Haitians tell their embassy in Dominican capital to cut the red tape

Santo Domingo.- To thebeat of a gaga rhythm and waving banners with their demands, dozens of Haitiansprotested outside the Haitian embassy in the Dominican Republic, alleging that they’vealready paid for all the documents needed to request Dominican residency buthave yet to receive any.

Group spokesmanChristophe Leonard said around 98,000 applications were submitted for the Dominicangovernment program to regularize foreigners,but have yet to receive any response not even from 5% of the requests.

For all of the three documents:birth certificate, ID card and passport, the Haitian government decided to chargeRD$1,000.

To mark InternationalMigrants Day the protesters gathered in front of the embassy, where they denouncedthat despite having paid those documents have not been delivered.

"The documentationand identification program was designed as a set of three documents, includingpassport, and Haitian birth certificate at a cost of 1,000 pesos and wassupposed to be delivered within 22 days. 18 months have passed since we submittedthe requests for documents in the office of PIDIH (Haiti embassy branch), butso far we have not received even 1,500 passports in response to these requests,"said Leonard, who represents 32 organizations that supported the demonstration.