day 15, p. 7. 67. According to U.S. District Court, District of Puerto Rico, “Affidavit in Support of the Criminal Complaint Against Kennedi Martinez” (December 4, 2004), Miranda rights were read by ICE to all passengers; forty-­nine of the ninety-­two waived their rights and provided statements. According to U.S. Coast Guard, Sector San Juan situation report to Coast Guard District 7 (December 4, 2004), 2–3, ICE surrendered custody of fifty-­one aliens—those detained as material witnesses—to U.S. marshals; the remaining thirty-­seven passengers were repatriated or deported. Regarding thirty witnesses, see Hilario, docket entries 95 and 167. For absconders see docket entries 380, 381, 393, and 394, for example. The news article is Frank Griffiths, “Five in Puerto Rico Charged with Causing Deaths of Seven Dominican Migrants to Face Trial,” Associated Press, May 3, 2005. 68. The first quoted dialogue is from Hilario, trial day 12, p. 30; see 33–34 and 40; and the prosecutor’s response is in trial day 12, pp. 73–74. See also the “security concerns,” trial day 12, p. 81. Bail for the material witnesses was set at $5,000

Notes to Pages 204–210 267 ($2,000 cash, $3,000 unsecured); see Hilario, docket entries 80, 81, and 102–114, for example. Regarding work permits, see Hilario, trial day 8, pp. 11–12. Regarding the witness to Boston, see trial day 12, pp. 2–3 and 66. Dominicans often use “New York” in reference to the mainland United States as a whole. 69. U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Resource Manual, Section 1862, “S Visa Program—Eligibility.” 70. The quoted passage is from Hilario, trial day 13, p. 60. For a proper use of “negligence,” see Hilario, sentencing hearing, 7. 71. The epigraph is in Dudley Althaus, “Dominicans Seek Better Life, Jobs in Puerto Rico,” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, November 2, 2003. A migrant prevented from departing by the Dominican navy in November 2010 said, “If I had the opportunity, I would go again tonight.” La República, “MdG frustra viaje de 45 a Puerto Rico,” November 19, 2010. For statements regarding the effectiveness of detention as a deterrent, see, for example, INS Notice; Fleissner and Shapiro, 268; U.S. Coast Guard, Maritime Law Enforcement Manual, 6–8; and U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Pushing the Border, testimony of Robert L. Harris, deputy chief, Border Patrol, CBP, in 36. 72. For a European example of enhancing punishment in an attempt to deter smuggling, see Ilse van Liempt, “Inside Perspectives on the Process of Human Smuggling,” Policy Brief No. 3 (Amsterdam: International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion, 2007), 2. 73. The quoted passages, except the one from Fernando, are from Robinson and Darley, 185 (on the same page: “most criminals do not think they will be caught and punished”) and 174, respectively. 74. The first quoted passage is from Hilario, sentencing hearing, 114, as proffered by defense counsel. Probability rather than severity is from Tyler, 253. The other quoted passages are from Bhabha, 29 and 4, respectively. See Kanstroom, 228, where “the post-­entry social control deportation system was a perfect vehicle for politicians to demonstrate toughness on crime at virtually no political cost.” 75. Pentagon Channel, “Perilous Passage,” Recon, July 5, 2008. 76. The quoted passage is from Robinson and Darley, 174. 77. See Robinson and Darley, 175. 78. See the website text supplement, “Alternatives to Yola Travel.” 79. The quoted passage is from Miami Herald, “Coast Guard Keeps Watch against Revival of Boatlift,” October 6, 1980. 80. The quoted passages are from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “Operations Order—After Action Report” (Aguadilla, Border Patrol Ramey Sector, April 4, 2006), concerning Operation Monkey Wrench. Acquired through Freedom of Information Act request no. 2010F11185; requested on May 13, 2010, and filled on June 18, 2010.

268 Notes to Pages 211–220 81. The quoted passage is from Koslowski, 349. 82. The first quoted passage is from Kyle and Koslowski’s introduction to Global Human Smuggling, 8; the second is from Douglas S. Massey, “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis,’” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151/3 (2007): 322. For discussion of why enhanced border enforcement fails to reduce undocumented immigration, see Massey and Riosmena, particularly 299; Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), 137; and Belinda I. Reyes, Hans P. Johnson, and Richard Van Swearingen, Holding the Line? The Effect of the Recent Border Build-­Up on Unauthorized Immigration (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2002), 7–23. See also Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply since Mid-­Decade” (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2010). 83. The quoted passage is from Mercer, 20. 84. The myth is discussed in the chapter “The Psychology of Migrant Motivation.” 85. The evasion tactics described in this section do not put captains and migrants at greater risk of interdiction. Border-­enforcement authorities in Puerto Rico are aware of all of these tactics. 86. Canvas coverings are used on migrant boat voyages from Albania to Italy. See United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Toolkit, tool 2, p. 10. 87. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, Annual Review of Mission Performance: United States Coast Guard (FY 2006) (Washington, DC, February 2008), 4–5; and U.S. Senate, Allen testimony, 2009, 5. In response to these problems, the Coast Guard is modernizing its fleet. See U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Coast Guard: Deepwater Requirements, Quantities, and Cost Require Revalidation to Reflect Knowledge Gained” (July 2010), 7; and testimony of Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr., Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard, in U.S. Senate, Appropriations Committee, Coast Guard Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Request: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, May 10, 2011.

Saúl 1. Regarding these details and the congressional report, see statement of Rear Admiral Gary Blore, Assistant Commandant for Acquisition, in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Overview of Coast Guard Acquisition Policies and Programs: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation (March 24, 2009), 12; and U.S. Coast Guard, “Acquisition Update: New Selex HC-­130H Radar Continues to Prove Value in Lifesaving,” press release, September 23, 2008. The Seaspray 7500E costs about $2.9 million per airplane. The Coast Guard also uses self-­locating data markers. These are buoys that are placed in the water at

