Dominican Republic Emigration and Immigration

Online Sources

 * 1851-1980 Dominican Republic, National District, Santo Domingo de Guzmán, immigration records, 1851-1980, index and images.
 * 1921-1980 Miscellaneous records housed at the Archivo General de la Nación in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. These records include residency permit requests, immigration tax exemption requests, passenger arrival and departure lists, and immigration-related correspondence. Also at Ancestry.com, index and images, ($).
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Dominican Republic under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".

Finding the Town of Origin in Dominican Republic
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Dominican Republic, see Dominican Republic Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Dominican Republic Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration to the Dominican Republic

 * Ethnic immigrant groups in the country include:
 * West Asians—mostly Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians.
 * East Asians, primarily ethnic Chinese and Japanese
 * Europeans are represented mostly by Spanish whites but also with smaller populations of German Jews, Italians, Portuguese, British, Dutch, Danes, and Hungarians
 * Some converted Sephardic Jews from Spain, part of early expeditions
 * Jewish migrants coming from the Iberian peninsula and other parts of Europe in the 1700s


 * In the 20th century, many Arabs (from Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine), Japanese, and, to a lesser degree, Koreans settled in the country as agricultural laborers and merchants.
 * The Chinese companies found business in telecom, mining, and railroads.
 * The Arab community is rising at an increasing rate and is estimated at 80,000.
 * In addition, there are descendants of immigrants who came from other Caribbean islands, including St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, St. Vincent, Montserrat, Tortola, St. Croix, St. Thomas, and Guadeloupe. They worked on sugarcane plantations and docks. *
 * Puerto Rican, and to a lesser extent, Cuban immigrants fled to the Dominican Republic from the mid-1800s until about 1940 due to a poor economy and social unrest in their respective home countries.
 * Haiti is the neighboring nation to the Dominican Republic and is considerably poorer, less developed and is additionally the least developed country in the western hemisphere. In 2003, 80% of all Haitians were poor (54% living in abject poverty) and 47.1% were illiterate. The country of nine million people also has a fast growing population, but over two-thirds of the labor force lack formal jobs. Haiti's per capita GDP (PPP) was $1,800 in 2017, or just over one-tenth of the Dominican figure. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have migrated to the Dominican Republic, with some estimates of 800,000 Haitians in the country, while others put the Haitian-born population as high as one million.

Emigration From the Dominican Republic

 * The first of three late-20th century emigration waves began in 1961 after the assassination of dictator Trujillo, due to fear of retaliation by Trujillo's allies and political uncertainty in general.
 * In 1965, the United States began a military occupation of the Dominican Republic to end a civil war. Upon this, the U.S. eased travel restrictions, making it easier for Dominicans to obtain U.S. visas. From 1966 to 1978, the exodus continued, fueled by high unemployment and political repression.
 * In the early 1980s, underemployment, inflation, and the rise in value of the dollar all contributed to a third wave of emigration from the Dominican Republic.
 * In 2012, there were approximately 1.7 million people of Dominican descent in the U.S., counting both native- and foreign-born. There was also a growing Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico, with nearly 70,000 Dominicans living there as of 2010. Although that number is slowly decreasing and immigration trends have reversed because of Puerto Rico's economic crisis as of 2016.
 * There is a significant Dominican population in Spain.

Dominican Americans

 * Since the establishment of the Spanish Empire, there have historically been immigrants from the former Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to other parts of New Spain which are now part of the United States, such as Florida, Louisiana and the Southwest.
 * Dominican emigration to the United States continued throughout the centuries. Recent studies from the CUNY Dominican studies Institute identified 5,000 Dominican nationals who were processed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924.
 * During the 1930s and 40s, the flow of Dominicans to the United States fluctuated after Rafael Trujillo, who rose to power in 1930, imposed heavy restrictions on the outward migration of his citizens. Many of the 1,150 Dominicans immigrating to the United States between 1931 and 1940, came as secondary labor migrants from Cuba, Puerto Rico and Panama.
 * A larger wave of Dominicans began after 1950, during a time when cracks began to appear in the Trujillo regime. Dominican immigrants during this period where largely classified as anti-Trujilo political exiles. During that decade, the United States admitted an average of 990 Dominican nationals per year.
 * During the second half of the twentieth century there were three significant waves of immigration to the United States. (See above.)
 * Today, emigration from the Dominican Republic remains high, facilitated by the social networks of now-established Dominican communities in the United States.

Dominican Republic Immigration to Puerto Rico

 * Historically, there has been very high migration between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, not only during the Taino era, but also during the Spanish colonial era up until modern times.
 * Many residents of Colonial Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic, left for Puerto Rico because of the cession of Santo Domingo to France in 1795, the Haitian invasions from 1801 to 1803, and the occupation from 1822 to 1844.
 * Dominican migration increased sharply after 1961 as a result of political events.
 * The height of modern-day Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico was from 1970 to about 2005, when the Puerto Rican economy started to decline, since then its been slowly dying down, with increasing immigration the opposite direction, Puerto Ricans moving to the Dominican Republic. Though, many Dominicans who moved to Puerto Rico, stayed and started a life there, some Dominicans (and even other Latinos/Caribbeans like Haitians and Cubans) used it as a temporary stop-over point to the US mainland, particularly to cities like New York and Miami.
 * Although, 2010 census estimates put the number of Dominicans living in Puerto Rico at 68,000, there are estimates that put the number as high as 300,000, with many undocumented.

Records of Dominican Republic Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

 * United States Emigration and Immigration
 * Puerto Rico Emigration and Immigration
 * Spain Emigration and Immigration

For Further Reading
There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog: