Dominican Republic strips Haitian descendants of citizenship, prepares for deportation

Nearly two years after the high court in the Dominican Republic stripped citizenship from people descended from Haitian migrants, the Dominican government reportedly is preparing to send tens of thousands of its former citizens to Haiti.

Wednesday, June 17 is the Dominican government’s deadline for undocumented people to submit proof they were born there or provide documentation showing they’re employed in the D.R. Because many people born in rural areas in the Dominican Republic are not given birth certificates, and because the Haitian government has not routinely issued passports or other documentation to Haitian nationals who travel to the Dominican Republic to work, it’s expected that as many as 300,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian nationals may be sent forcibly to Haiti, a country that is still struggling to house people in the wake of a crippling 2010 earthquake.

Haitian Americans are warning that the impending deportations could trigger a massive humanitarian crisis.

“You still have people living in tents in Haiti four years after the earthquake,” said state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry. “Four years later, there’s still not enough permanent housing in place.”

While Dominican government officials have said their aim is to fix the island nation’s broken immigration system, manty observers say the current push to rid the country of Haitian-descended Dominicans is rooted in decades of discrimination against Haitian immigrants. In one of the most violent anti-Haitian episodes, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the massacre of an estimated 22,000 Haitian migrants in 1937.

Yet over the decades, Dominican plantation owners have continued to hire Haitian laborers to cut sugar cane and work on large plantations. And the Dominican constitution extends citizenship to anyone born on Dominican soil, excepting children of diplomats and what the government terms “people in transit.” Although many Dominicans of Haitian descent have been living on the Dominican side of the island for generations, a 2013 ruling by the republic’s Constitutional Court stripped the citizenship rights of people born to Haitian parents after 1929.

“It completely changed the definition of who could be considered Dominican,” said Angelita Baeyens, program director at the Robert F. Kennedy Partners for Human Rights.

There are three classes of Haitian-descended people living in the Dominican Republic who will be affected by the ruling: those with birth certificates and other documentation proving they were born there, those without documentation and recent immigrants who were born in Haiti.

Although the Dominican government has stated that it will allow Haitian-born workers to remain in the country if they can prove they’re currently employed, many workers lack any such documentation. And human rights groups report that the Dominican Army has been rounding up dark-skinned residents and transporting them to Haiti, according to Baeyens.

“The army has been conducting deportations without screening,” she said.

Dark-skinned Dominicans, including those of Haitian descent, also are being targeted by mob violence. In February, a Haitian-descended man was lynched by a mob in Santiago, the nation’s second largest city. More recent videos from Dominican news outlets show mobs attacking Haitian descended residents with sticks, bats and other weapons, and destroying their homes.

Deportation disputes

The Dominican government has set up seven detention facilities they euphemistically refer to as “welcome centers.”

“They are in-transit shelters,” Immigration Agency director Dario Paulino told CDN 37, a Dominican news broadcaster, “We cannot hold any undocumented alien for more than 48 hours.”

“What we do (in the centers) is received Haitians, clear them, verify whether they have documents or not, and then prepare their transfer.”

Baeyens said things could get much worse in the coming weeks when the government begins an official program of deportation.

“Many of these people are third and fourth generation Dominicans,” she said. “They don’t have family in Haiti. They don’t speak the language. This is a group of people who are effectively stateless.”

The Dominican government’s plans to deport Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent have drawn condemnation from the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the United States, as well as prominent Dominicans and Haitians in the United States.

The National Dominican Student Conference disinvited Dominican President Danilo Medina from its March conference in Philadelphia to protest the government’s plans to move forward with deportations.

The state legislatures in New York and New Jersey have passed resolutions condemning the Dominican government’s planned deportations. Dorcena Forry said she is drafting a similar resolution for the Massachusetts Senate.