Erica Gonzalez, executive editor of El Diario, was a recent guest on our partner WNYC Radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show talking about the role of Dominicans abroad in the country’s recent elections.
The Dominican Republic holds presidential and congressional elections on Sunday. This year three women are running for vice president, which is awakening interest in the election among Dominican women in New York. A story from our partner El Diario/La Prensa.
Dominican immigrants vote in their homeland’s national election on Sunday. We bring you election coverage from our partner El Diario/La Prensa.
The flow of remittances between the Dominican Republic and the U.S. has undergone an interesting change recently, an apparent consequence of the economic recession that has affected many immigrant workers in the U.S.
Remittances — funds that immigrants send back to their home countries — are a major source of income in the Dominican Republic. Now, a leading New York-based money transfer firm, La Nacional, has reported a spectacular increase in the amount of money Dominicans are sending to the U.S.
Washington Heights, the heart of New York's Dominican community. Photo: serhio
“We have seen a significant increase in the number of money transfers made from the D.R. to the U.S.,” confirmed Reny Pena, supervisor of customer services and transfers at the company’s office in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights.
Pena said that the volume of transfers from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. grew from between 80 and 120 monthly transfers in 2006 to the current rate of about 150 transfers a day. The increase has prompted the agency to expand the department that deals with U.S.-bound remittances from one to five employees.
“All of a sudden,” Pena said “this service became an important part of our business. In the past, we did not perceive it as profitable.”
There are so many Dominicans in New York today that the city is sometimes called the thirty-second province of the Dominican Republic.
Feet in Two Worlds journalist Diego Graglia reports on the roots of the city’s Dominican community—how they got here, how political activism shaped their early arrival, and how they have preserved what one person in Diego’s story calls their community’s “Dominicanness.”
Diego’s story, “Feet in Two Worlds: Dominicans in Manhattan,” aired on November 5, 2007, during All Things Considered on WNYC, New York Public Radio. You can listen to it online on the WNYC website or you can press play below.
[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/news/news20070511_feet_in_two_worlds_graglia.mp3]