New York.– Since US immigration laws got stricter in1996, some 36,000 Dominicans have been deported, though unofficial figures raise the number to 56,000, a fact that has caused a serious crisis in that community, according to a new study.

The report, produced by the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights in conjunction with the Immigrants Rights Clinic at New York University’s School of Law, was presented before the May Day marches in which thousands of immigrants were expected to demand immigration reform from President Barack Obama.

Nearly 1.6 million Dominicans live in the United States, most of them in New York. A total of 600 were deported in the first five weeks of 2009.

“At this rate, immigration authorities will deport more than 5,000 Dominicans this year, which will double the figures from, previous years,” the study says, adding that 2,990 were repatriated in 2007, all as a result of the 1996 immigration law.

Under that law, immigrants can be deported retroactively, even though they are legal residents and have finished serving their sentences for minor crimes committed in the past, which under the new statute are considered felonies.

The study points out that since the range of crimes was extended to include many non-violent crimes as a reason for deportation, a surprisingly large number of Dominicans have been, and are, taken from their communities and jailed for convictions that in the past were not reasons for repatriation.

It says that deportees have faced and still face “a triple punishment” out of all proportion to the crime committed since, after paying their debt to society, they are jailed again “and punished once more,” this time followed by deportation to the Dominican Republic, where they are stigmatized and persecuted for the mere fact of having been deported.

The report also says that with deportation, family members remaining in the United States are not only separated from their loved ones but lose their economic support.