And what exactly is that mindset which you refer to ?

'Denaturalized' citizens protest at SCJ

With the slogan "Sonia we're all together," dozens of people claiming to have been affected by a denaturalization policy assembled outside the new Supreme Court building in the Centro de los Heroes yesterday. With loudspeakers, placards and chants, they declared that they would not stop fighting for their rights as Dominicans of Haitian ancestry to be recognized and respected. Commenting on the protest by children of Haitians born in Dominican territory over the sentence of the Supreme Court that refused to grant them nationality, the president of the Senate, Reinaldo Pared Perez said that the high court decision was correct.

"This (decision) is correct, because the Constitution is clear, with the other one (previous Constitution) there was a loophole, a dark side, but the present one is clear when it says unequivocally when it considers that all children born to foreigners in the Dominican Republic are not considered Dominicans, and the Supreme Court acted in accordance with this mandate." He suggested that anyone born under the previous Constitution to the one of 26 January 2010 should wait until the Constitutional Tribunal is established in order to challenge the latest ruling.

They better get use to this answer from now and on. They can also blame Sonia for making it easy for Dominican politicians to have a easy way out now by simply saying. "That what the constitution says". They can scream all they want but they are asking for something that is NOT legally able to be accomplish.

This is what I was referring to earlier Guilermone

Yes, I see your point.

This story was filed by CBS News' Adriana Diaz.



(CBS) - Almost two years after a devastating earthquake inspired solidarity between the estranged neighboring nations which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is descending back to business as usual.


"We have no value in the eyes of Dominicans," says Haitian construction worker Pierre Giraud, 24. Giraud snuck across the border into the Dominican Republic with the help of a smuggler after the 2010 earthquake destroyed his home, killing his parents.


Special section: Haiti, the Road to Recovery

An estimated 1.2 million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, making up roughly 10 percent of the country's population.


Many Haitians view their eastern neighbor as a land of opportunity, and many illegally cross the porous border to escape poverty - often to take low-paying jobs in construction, housekeeping, or cutting sugar cane. But many say they face discrimination and live in constant fear of being deported.


Mass deportations of undocumented Haitians have been a practice in the Dominican Republic for years.


However, when the January 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, the Dominican Republic suspended the deportations. This was just part of the solidarity that the Dominican Republic showed Haiti after the quake. The Dominican Republic was the first to send supplies and dispatch relief workers. Injured Haitians were air lifted to Dominican hospitals and the Dominican officials even opened the tightly controlled border, allowing thousands of Haitians to enter freely.


"The demonstration of solidarity and generosity was extraordinary and very moving," says Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, director of the United Nations agency on refugees (UNHCR) in the Dominican Republic. "But as time passed those demonstrations of candid solidarity, good will, and fraternal feelings started to diminish to some extent. Towards the end of last year and beginning of this year, the government restarted some deportations of undocumented Haitians."


According to NGOs, Dominican authorities periodically round up undocumented Haitians, some of whom overstayed work visas, and drop them at the Haitian border without due process.


Dominican political analyst Cristhian Jimenez says the renewed deportations are necessary to relieve some of the pressure illegal Haitians put on Dominican resources.


"18 percent of the budget of the Dominican Republic's Health Ministry goes to serve Haitians," says Jimenez. "There are more than a million Haitians here. The majority work, receive healthcare, their children go to school, and most of the money that they earn they send back to Haiti. So not only are we taking care of Haitians here, we are helping support Haitians that are in Haiti as well."


With Dominican elections approaching next year, the deportations may also serve a political purpose.


"[The deportations] tend to be given quite a lot of publicity," said Vargas Llosa of the UNHCR. "They give it visibly so the average Dominican person knows that the government is trying to take some action to stem the flow of undocumented Haitians."


Tensions have been further strained over questions about the citizenship status of children of undocumented Haitians.


In this Nov. 2, 2006 file photo, Dominican-born human rights activist Sonia Pierre poses for a photo near Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
(Credit: AP)
"They're trying to erase us," said Sonia Pierre, a Dominican activist of Haitian decent and director of the Dominican-Haitian Women's Movement.


Thousands like Pierre, who were born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, are at risk of having their Dominican citizenship revoked. Dominican citizenship is granted to all those born on Dominican territory. However, a 2007 law denies Dominican nationality to the children born to foreigners that are "in transit" in the country.



NOTE: After speaking to CBS News, Dominican-Haitian activist Sonia Pierre passed away suddenly on Dec. 4, 2011, due to natural causes. She was just 48.


The Dominican government applies "in transit" status to the country's illegal immigrants, most of whom are Haitian. Last year, the country's new constitution further specified that the children of illegal immigrants will not be granted Dominican citizenship.


"It's as if a grandchild or child of a Dominican born and raised in the U.S. was told by the U.S. government that they're not American because of a retroactive law," said Pierre. "Can you imagine that?"


Because of the policy, thousands have been denied Dominican birth certificates and national identity cards. These documents are required to enroll in university, marry, and apply for a passport in order to travel internationally.


Those affected are also at-risk of becoming stateless. Most have lived in the Dominican Republic all their lives and are not Haitian citizens, as Haiti does not recognize dual-citizenship.


Last week, hundreds of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian decent gathered in front of the Dominican Supreme Court to protest the de-nationalization practices. One protestor held a sign that read, "I am Dominican, you know it."