Note to Page 221 269 the last-­known positions of capsizes; satellite signals sent from the buoys are used for tracking. 2. Regarding the fearlessness followed by fear, see Janoff-­Bulman, 313–314, where “denial numbness” or “psychological detachment” following an extreme experience can result in “the involuntary reexperiencing of the victimizing event.” Over time, “as the arousal diminishes and the ability to confront the experience grows,” the numbness decreases. See also Bessel A. van der Kolk, “The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-­enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism,” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12/2 (June 1989): 389–411.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate photos. abandonment, 26, 50, 114, 115,135, 251nn63,64, 253n15; causes of, 117; facilitated by consensual unions, 114; laws regarding, 247–248n41; and values, 107; by women, 117, 118 abuse, of passengers, 64 advertising, 89, 90 Afghani migrants, 54 agency, 40, 99, 142, 149, 150, 223n1, 225n1, 235n39 Aguada, 46, 49 Aguadilla, xiv, 46, 71, 80; as arrival site, 161; as site of air station, xv, 181, 220 air migration, 42, 68. See also fraudulent documents; TSA; two-­ticket scheme Alberto, 207; on marriage as business arrangement, 73; and migrant-­ organized trip, 39 Alejandro, 62; experience at sea, 61–62; and risk tolerance, 147 Algerian migrants, 243–244n10 Alicia, 31, 34, 165–166 Altagracia, 26, 160; on failed migrations, 27; on fate, 148; on husband’s migration, 134, 160; poverty of, 22; on protecting captains, 192; and reason to migrate, 146

Álvarez Renta, Luis, 102, 246–247n34 Amado (captain): on cell phones/ detection, 212; and days in monte, 42; on decrease in yola trips, 100; on deceiving migrants, 91; on detention, 207; on fear, 147–148; and jumping ship, 56; on migrant-­organized trips, 59; on migrating husbands, 134; and mysterious disappearances, 142; on radar, 212; and reason for return, 155; on smuggling fees, 52; tactic of, 41; on yola transportation, 43 amnesty, 10, 11, 141, 254n25 Añasco, 80 anxiety, 1, 147, 157, 159; reason for return, 161, 256–257n52 Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility (I-­601), 72. See also marriage fraud Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA), 172, 189, 192, 193, 203, 206, 207 ayudantes (crew members), x, 32, 36, 38, 46, 53, 63, 109, 122, 128, 174, 193, 194, 195, 200, 202, 205, 214, 252n1, 264–165n47; conflation of, with captain, 199, 201, 266n59; sentencing of, 204

306 Undocumented Dominican Migration Báez Figueroa, Ramón, 102 Balaguer, Joaquín (D.R. president), 9, 103 Banco Intercontinental (Baninter), 22; bailout of, 101–102 Bayahibe, xiv, 97 Betty, 166, 238n25; and possible self, 153; success of, 154 biometrics, 70, 181, 189, 191, 206, 263–264n38; and biometrics at sea, 178, 189, 190, 263–264n38 Biscayne Bay, Florida, 170 Blackmun, Harry, 169 bola (free trip), 52–53, 54, 130 border enforcement, xi; and awareness of evasion tactics, 268n85; and corporate capitalism, 9; enhancement of, 6, 52, 68, 207, 208; evasion of, 41; and inequality, 229–230n18; and migrant flows, 3, 11, 156; and “prevention through deterrence,” 204; reactive policy, 168–174; reducing yola migration, 207; view of, by migrants, xii Border Patrol, 32, 46, 47, 147; on captain error, 59; Del Rio Sector, 172; on Dominican navy, 104; and FURA, 262n27; and migrant-­organized trips, 40 Boston, 71, 203 Brazilians, 55 breast-­feeding, 62–63, 99 bribes, 103, 104; and impunity, 247n37 broaching, 57, 58. See also capsizing brujería, 136, 139 brujos, 139. See also brujería Bush, George H. W., 168, 169 Bush, George W., 109, 170 Cabeza del Toro, 194 Cabo Engaño, 57 Cabo Rojo, 46 cannibalism, 61, 63, 99, 239–240n32 capitalism, 6; corporate, 8, 9, 110; global, 8 capsizing, 45, 57, 60, 183, 195 captains, ix–x, xi, xii, 61–62, 192, 193, 200, 202, 261n19; and accommodating passengers, 53–54; armed, 64; and

captain error, 58–59; and death penalty, 109; evading Coast Guard, 59; fearing arrest, 161; freelance, 38; and giving migrants a choice, 32–33; as having final say, 43; and intimidating witnesses, 192; and limited knowl‑ edge, 212, 213; and malfeasance, 63–65; migrants’ view of, 39, 193; murder of, 63, 67; and navigation, 44–45; overconfidence of, 58, 205; perceptions of, x, 39; and pressure from passengers, 194–195; prosecution of, 124; and relatives’ revenge, 67; rescuing passengers, 193; self-­employed, 37; surviving failed trips, 142; tactics of, 213, 214, 268n85; and weather, 65 Caquito (captain), 65, 67 Caribbean Air and Marine Operations, 179, 181, 182 Caribbean Border Interagency Group (CBIG), 179, 180; layered approach of, 180; and “publicize and deter,” 204 Caridad, 20–21, 114, 129, 129; apartment of, 145; desperate situation of, 144–145; and failed trips, 24; on infidelity, 114 Carlos, xviii; and being found, 48; and fear, 100; house of, 16; and migrant-­ organized trip, 39; on perseverance, 153 cartas de ruta, 38, 70, 96 Carter, Jimmy, 161, 209 Catalina, 63 catamarans, 42 Catholic Church: on human dignity, 235n39; on migration, 140–141 Cayman Islands, 101 Cayo Levantado, and scam, 68 cell phones, 48; and detection, 212–213 cheap labor force, 9 Chencho, xviii; house of, 16; on the law, 101; success of, 144 Chicago, xiv, 131, 165 Chicho, 207; business idea of, 26; on decrease in yola trips, 96; on Dominicans and favors, 134; on life abroad,

Index 307 95, 158; on living in the country, 21; plan of, 129–130; and returning home, 157; success of, 26, 88–89, 130; on tourism, 89; on U.S. law, 109 child raising, 15, 99, 114, 117, 118, 119, 145. See also abandonment; children; single motherhood children, 4, 50, 75, 95, 97, 113, 114, 115, 247–248n41; disadvantages of, 118; exploitation of, 251n63; future of, 6, 15, 116, 134–135, 136, 156, 250–251n59, 251n63, 251n66; and neglect, 119; as reason to migrate, 134; and self-­ realization, 119. See also child raising; procreation; single motherhood child support, 117, 150; and double thinking, 134 China, 55 Chinese migrants, 55, 170 Chinese smuggling, 55 Christian, 49; chance encounters of, 48–49; on decrease in yola trips, 207; failed trip of, 24; and free trip, 53; on having fewer children, 116; on invoking God, 136; and oversold yola, 43; on peer encouragement, 148; repatriation of, 49; on traveling with friend, 64 Christianity, 83–84, 124, 136; and migration, 140 CIA, on D.R. government and migration, 10 Clara, and marriage for legalization, 76 la clase de los mantenidos (class of dependent people), 12 Claudia: on decrease in yola trips, 207; motivation of, 1 Clinton, Bill, 176; and Cuban migration, 169, 170 Coast Guard, xi, 168, 170, 173, 179, 180, 181, 184, 263n33, 263n36, 268–269n1; boats of, 61; burning yolas, 124, 187; on collisions, 59; and Cubans, 262n30; on Dominican navy, 104, 182; evasion of, 59; and Maritime Alien Smuggling Law Enforcement

