cutting the cane and swinging the machete, the machete can come loose and cut off their foot. So, as a monitor, if they don’t want to wear the protectors, I have to call the boss. And the boss is the one who knows what he’s going to do with those people.” Sylvie, a Haitian woman and mother of a Dominican beneficiary of the July 2020 Decree, describes the difficulties that she has had conforming with the PNRE: “The problem I have is that they are just not changing the card. Me, I used to walk. Before I’d buy bananas and sell them in the market, but now you can’t buy stuff far away to sell. Migration [General Directorate of Migration] runs after you, so you can’t sell like that, that holds us back. Well, if they don’t change it, I’m going to be left out. I’m not going to get a passport because I don’t have ‘cuartos’14 for that.” reliable enough to keep his job in the long term. He received the compensation that was owed to him.16 Another testimony, from Violeta, a 27-year-old Dominican woman of Haitian descent from Group A with her documents restored, exposes the impact of the pandemic even for those in possession of Dominican documents. She is a lottery ticket saleswoman, whose work was affected by the lottery closing during the pandemic, then half-reopening, and the inability to get by with a side job street vending. She explains the following: In the beginning I spent like three months without working. I had been with Verifone for one year and seven months and I spent about three months without working. That affected me a lot because I had to pay the bank, pay rent, buy milk for my girl. After the three months when I didn’t work, they put me back to work at VeriFone. They paid me half my salary, that is, I was getting 3,500 pesos, and they started paying me almost half of it, 2,000 pesos. They said it was because it was a single lottery, and that the other lotteries were closed so they were going to pay me two thousand pesos. And I couldn’t go out to sell the sweets because I used to sell sweets to make the payments. After that disease appeared, I said I wouldn’t be able to go out anymore because I have my little girl. My daughter is two years old and my mom is a sick person and I can’t go out on the street. I had to resign myself to collecting the two thousand pesos from VeriFone, for walking around a whole day from 10 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. And that had a big impact because there are people who were going to work as day laborers in the countryside and did not go because they said that if there is a single person who’s vulnerable in the house, one cannot be going out so much like that.” Yet another testimony of moving backwards work-wise is that of Luis, a 40-year-old Dominican of Haitian descent from Group A, who technically should have had his documents restored yet is still experiencing problems. Due to the lack of access to his Dominican documentation, he regrets that: “One can’t work. Look, I don’t know how much money I have saved in the AFP15 and all that is blocked. I have absolutely no right to anything. How does one go outside without a document? Not even to Barahona because it’s a problem when one can’t work. I’d like to work in the company now, but how? Last year they fired me. They did a lot for me, a lot because they found out about it [his documentation problems] when I was in the company. My case is not a current case; it’s five to six years old. They finally had to let me go.” Given these circumstances, Luis has resorted to driving a motor taxi to support his children, despite the health risks this entails during a pandemic. In contrast, Antoine, a 39-year-old Haitian migrant, voluntarily left his job at the Consortium during the pandemic because he realized that his document was not Slang word in the DR meaning money. AFP [Spanish acronym] or Pension Fund Administrator is a financial company, whose main objective is to manage the personal accounts of affiliated workers and grant them a pension when they end their working life, whether due to retirement, disability, old age or work accident. 14. 15. Another intervening factor was the change of administration amid the pandemic, when the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) assumed power, taking over after almost two decades of rule by the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD). Clara, a 36-year-old Dominican of Haitian descent with her documents restored, explained that her job as a caretaker/janitor at a school was on standby due to the health crisis and the closure of schools. The fear of dismissal due to the use of other people’s documents was mentioned several times in the interviews. 16. Research Brief: COVID-19 Impacts on Haitian Migrants and their Descendants on the Southern Border of the D.R. 23