JUAN GMEZ, Dominican Republic — The muddy hillside covered with scrap-wood shanties does not look like a land of prosperity.

The shacks have leaky roofs and dirt floors, with no lights or running water. But hundreds of Haitian migrants have risked their lives to come here and work the surrounding fields, and they are part of a global trend: migrants who move to poor countries from even poorer ones.

Among them is Anes Moises, 45, a dark-skinned man with flecks of gray hair, who has worked the Dominican banana fields for more than a decade, always illegally. Farm bosses pay him $5 a day and tell him that Haitians stink. Soldiers have called him a dark-skinned 「devil」 and deported him four times.

Still, with the average income in the Dominican Republic six times as much as in Haiti, Mr. Moises has answered each expulsion by hiring a smuggler to bribe the border guards and guide him back in.

「We are forced to come back here — not because we like it, but because we are poor,」 he said. 「When we cross the border, we are a little better off. We are able to buy shoes and maybe a chicken.」

Across the developing world, migrants move to other poor countries nearly as often as they move to rich ones. Yet their numbers and hardships are often overlooked.

They typically start poorer than migrants to rich countries, earn less money and are more likely to travel illegally, which raises the odds of abuse. They usually move to countries that offer migrants less legal protection and fewer services than wealthy nations do. Yet their earnings help sustain some of the poorest people on the globe.
There are 74 million 「south to south」 migrants, according to the World Bank, which uses the term to describe anyone moving from one developing country to another, regardless of geography. The bank estimates that they send home $18 billion to $55 billion a year. (The bank also estimates that 82 million migrants have moved 「south to north,」 or from poor countries to rich ones.)

Nicaraguans build Costa Rican buildings. Paraguayans pick Argentine crops. Nepalis dig Indian mines.

Indonesians clean Malaysian homes. Farm hands from Burkina Faso tend the fields in Ivory Coast. Some save for more expensive journeys north, while others find the move from one poor land to another all they will ever afford. With rich countries tightening their borders, migration within the developing world is likely to grow.

「South to south migration is not only huge, it reaches a different class of people,」 said Patricia Weiss Fagen, a researcher at Georgetown University. 「These are very, very poor people sending money to even poorer people and they often reach very rural areas where most remittances don』t go.」

The Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic, its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, has been large, longstanding and filled with strife. The Spanish-speaking Dominicans still refer angrily to a Haitian occupation that ended in 1844. The Creole-speaking Haitians point to 1937, when a Dominican massacre along the border is estimated to have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Haitians.

Haitian workers started coming in large numbers nearly a century ago, as seasonal help in sugar cane fields. But many now work year-round on farms or urban construction sites, which raises their visibility and the chance for conflict. Estimates vary greatly, but Dominican officials put Haitian migrants at one million, or 11 percent of the population.

As Haitians see it, the problems go beyond hard work and low pay to the systemic violation of their rights. Dominicans profit from their labor, they say, but deny them work papers, deport them at will and discriminate on the belief that Haitians have darker skin.

「There is no justice here,」 Mr. Moises said.

Dominicans often present themselves as generous neighbors of limited means, forced to bear the burden of Haiti』s failed state, indigence and epidemic disease. They say they offer Haitians jobs and health care — 30 percent of the public health budget is spent on Haitians, government officials say — while enduring lectures about human rights from countries far from the fray.

「Ay-yai-yai-yai,」 said Gen. Adriano Silverio Rodrguez, the commander of a new border force, when describing how Americans would respond if they shared a border with a country as troubled as Haiti. 「That wall they』re building — it would be longer and taller.」

The village of Juan Gmez lies 35 miles east of the border, past three military checkpoints that search for illegal migrants. But its illegal migrants, like Mr. Moises, live in plain view. Their open presence points to the capricious unwritten rules: Haitians caught at the border are usually sent back, while those needed by employers are often left to stay, at least until someone objects.

「We do not intervene in the workplace,」 said Carlos Amarante Baret, the Dominican immigration director. 「We understand the needs of the agricultural sector.」 He acknowledged that the situation 「benefits the landowner.」
Some south to south migrants are 「pushed」 by wars and political crises. Others are 「pulled」 by jobs and better wages. Some follow seasonal work. Some put down roots. Some countries — Argentina is one — have been quick to give amnesty to migrants. Others, including Nigeria and Indonesia, have subjected them to mass deportations.

Many countries simultaneously send and receive large migrations. One reason there are jobs for Haitians is that so many Dominicans have left for the United States. The president, Leonel Fernndez, was largely reared in New York City.

That exposes what Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank, calls a common double standard. 「Many countries want good treatment for their own people abroad but they don』t treat immigrants well themselves,」 he said.

Egyptian police officers killed 26 Sudanese migrants last year in an attack on their squatter camp. An Indian film star, Hritik Roshan, set off a deadly riot in Katmandu, Nepal, in 2000 when he was quoted as saying he 「hated」 the Nepalis. Costa Ricans sometimes deride Nicaraguans as 「Nicas.」

Still, Manuel Orozco of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group, warned against viewing south to south migration solely in a negative light. He estimates that Haitians in the Dominican Republic send home $135 million a year.

「Destination countries benefit from foreign labor,」 Mr. Orozco said, while migrants get jobs. The challenge, he said, is to create policies that 「promote development for both countries, while protecting migrants and their families.」

「Just letting migration happen is not good enough,」 he added.