Act, 264n44; on migrant flow, 22, 23; and repatriation, 172; and rescues, 57, 62, 137, 186, 195, 196, 220, 239n30, 268–269n1; and tracking yolas, 186, 268–269n1; and view of captains, x; on yolas, 56. See also Dash 8; interdiction cocaine, 52, 81 colmados (neighborhood grocery stores), 14, 21; as preferred enterprise, 25 Colombians, 55 complex causation, 1–4; v. cumulative causation, 3–4 compulsion, 24, 151–155, 204 con men, 53, 66–67, 110; in Turkish smuggling, 240n40 consensual unions (uniones libres), 20, 76, 113, 249n51, 251n66; abandonment of, 118, 119; disadvantages of, 114; v. marriage, 124; as trial period, 114, 250n53. See also children; marriage construction work, 15, 17, 23, 33, 51, 93, 95, 155, 219 conucos (household food gardens), 21, 124 Cornyn, John, 230–231n20 Corruption Perception Index, 102, 247n35 cost of living: in D.R., 20, 21; in P.R., 5 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, 104 coyotes, 237n20, 264n42 crack, 81, 82 crime, 6, 11, 79, 85, 97, 101, 109, 111, 119, 159; acquisitive, 110, 177; as cause of migration, 151; organized, 38, 174, 175, 204, 261nn18,20; as shortcut to wealth, 112; and smuggling fee, 55 Cuba: mass departures from, 170; and terrorism, 171 Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, 169, 171 Cuban migrants, 41, 55, 161, 169, 180, 210; v. Dominican migrants, 171; encouragement of, by U.S., 259n10; interdiction of, 262n30; smuggling of, 53, 171; and wet foot/dry foot policy, 170, 171, 210

308 Undocumented Dominican Migration Cuban Migration Agreement of 1995, 169–170 Cuban Revolution, 169 Culebra Island, 59 cultural osmosis, 97 culture of migration, 4, 12, 86, 130, 148, 149, 226n6 culture shock, 157 cumulative causation, 2–4, 225n2, 226n7 Dash 8 (surveillance aircraft), xv, 182, 185, 192, 214, 215, 263n36; detection equipment of, 184–185 death at sea, 26, 57, 58, 59, 62, 195; fear of, 142, 147; not a deterrent, 210; routinization of, 99. See also capsizing; drowning; Mona Passage dehydration, 61, 90, 157, 163, 165, 186 Delgadino (captain), 46; on cell phones, 212; on countersurveillance, 214; on decline in trips, 55; deportation of, 108; as desensitized, 148; disbelief of, in God, 139; as hopeful, 132; on male migrants’ behavior, 26–27; and near collision, 59; not understanding consequences, 206–207; on smuggling fees, 52; and transporting migrants by referral, 38 Delio, 152; on choosing illegal migration, 106 deliriousness, 45, 46, 61, 62, 122; and jumping overboard, 193 Department of Homeland Security, in P.R., 179. See also homeland security deportation, 27, 32, 33, 71, 153, 154, 266n67; and demand for small trips, 38; fear of, 159; laws of, 256n49; and politicians, 267n74; reasons for, 155 deprivation, 3, 4, 29; entrapment in, 22, 29; relative, 88, 89; routinization of, 22 Desecheo Island, 45, 56, 164, 237n13 desperation, 29, 63, 86, 93, 115, 121, 122, 135, 144, 155, 157, 160, 194, 195, 220, 237n18, 258n64 deterrence, 24, 66, 90, 96, 100, 107, 132,

142, 147, 152, 170, 171, 172, 174, 178, 179, 190, 193, 199, 204–211, 230–231n20, 262n30, 267n71; in European smuggling, 267n72 Diego, on cell phone detection, 212 discomfirming evidence, 131–132 distribution of wealth, 7, 9, 244n12 divorce, 74, 77, 114, 124, 131, 247–248n41; as means to reunite, 75–76 Dolores: experience of, on yola, 56; and spontaneity, 131 Domingo, 32; getting to New York, 69; in P.R., 51; on preferring life in D.R., 159; selling heroin, 112 Dominican Central Bank, 10, 231n22 Dominican navy, vii, 103, 141, 164, 180, 193, 208; and Coast Guard, 213, 263n33; complicity of, in migration, 10, 36, 41, 104, 105, 122, 174; and cor‑ ruption, xii, 104, 105, 106, 182; and destroying yolas, 175, 182; and in‑ formants (chivatos), 182–183; and preventing migration, 267n71; and rescues, 61; and scams, 68; and treatment of migrants, xii Dominican Republic, 7–8, 104; and benefits of migration, 9–13; and bilateral agreement with U.S., 184, 186, 190; compared to U.S., 108; corruption in, 101–106, 117, 205; economic crises of, 10, 22; employment in, 15, 233n29; Gini coefficient of, 7, 228n14; and government bailout, 22; houses in, 14, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 20; and impunity, 101; and inequity, 7, 228n14; law in, 101–112; migration flow of, to U.S., 54–55; v. P.R., 157–158; and selective enforcement of law, 104, 247n37; as society without consequences, 103; and tourism, 89; as transit country, 55; underclass in, 6; and underemployment, 13, 94, 112, 116, 124; and undocumented Haitians, 13, 159, 232–233n28; and unemployment, 11, 13; and world capitalism, 21–22. See also poverty