Some call the de-nationalization practices institutionalized discrimination against Haitians.


"This is not happening to the children of Europeans, Chileans, or Colombians," said Pierre, the women's activist. "We share an island where one part is extremely poor and darker skinned. There is discrimination."


Resentment toward Haitians is deeply rooted in the island's history. In the mid-1800s, Haiti occupied the eastern part of the island for 22 years. The day Dominicans celebrate as their Independence Day is the day they broke free from Haiti in 1844, not their independence from Spain in 1821.


"What is taught in history classes in schools is Dominican independence from Haiti and that has become deeply entrenched in the mentality of Dominicans," said Jimenez.


Pierre is not convinced.


"A lot of people say discrimination against Haitians has to do with history. I don't think so," she says. "If that was the case, Dominicans would have the same attitude toward Spain and even the U.S., which occupied the Dominican Republic more recently."


Despite the controversy over de-nationalization, the Dominican government is making strides to unify the island. It partnered with the UNHCR to launch a tolerance campaign titled, "Living With Everyone Is Living With Tolerance."


The campaign kicked off on Friday with a free concert in Santo Domingo featuring prominent artists from both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The concert, which coincided with Human Rights Day (December 10), was to be followed by events throughout the year promoting Dominican and Haitian culture.


"We thought this would be a good time to try to revisit some of that spirit and dynamic that was created after the earthquake, but this time not prompted by a tragedy, but to the contrary, this time prompted by... a positive and constructive spirit," said Vargas Llosa of the UNHCR.


Some of the names in this story have been changed to protect the identify of sources.

[URL]http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57341181-503543/haitians-see-neighbors-post-quake-love-dry-up/[/URL]

Our blog post on Haitian-Dominicans
A response from the embassy of the Dominican Republic in the United States

Dec 27th 2011, 18:35 by The Economist

The Economist has received the following letter in response to a blog post on the citizenship rights of Dominican-Haitians. Our response is below.

SIR - Your online article, “Stateless in Santo Domingo”, inaccurately claims that the Dominican Republic has recently changed its citizenship policy, implying that the children of illegal Haitian parents have been deliberately targeted and discriminated against. However, the principles governing the citizenship rules of the Dominican Republic have been in place since 1929. From that year, the principle of jus soli contained in the Constitution of the Dominican Republic has been qualified by Paragraph 1, Article 11, which excludes from acquiring Dominican nationality the legitimate children of foreigners residing in the country on diplomatic missions or those who are in transit.

The Supreme Court of the Dominican Republic has repeatedly ruled on the matter of the children of illegal immigrants, whatever their origin, confirming that if those born to parents legally in transit are precluded from automatically acquiring the nationality, the children of those who cannot justify their legal entry or stay in the country cannot benefit from a greater right. However, despite your assertion to the contrary, statelessness is not at issue here. Given that Article 11 of the Haitian constitution establishes that “Any person born of a Haitian father or Haitian mother who are themselves native-born Haitians and have never renounced their nationality possesses Haitian nationality at the time of birth,” persons born within Dominican territory of Haitian parents are not stateless.

The Dominican Supreme Court has also ruled to affirm the legality of the measures implemented by the Dominican Central Electoral Board since 2007 to detect and correct the high number of irregularities that plague the Civil Registry. This urgent task is made more arduous by previously widespread weaknesses in the registry process.

These have generated a range of unlawful and potentially dangerous situations, from baseball players using fraudulent birth certificates to hide their true age to criminals acquiring multiple identities through forged documents. They have also masked previous irregularities in the issue of birth certificates to the children of foreign parents who had not proven their residency or legal status in the Dominican Republic.

The Central Electoral Board has a mandate to investigate suspected irregularities in the Civil Registry and subject these to the scrutiny of the courts. The investigation, and possible future annulment, of a civil registry document, such as a birth certificate, does not contravene domestic legislation. Nor does it violate international human rights commitments undertaken by the Dominican Republic if those affected are entitled to a different nationality.

As part of its mandate for transparency, the Central Electoral Board did, however, evaluate upon the request of a local NGO a number of decisions made to suspend, pending investigation, the release of copies of birth certificates. The number of cases submitted to the Board was 120, not 457. Of these, 80 have been answered and were 20 returned to the petitioners due to lack of sufficient documentation.

The Dominican Republic cannot be asked to shoulder the consequences of the serious deficiencies that plague the Haitian civil registry. Neither can it be expected, as in fact has been said in many of the comments elicited by your post, to bear the brunt of the human and economic costs of the dire situation faced by the Haitian people, for which they see no better solution than to emigrate across an extremely porous border to the Dominican Republic.

Aníbal de Castro
Ambassador
Embassy of the Dominican Republic
Washington, DC

The Economist responds:

As our blog post states, in 2004 the Dominican Congress redefined the “in transit” category, extending it from people who had spent no more than ten days in the country to include everyone without legal residency. Three years later, the government stopped recognizing as citizens people born in the country whose parents had thus been reclassified as “in transit”, no matter how long they had lived in the DR.

The people affected by these new criteria could conceivably request Haitian citizenship. However, since the DR refuses to give them a birth certificate, they have no way to prove to Haitian authorities that their parents were Haitian. Meanwhile, they are stateless.

The blog post also accurately states that 457 cases were presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, not to the Dominican Republic's Central Electoral Board.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/12/our-blog-post-haitian-dominicans