U.S. gives Dominican Republic 56 million dollars in foreign aid- but they get much more than that.

With high levels of Dominican poverty, crime, fraud, and illiteracy, I have to wonder why the U.S.A is doing so much for this country and its people??  Clearly something is going on, but it is hard to know what.

For example, this excerpt from state.gov https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35639.htm

says:

The United States has a strong interest in a democratic, stable, and economically healthy Dominican Republic and supports its democratic and economic development. The Dominican Republic registered the second-fastest economic growth in Latin America during 2017 (behind only Panama) with low, stable inflation. Nonetheless, income inequality remains high and the country faces some considerable obstacles to sustaining such robust growth over the long term, including the poor quality of the country’s education system, the inability of the health system to adequately respond to the population’s needs, and severe inefficiencies in the energy sector. While there have been efforts to address corruption, improving transparency is a priority in order to consolidate the country’s democratic gains. The U.S. Government works with Dominican authorities to address these issues, as well as with local and international partners to strengthen institutional and technical capacity.

But it does not say WHY the U.S. “has a strong interest” in the Domincan Republic.  This is key information that is missing.

This website says that the U.S gives 56 million dollars of aid to DR.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/DOM

This one says it’s 26 million.

https://howmuch.net/articles/countries-scaled-to-the-economic-aid-they-receive-from-us

I say, if you count all of the welfare fraud, business loans they receive in the U.S., Social Security fraud, Medicaid fraud, food stamp fraud, and money wire transfers from Dominicans in the U.S. to their home country, DR, the total amount of “U.S. money” DR is more like 1 billion annually.

I do believe that by not cracking down on Dominican fraud, (since the U.S. has such a “strong interest” in DR) that it is very difficult to ever know the exact amount of money DR receives from the U.S.  I can tell you, however, that I think so much” “aid” is ill spent.