Index 309 Dominicans: and apathy, 233–234n32; and astuteness, 111; and choosing not to migrate, 28, 238n25; and comparisons, 88; and contraception, 116; and culture of migration, 86, 130; and deferred responsibility, 129; and demobilization, 23, 233–234n32; and discontentment with D.R. government, 12–13, 23, 232n27; double code of, 107; and double thinking, 133, 134, 252n12; and dual citizenship, 232n25; and easy money, 109–112; and foreigners, 88, 89; and goal of poor, 144; and high tolerance, 44; and illusion of migration, 86, 89, 91, 92, 94, 96, 149, 242n2; and infidelity, 79, 114; and ingratitude, 95; and integrity, 111; and law abidance, 110; on losing motivation, 254n30; on migrant motivation, 127; and moral values, 107, 110, 229n17, 248n42; opinions of, on migrating, 25, 107–108; opinions of, on politicians, 102; and parental responsibilities, 251n60; posing as Puerto Ricans, 69; preferring self-­employment, 234n35; and procreation, 115, 250n58; and sexual relations, 116; suspiciousness of (complejo de gancho), 66, 240n39, 252n13; in U.S., 12, 38, 244n12; on value of work, 144; wages of, 15, 26, 34. See also migrants; migration Dominicans (documentary), 238n22 doublethink, 133, 134; as universal, 252n12 downward assimilation, 6–7 DR-­CAFTA, 8, 228–229n16 drop-­offs and returns, 46 drowning, 57, 60, 64, 99, 161, 195; fear of, 107, 137, 148 drug dealers, 46, 81 drugs, 52; trafficking, x, 105–106, 174, 183 economy, as factor in migration, 3, 4, 5–6, 8, 10, 22, 23, 24, 27, 68, 89, 178, 208 Ecuadorians, 55

education, 116 8 U.S. Code Section 1324, 176, 197, 265n52 8 U.S. Code Section 1325, 171, 172, 176, 177, 179, 189, 191, 261n22 8 U.S. Code Section 1326, 70, 176, 177, 179, 191, 192 El Cedro, xiv; housing in, 16 El Limón, 62 Emilio, 213; as con man, 66; on migration as flight, 150 employers, unethical, 93–94 employment, nonmonetary value of, 144 England, 54 European migrants, 161 Executive Order 13,276 (Bush), 170 exploitation, 8, 50, 51, 93, 94, 118, 141, 179, 237n18, 244n14; in U.S., 94 Fajardo, 71, 80 families, 27, 234n34; divided by deportation, 154; reunification of, 98, 99, 247–247n41; transnational, 97 family, 50, 143; concept of, 113; and escaping responsibilities, 135; planning of, 116; providers of, 143; and support, 115, 118. See also families; single motherhood FBI, 82 Félix, 32; on life in U.S., 34; repatriation of, 127; trip of, 63 Fernández, Leonel (D.R. president), 12, 102 Fernando, 195, 199–200; interrogation of, 265n57; on others’ failures, 205; prosecution of, 197; resentencing of, 197, 201; saving Yadira, 197; and smuggling conviction, 127 fishermen, 15 fishing boats: advantages of, 39, 40; capsizing easily, 57 Florida, as destination, 33 forgery, 33, 70, 99, 101. See also fraudulent documents Francisco, 152; on air patrols, 213; on compulsion of migration, 152; on

310 Undocumented Dominican Migration God’s involvement, 136; on older poor people, 22; and opting out of trip, 56 Franklin, 130; and deferred payment, 54; on encountering overturned yola, 64–65; experience of, on yola, 57, 99; on fear, 147; on helpless passengers, 64; on loss at sea, 142; migrating by air, 69 fraudulent documents, 33, 42, 68, 69, 70, 71, 80, 93, 154, 155, 165, 207, 238n22; use of, as prosecutable, 191; and values, 107 freedom to choose, 28–29 free trade zones (zonas francas), 7–8, 53, 228n15; and wages, 228–229n16 General Migration Law, 247n40 Gladys, 111; on collective excitement, 98; and discouraging yola migration, 96; and improvising employment, 111–112; on living in U.S., 96; on missing children, 156; and paying with pig, 52; on working, 111 global dispersion, 97 globalization, xiii, 1, 6, 8, 107; and migration, 227n10; and values, 110 Gordito: on air patrols, 213; on asking for help, 48; determination of, 132; and failed trips, 24; on forgetting tragedies, 100; on motivation, 87; on procreation, 116; on secuestros, 49; on U.S. v. D.R. laws, 108 Great Inagua, Bahamas, 62 green cards, 68, 71, 74, 154 Gregorio: on abandonment, 135; experience of, 147; on honest earnings, 110; on invoking God, 136–137 Guarnizo, Luis, 10; on remittances, 231n22 guns, on yolas, 63, 240n36 Gustavo, experience of, 154–155 Haiti, 55, 59, 258n1 (Border Enforcement); earthquake in, 13, 209, 215; mass departures from, 170; and smugglers, 54

Haitian migrants, 55, 168, 170, 180; in D.R., 13–14, 93, 232–233n28; stereotype of, 159 Hanna (tropical storm), 128 Hato Rey, 80 heroin, 32 homeland security, 170, 171, 172; unsubstantiated threat to, 199 homesickness, 156, 157, 161 hospitality, 50–52, 237n19 hostility, on yolas, 37, 63 human development, 29, 112, 243n5 human rights, 104, 172, 256n49 Human Rights Watch, 177 identification theft, 71 “illegal,” use of term, 177, 261n21 immigration, legal approach to, 172; social scientists and, xii–xiii. See also migration Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 55, 173, 179, 190, 195, 266n67; and focus on violent and sexual offenses, 177 Immigration and Nationality Act, 169 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 170 Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments, 72, 73. See also marriage fraud immigration policies, xi, 141, 168, 210, 211; and negative representation of migrants, 179; as punishing migrants, 171. See also border enforcement: reactive policy; politicians Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, 211 impoverishment, 6, 8, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 92, 140, 227–278n13 infidelity, 79, 114; fear of, 155; women’s tolerance of, 155 Inter-­American Development Bank (IDB), 10, 22, 107, 228–229n16, 231n22 interdiction, 64, 104, 105, 106, 168, 169, 171, 172, 221, 262n30; and deterrence, 210; as humanitarian efforts, 173, 186; in Mona Passage, 179–194

Index 311 International Organization for Migration, 107 Iran-­Contra affair, 109 Isabela, 46 Italy, 245n30; as migrant destination, 177 Jamel: confidence of, 58; and getting rich quick, 112; on reason for migrating, 13; on return to D.R., 155; and smuggling fee, 53 Javier, on air patrols, 213 jealousy, 1; as reason for return, 155, 256–257n52 Johnny, 60; house of, 18; and migrant-­ organized trip, 39; poverty of, 22; religious beliefs of, 137; survival of, 60–61 Joint Interagency Task Forces, 180 Jorge, and marriage for legalization, 76–77 José: on fear, 148; hopes of, for family, 135; on marriage, 114; on procreation and supporting children, 116; on starting new families, 117 Josefa: on marriage, 115; on mother’s abandonment, 118 Juan, and marriage for business, 76 Julio: being helped in P.R., 48; on decrease in yola trips, 208; on life abroad, 153; repatriation of, 108; on supporting children, 117 juries, as sympathetic, 193, 264n43. See also Mariel boatlift Key West, Florida, 168 kidnapping. See secuestro kidney failure, 61, 74 kinship and friendship, 50; exploitation of, 51 labor migration, 9, 24 La Romana, 57; as departure site, 59; as repatriation site, 124, 181, 190, 191, 208 Las Galeras, xiv, 31, 34, 122, 163 Las Terrenas, xiv; tourist industry in, 23

