DR Ambassador in US responds to De Blasio

SANTO DOMINGO. "I have read the statement in the press regarding your call to the international community in order to promote a boycott against tourism to the Dominican Republic. It seems to me that you do not completely know the reality of our historical relations with this brother nation. Neither you or any other country in the world has done what the Dominican Republic has done to benefit the Haitian people," José Tomas Perez, the Dominican ambassador to the United States said in a letter addressed to the Mayor of New York, Bill De Blasio.

The diplomat explained to the Mayor that the country is obliged to regulate the transit of illegals into its territory, and that the National Plan of Normalization of Foreigners was the first step in order to achieve this objective.

"Regrettably our country cannot carry by itself the burden which is represented by the poverty for a struggling and hard-working people such as the Haitians. Many times we have appealed to the solidarity of the international community in order that they come to the assistance of Haiti without receiving any satisfactory answer," said Perez.

In the letter, the ambassador to the United States said that he would have preferred that instead of a "boycott against tourism," De Blasio would convene the international community to collaborate with the Dominican Republic in order to find solutions to the human drama which the Haitian poverty represents.

The Mayor of New York issued a call to the Dominican Republic, "in order to avoid the inevitable and not to commit mistakes, to avoid the dangers of humiliation and the removal by force of the Haitians from their homes."