Two communities sharing common values

According to the latest U.S. figures, some one million Dominicans nationals (and a total of two million of Dominican origin) are currently residing in the United States and mostly in New York City, where their reputation as hard and honest workers and model citizens has earned the praise of local authorities and business leaders.
The U.S.-based Dominican community’s contribution to their country of origin’s economy is highly significant. These remittances account for some 10% of the Dominican Republic’s annual income, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Their assimilation into the U.S. workforce has also led to warmer cultural and diplomatic relations between the Dominican Republic and the United States. Dominican President Hipolito Mejia was one of the first world leaders to visit New York’s ‘Ground Zero’ following the September 11 terrorist attacks, and U.S. President George W. Bush was swift in sending his condolences to the Dominican people following last November’s air crash, which dealt a heavy blow to New York’s Dominican community and the entire Dominican Republic.
The November 12 passenger jet crash in the New York neighborhood of Queens killed 260 people, including 175 Dominicans. The majority of those victims were not considered foreign, and their deaths were a cause for mourning in the U.S.

The tragedy struck just a few weeks after Dominican President Mejia had attended a memorial mass with New York’s Dominican community for the 41 Dominican victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The plane crash had a devastating effect on Washington Heights, a neighborhood on the northern end of the island of Manhattan that is home to some 200,000 people with ties to the Dominican Republic, more than any other city in the world outside the Caribbean nation itself.