La Vega, 14, 95 Leonardo (captain), 194; and desperate passengers, 195; prosecution of, 200, 265–266n58; sentencing of, 197, 199 liberation theology, 140 Libya, 177, 245n30 loans, to pay smuggling fees, 53, 238n22 Loíza, 80 loneliness, 76, 144, 156, 159 loss at sea, 58–59, 100, 141, 142; and prayer, 253n19. See also captains; myths Los Zetas, 174, 261n18 Luis, 109; on money, 109–110; on procreation, 115; on youth, 119 Lynn, Massachusetts, 32 M-­2, 104–105. See also Dominican navy macro levels, xii, xiii, 2, 3, 225n1 Manny, 32; “kidnapping” of, 49 Manolo, 245n20; and lifetime of hard work, 95 Manuel: as dishwasher in N.Y., 94; and marriage for legalization, 76 María, and marriage for legalization, 76–77 Mariel boatlift, 161, 168, 170, 204, 209, 240n40, 257n63, 264n43 Mario, determination of, 207 Marisol, 22 maritime migration, types of, 36–42 marriage: v. consensual unions, 124; as rare, among poor, 113; as too expensive, 114; and unilateral love, 74, 75. See also consensual unions; marriage fraud marriage fraud, 71–77; and values, 107 Marta, 15, 16, 17, 21, 120, 121–122, 123, 124–125; and cell phone, 48; characteristics of, 125; and Christianity, 124; and consensual unions, 115, 124; employment of, 124; and failed trip, 15, 121–122; house of, 17, 124, 125; on the law, 101; and loss at sea, 141, 142; on migration, 124, 125; not understanding consequences, 206;

312 Undocumented Dominican Migration and protecting captains, 193; religious beliefs of, 140 Martina, 20; husband’s situation, 159; job situation of, 22; on marriage for legalization, 76; on migrants’ returning, 160 Massey, Douglas S., xii, 2, 3. See also cumulative causation Matancitas beach, 60 Mayagüez, as site of interviews, 190 media, 89–90, 243n6; and dissuading migration, 90; and sensationalism, 99 men: as proud of procreating, 115; and sexual relationships, 115, 250n57 Mexican border, 52 Mexicans, 245n22; and motivation, 243n6 Mexico, 24, 211; as migration route, 42, 51, 171 Miami, 33, 41 Miches, xiv, 58, 99, 183; as departure point, 31, 80, 129, 166, 212; as home to migrants, 32; Los Franceses neighborhood, 33; as retirement destination, 96 micro levels, xii, xiii, 3, 225n1 migrant-­harboring services, 49 migrant labor flows, 6, 254n25 migrant-­organized trips, 211, 236n6; advantages of, 39–41. See also specific migrants migrants, xi, xii, 5, 47, 54–55, 93, 148, 153, 188, 191, 196, 198, 238n25, 238–239n26; and abnegation, 135, 140; and advancement, 87, 88, 97; on arranged marriages, 72; on arrival, 46–52; and asking for help, 48; bound for mainland, 68–71; and collective choice, 32–33; and collective excitement, 98; and collective momentum, 98; and comparisons, 88, 243n4; and compulsion, 24, 151–155, 204; concerns of, xiii, 4; and “contagious goal,” 88, 98, 245n27; and control of success, 26, 144; and crimes, 111, 112;

and deferred responsibility/deference, 128, 129, 136; and dependence on relatives, 49–50; determination of, 100; dilemma of, 146; and disappointment, 86, 92, 95, 96, 160, 244n14; and disillusion, 92–96, 151, 160, 243–244n10; and divorcing to reunite, 75–76; and the Dominican dream, 14–15; ethics of, 110; and failure, 87, 141; and fatalism, 136, 143, 253n18; and fear, 100, 137, 148, 205, 211, 269n2; and fidelity, 76; and formal employment, 11; and goals, 129–130, 134, 208; and hope, 92, 149–150, 159–160; and hospitality, 50–51, 237n19; and illusion of control, 140, 150; on immigration process, 247–248n41; and inability to swim, 57; and informal economy, 233n29; jobs of, 93; and leaving in secret, 133, 150, 252n11; legalization of, by marriage, 72, 241nn47,48; and majority rule, 264–265n47; and motivation, 1, 2, 3, 55, 86, 87, 127, 129, 131, 141, 150–151, 153, 154, 233n30, 243n25; as not thinking, 127–128, 129, 130, 131, 160; and obstacles to success, 92–93; and ostentation, 87, 242n2; perceptions of, on choice, 29; and planning, 128, 129, 130; and positive emotions, 242n1 (Culture of Migration); and possible self, 153; pregnant, 55, 58, 65–66; and preparation, 128, 129, 136; and promiscuity, 75; prosecutability of, 189, 191; and protecting captains, 142, 175, 186, 192, 193; protection of, under U.S. law, 93–94, 244n16; on Puerto Rico, 5, 226n8; reception of, 48–52; and religious beliefs, 135–136, 137, 138, 139–140, 142, 253n18, 254n27; on return, 86–87; and self-­ actualization, 146; and self-­imposed austerity, 95; self-­perceptions of, 127; and sense of purpose, 135, 145–146, 150; and separation emotions, 155–161, 256–257n52; and solidarity, 192–193; and spontaneity, 130, 131; as unaware,

Index 313 28, 187, 206; as undocumented, 223n2; viewed as criminals, 174, 175, 178; and view of captains, 39, 193; vulnerability of, x, 66, 93, 142; and will, 204, 209, 210, 267n71; as witnesses, 193, 203, 204, 266n67, 266–267n68. See also death at sea; deportation; Dominicans; migration; poverty; processing of migrants; repatriation migrant smuggling, x, 174, 175, 230–231n20, 261n18, 261n20; conflated with human trafficking, 199, 265n55; and corruption, 103–104; and death penalty, 109, 197; disruption of, 105; hierarchy of, 193, 199, 200, 202, 204; large-­scale, 215; procedures of, 194; as prosecutable offense, 191; types of, x, 175, 211. See also organizadores migration, xi, 248n44; by air, 55, 68, 69; and arrival at P.R., 46, 47, 48–52; benefits of, to D.R. government, 9–13; causes of, 4–9, 22, 101–102; as civil disobedience, 108; complexity of, xiii; cycle of, 11; and decision making, 3, 4, 5, 28, 66, 98, 126, 130, 131, 132, 133, 145, 146, 161, 226n5, 234n37; defined, xii; discouragement of, 96; and domestic disintegration, 151; domino effect of, 14; as endorsed by God, 140; as escape from psychological numbness, 146, 150; and failure, 24, 25, 26, 27, 132; “feminization” of, 55, 151, 156, 238n–239n26; as flight, 150–151; forced, 27–29; as global humanitarian crisis, 177; goals of, 15, 134, 208; government dependence on, 12; government role in, 231n21; illegality of, as abstract, 206; and impoverishment, 26; as labor supply, 6; legal v. illegal, 107; length of trip, 44; as mobilization of poor, 23, 233–234n32; motivation for, 1, 2, 23, 86, 127, 135, 149, 233n30; as normative, 97; as only hope, 132; as ostensibly voluntary, 27, 28; and personal factors, 2; as politically motivated, 10; postponed by tourism,

89; predeparture, 42–44; and prestige, 5; reasons against, 28, 140, 142; reasons for, 13, 15, 27, 106–107, 134, 135, 150–151, 153, 155; and relativity, 24; as rite of passage, 254–255n32; as route to advancement, 97; as safety valve, 9, 11; as self-­perpetuating, 2, 3, 24; as successful, 167; as solution and problem, 156; and structurally transformative agency, 99; theories of, 2; as win-­win, 227n11. See also culture of migration Miguel, 30, 43; and failed trips, 24; and getting caught, 33; life of, in P.R., 33; on luxuries, 33–34; and rebuilding life in D.R., 34; on resolving to stay in D.R., 34; and rethinking another yola trip, 34; successful trip of, 32–33; traits of, 32 Miguelina, 192; as competent mother, 119; on overcoming fear, 147; on sense of belonging, 148 Milagros (wife of Caquito), 65, 67; on compulsion, 151; on illegal migration, 106; on migrating from Sánchez, 23 Miranda rights, 187, 265n57, 266n67 misdemeanors, 171, 172, 177, 191; class B, 172, 260n14 moebius strip, 24. See also migration; poverty Mona Island, 53, 55, 61, 171, 210 Mona Passage, ix, 31, 69, 169, 172, 205; and biometrics at sea, 189; crossing of, 44–46, 59, 60; as dangerous, 56, 57, 237n21; as devoid of terrorists, 174; infrastructure around, 99; and interdiction, 179–194. See also yola trips money, as guiding principle, 109–110 Monito Island, 53, 55, 171 monte, 122; and delays, 42; as hiding place, 42, 48, 164 Morena, 25, 26, 45, 55, 102; and Coast Guard, 127; on disappearance at sea, 141, 142; and education, 238n25; fourth trip of, 56–57; and marriage

314 Undocumented Dominican Migration for legalization, 73–74; on migration as addiction, 151–152; and near collision, 59–60; not understanding consequences, 206; on passengers going crazy, 64; and political contact, 102; on protecting captains, 192–193; religious beliefs of, 137, 139; and trip preparation, 128 Moreno (captain), 11, 99; competence of, 58; on contraceptives, 116; on decline in trips, 55; and discouraging migrants, 96; on Dominicans procreating, 115–116; on education, 116; on failed trips, 24; on fear of yola trip, 100; on fishing, 23; on God’s will, 136; on hypocrisy, 139; on illegality of trip, 106; and infrared, 212; migrant-­organized trip of, 41; on organizers, 193; on overcoming fear, 147; on oversold yolas, 43–44; on recruitment, 91–92; on repatriation, 153; on salaries, 15; on self-­interest, 134; on sharks, 66; on time healing wounds, 100; on yola travel, 97 motoconchos (motorbike taxi drivers), 15, 23; as job, 34, 89, 144 multiple attempts, as routine, 153 Myrdal, Gunnar, 2. See also cumulative causation myths, 141, 142, 211

NAFTA, 228–229n16 Nagua, 60, 98, 122; as departure site, 161 Naranjito, xiv National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness, 179–180 neoliberalism, 1, 6–9, 171; as benefitting wealthy nations, 8; and inequity, 7; and values, 110 Netherlands, 55 networks, 3, 4, 50, 226n7 New Bedford, Massachusetts, 32 New York, 1, 24, 76, 94, 95, 108; unregulated work in, 93. See also Washington Heights 9/11 attacks: and immigration policy, 170;

and paradigm shift, 173; victims of, jumping to death, 28 Núñez smugglers, 56–57, 239n29 Office of Field Operations, 70, 179, 180, 182 Office of the Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, 169 Olivario: on air patrols, 213; on capsizing, 57; on economy, 208; lost at sea, 59; on rough seas, 45; on working in P.R., 96 Operation Able Manner, 180 Operation Able Response, 181 Operation Able Vigil, 180 Operation Monkey Wrench, 210. See also deterrence Operation Streamline, 172 organizadores (migrant smuggling organizers), x, 36, 205; evading law enforcement, 193; less dependence on, 211; and oversold yolas, 43, 238n23; and smuggling fee, 53 organized smuggling, 46; disadvantage of, 36–37. See also migrant smuggling Orlando, 78, 79–85, 236n6; arrests of, 82, 83; business ideas of, 25–26; Christian conversion of, 83–84; health problems of, 81; marriage and divorce of, 81; navigation methods of, 45; 1973 migration of, 79–80; on preferring death to returning, 151; and prejudice, 79; and return to D.R., 84; second attempt, 80; self-­reflection of, 80; strength of, 85; and suicide attempts, 83; and survival instincts, 85; in U.S., 81–84; on U.S. v. D.R. laws, 108; view of, on family, 79, 80 Orwell, George, 133 out-­migration, 11–12 overfishing, 23 Pakistan, 54 Pakistani migrants, 54 panic, 45, 46, 57, 60, 63 parenting, 117, 250–251n59, 251n60; and

Index 315 hopes of, for children, 134–135. See also child raising patriarchy, 114 Peace Corps, 146 Pedro, on motoconchos, 15 peer encouragement, 148 Pepe, on behavior, 109 perseverance, 153, 160–161 Peruvians, 55 pitch poling, 57. See also capsizing Plame, Valerie, 109 Playa Limón, vii, 183 policy makers, and migration, xiii. See also immigration policies; politicians political activism, diminishment of, 233–234n32; in Latin America, 23; v. migration, 233–234n32 political contact, 102–103 politicians: and harsh laws, 267n74; and immigrants, 205–206; as villains, xi polygamy. See men, and sexual relationships Ponce, 71 Population Council, 115 Portes, Alejandro, and out-­migration, 11–12 possible self, 153; v. real self, 154 poverty, 8, 29, 111, 112, 134, 143–144, 227–228n13, 232–233n28; chronic, 1, 4, 13–27, 79; and consensual unions, 118; exacerbated by neoliberalism, 7, 9; increased by failed migration, 24; in Latin America, 7; migrants’ attitude toward, 143; and migration, 2, 55; as necessitating migration, 107; perpetuation of, 118; resistance of, as motivation, 145; as result of corruption, 101, 246n33 Presidential Decision Directive 9 (Clinton), 170, 176, 180 privatization, in the D.R., 8 processing of migrants, 186–187, 188, 189–194, 206 procreation, 115, 116, 119, 251n66; and ability to support children, 22, 116, 250n58; ambivalence of, 147

profiteering, 202–203 prosecutions, x, 71, 171, 176–177, 179, 200; and conflating captains and crew, 200, 266n59; difficulty of, 192, 193; and homogenizing culpability, 201; increase of, 172; as ineffective deterrents, 207; process of, 191; and prosecutable offenses, 191; of second attempt, 206; and sending a message, 205; and sensationalism, 205; and smuggling hierarchy, 202, 204 prostitution, 75, 118, 243–244n10, 247–248n41; and values, 107. See also sex tourism: and “sex-­pats” Puerto Ricans: as collaborators, 194; helpfulness of, to migrants, 48; and overcharging migrants, 49 Puerto Rico: arrival at, 46, 47, 48–52; v. D.R., 157–158; as migrant destination, 1, 68–69, 240n41; as transit point, 68; underemployment in, 151; unemployment in, 94 Puerto Rico Police Joint Forces of Rapid Action (FURA), 179, 180, 184, 195; and Border Patrol, 262n27 Punta Cana, 164 Rafael (captain), ix, x; competence of, 58; on migrant motivation, 127; on risk level, 159; and scam, 67; and stopping leaks, 56 Ramey Air Force Base, 181–182 Ramón: on migrants as slaves, 93; religious beliefs of, 136; and smuggling fee, 53; on tragedies not dissuading migration, 100 Ramona, 26; on marriage, 114–115; on not returning home, 157; on yola travel as obsession, 152 rape, in monte, 42 rational choice, 3, 226n4, 226n9. See also migrants: and motivation Raúl, 146, 162, 163–167, 239n28; and bringing Betty, 166–167; business idea of, 26; business of, 165; in Chicago, 163; childhood of, 163; education

316 Undocumented Dominican Migration of, 163–164, 238n25; migration of, 163–164; and positive thinking, 165; pragmatism of, 139–140; and success, 167; and U.S. citizenship, 166; on U.S. law, 109; visit of, to D.R., 166 Reagan, Ronald, 168, 258n1 (Border Enforcement) recidivism, 172, 207, 246n31 recruitment, 36, 37–38, 43, 112, 131, 133, 166, 174; and hope, 150; and sales pitches, 91–92 refoulement, 169. See also repatriation regional concurrence team (RCT), 189, 190, 191. See also processing of migrants regret, spontaneous, 161, 257n63, 258n64. See also remorse rejection, 79, 84, 85, 157, 158 remittances, 3, 5, 12, 95, 130; and alleviation of poverty, 9, 96, 124; as burdensome, 135, 253n15; and fostering dependence, 12, 231n22; and housing, 16, 20; as motivation for migration, 87; and reverse transfers, 94; role of, 11–12; and subsidizing economy, 10–11 remorse, 157; as reason for return, 161, 256–257n52. See also regret repartimiento de mercancías, 22 repatriation, 33, 49, 80, 169, 172, 266n67; as defeat, 161; desire for, 161; and hijacking, 257n63; and readjustment, 153; without legal formalities, 169. See also refoulement research method, xiv–xvi return migration, 4, 23, 96, 150, 155, 160, 242n2, 257n63 Ricky Martin Foundation, 107 Rincón, 46, 59; as detention site, 155 Río Piedras neighborhood, 49, 51 risk, 255n33; tolerance of, 146–149 Roberto: and days in monte, 42; on fear, 147; on legal v. illegal migration, 107; on motivation, 98 Rolando: and deferred responsibility, 128; house of, 20; and preparation, 128, 129; religious beliefs of, 137

Rubén, 51; ambivalence of, toward migration, 146; on Dominicans and money, 110; on isolation abroad, 158; on life abroad, 159; on loneliness, 156; migration expense of, 25; on obligation to stay abroad, 161; on struggle for subsistence, 143; in Washington Heights, 51, 52 Sábana de la Mar, 31, 34, 129 sailboats, 41, 53 Saint Camisa, 139; prayer to, 138 Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, 169 Salinas Bay, 41 Salvador: experience of, 151; on perse‑ verance, 160; on staying in D.R., 25 Samaná, 31, 35, 258n64 Samaná Peninsula, xiv, 100, 134, 214; and loss at sea, 141 Sammy: as con man, 66; and smuggling fee, 53 Sánchez, xiv; poverty in, 23 San Juan, 46, 48, 71; as destination, 194; transportation to, 49 Santiago, 195; on decrease of yola trips, 207; and earning a trip, 53; and education, 238n25; honesty of, 112; hopes of, for family, 135; sentencing of, 265–266n57; on supernatural protection, 136; and use of knife, 201; and working in San Juan, 95, 96 Santo Domingo, xiv, 11, 21, 70, 84; as retirement destination, 26; U.S. Embassy in, xv, xix, 90, 173 Sassen, Saskia, 6 Saúl, 216, 217–221, 218; belief in God, 220, 221; on captains, 38; on collective excitement, 98; on decrease in yola trips, 208; determination of, 221; and divine intervention, 137, 139; house of, 14, 14, 217, 218; on illusion, 92; on migrant work, 93; migration experience of, 219; rescue of, 220; on smuggling fees, 52; on smuggling hierarchy, 193; and Tropical Storm

Index 317 Hanna, 219–220; on undocumented Haitians, 14 scams, 66–68, 180, 211 scuba diving, as migrant employment, 80 Second Vatican Council. See Catholic Church secuestro (lit. kidnapping), 49, 237n14; as misunderstood, 202 sentencing, 197, 264n44; as ineffective deterrent, 207; and “sending a message,” 199, 205 Sergio, 120, 121–122, 124–125; on cap‑ tains, 121; and Christianity, 124; on divorce, 124; and housing, 15, 16, 17, 20, 121, 124, 125; and loss at sea, 141, 142; on migration, 124–125; on past ways, 21; and underemployment, 124; on U.S. v. D.R. laws, 108; and yola migration as sin, 140 sex tourism, 75; and “sex-­pats,” 75, 242n54. See also prostitution shame, 87, 159 sharks, 65–66, 137, 148, 240nn37,38; as fear tactic, 90 Silvio, on consensual unions, 114 single motherhood, 113, 115, 117, 119, 156, 250–251n59; and dependence on family, 118 60 Miles East (documentary), 239n28 smugglers, xi, 175; continuum of, 38; corrupt, 142; perceptions of, 235– 236n4; professional, 36; and scams, 66; types of, 38–39; UN definition of, 176 smuggling fees, 4, 15, 24, 33, 37, 50, 92, 105; loss of, on failed trip, 53; in Mexico, 237n20; payment of, 42, 52–54 social discontent, 9, 12, 23 Sonia, 25; on advancement, 27–28; business of, 26; on comparisons, 88; and decision making, 130; on disappearance at sea, 141; on education, 116–117; fatalism of, 143; on having fewer children, 116; on life abroad,

158; on migrant motivation, 127–128; on migrants, 87; on money, 110; and relative deprivation, 88; religious beliefs of, 140, 143; resolve of, 149; on U.S. v. D.R. laws, 108; on yola movies, 90 Spain, 55 speedboats, 41 speed payments. See bribes Sri Lankans, 55 standard of living, as factor in migra‑ tion, 3 starvation, 61, 90 stress, 27, 45, 68, 136, 144, 195; of undocumented life, 157 sub-­Sahara African migrants, 177, 245n30 Super Tucano aircraft, 183 S visa program, 203–204 Syracuse, 81 terrorism, 172, 173, 174; conflation of, with migration, 170, 172–173, 174 theft, 39; in monte, 42 throwing overboard, 63, 64, 66, 240nn35,36; and menstruating women, 65, 90, 240n37 tigueres (delinquents), 110. See also crime Tito (captain), 96; competence of, 58, 59; and deferred payment, 54; on his integrity, 111; on reason for illegal migration, 106; on working abroad, 5 Tiva: arranged marriage of, 74; death of, 74 tolerance, 13, 112, 118, 130, 135, 158; of danger, 44, 237n12 tourism, 7, 14, 23, 89, 125, 178, 233n29 tourist boats, 41 tragedy: and explanations, 142; routinization of, 100 Transparency International, 102 Trinidad, 53; and respecting migrants, 87 TSA (Transportation Security Administration), 69 tumbes (swindles), 54, 63, 110; fear of, 65, 91, 142

318 Undocumented Dominican Migration Turkey, 54 two-­ticket scheme, 69–70 Ukrainians, 55 underemployment abroad, 4, 112, 151, 160 unilateral fraud, 74; and K-­1 visas, 75 United Nations’ Palermo Protocols, 176 United States: and Americans breaking the law, 177; and bilateral agreement with D.R., 184, 186, 190; compared to D.R., 108, 258; and Dominican migration, 10; economy of, and migration, 23–24, 68, 208; and idea of corruption, 103; and individual responsibility, 227–228n13; and newsworthiness, 178; and poverty, 92; procreation rates of, 250n55; and punishment of crime, 109; and public perception, 178; and scams, 68; and underclass, 92; and unemployment, 94, 211; and upward mobility, 92 United States v. Hilario-­Hilario et al., 194–204 U.S. Attorney’s Office, xi, 172, 179, 181, 191; and “fast-­track” program, 192; and “making an example,” 199, 205; and marriage fraud, 73 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), xi, 173, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 195, 236n8; boats of, 61; and focus on violent and sexual offenses, 177–178; and preflight inspection, 69, 70, 71, 241n43. See also Border Patrol; Caribbean Air and Marine Operations; Office of Field Operations U.S. Embassy, as discouraging yola trips, 90, 90 U.S. Marines, 180 U.S. Secretary of Labor, 94 U.S. Virgin Islands, 179, 182 Valdesio: on fishermen as captains, 193–194; on navy schedule, 213; and others’ success, 89; pragmatism of, 98;

on radar, 212; on types of trips, 40–41; on yola travel as obsession, 152 viajes de familia (family trips), 39. See also migrant-­organized trips viaje seguro (safe trip), 91, 128 viajes ilegales (illegal trips), 106. See also migrant smuggling; migration; yolas; yola trips Víctor, 214; on arriving in P.R., 48, 51; deportation of, 159; on emotions, 159; and emphasis on successes, 87; on failure, 159; and fear, 147; on having fewer children, 116; on life in P.R., 158; on marriage as business, 74; on migration, 92; on passenger relations, 63; on U.S. v. D.R. laws, 108–109; on yola travel as obsession, 152 violence, on yolas, 37, 63–65, 240n35 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), 241n48 visas: delays of, 38; family reunification, 230–231n20; K-­1, 75; overstaying, 10, 76, 223n2, 247–248n41 voluntary return, 27, 241n44, 256– 257n52. See also return migration Washington Consensus, 6, 8. See also neoliberalism Washington Heights, 12, 51, 81; migrant salary in, 93; resentful migrants in, 94–95 weapons, on yolas, 63, 64, 151 Which Way Home (documentary), 256n45 Winnicott, D. W., and “good-­enough mother,” 114 women, as serially monogamous, 115 World Bank, 22 World Trade Center, 28 yachts, 42 Yadira: saved by Fernando, 197; testifying against Fernando, 197 Yolanda: and jumping ship, 56; poverty of, 22

Index 319 yolas (migrant boats), ix, xii, 1, 37, 90, 97, 239n28; abandonment of, 46, 47, 56; alternatives to, 41, 42, 53; blessing of, 253n19; camouflaging of, 60; and collisions, 59–61; construction and transportation of, 42–43; description of, x, 44, 57, 214; destruction of, 124, 175, 187; detection of, 184, 185 185; and engine failure, 61–63; as insufficient, 43, 239n29; and life-­threatening dangers, 37; overloading of, 44, 181,

236n11; overselling of, 43; passengers on, 45; piloting of, 200–201; submersion of, 56; unseaworthiness of, 56–57 yola trips, 24, 31, 122, 136, 213–214; as addiction, 151, 152–153; and bad weather, 194; decrease of, 207; as sin, 140. See also Mona Passage youth, boredom of, 143 zero-­tolerance zones, 171–172 Zolberg, Aristide R., 6