The tragedy of identity-less people

[Dolores]

While the situation is more common with recent Haitian migrant arrivals, the lack of legal documentation also affects hundreds of thousands of persons who have lived in the Dominican Republic all their life and generations of their families, too.

Hoy newspaper carries a report of the community of El Berrinche where many long time residents do not have civil identity. The tragedy worsens when a woman does not have ID, and then has children. Like herself, her children will be able to finish grade school, and maybe even continue into high school but they will not be able to graduate from school and without legal status, they will have a hard time getting a good-paying job.

Over the years, hundreds of thousands have found ways to irregularly get an ID. People can recall the extreme case of a Belgian Roman Catholic priest Pedro Ruquoy who served as father to declare...

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[chico bill]

This is of course going to fall on deaf ears.
Dominicans don't usually show much empathy. They would rather pull out their cell phones and record than help an injured person, they couldn't care less about Mother Earth as evidenced by the way they trash this country. They stand at the door of the hospital and turn away an unconscious person until they can produce a stack of bills or insurance that they can verify.
The geniuses in charge of the power companies now think that by denying everyone power they will fix a theft problem, that they themselves let get out of hand, by doling out more pain.

The obvious solution is to setup an small agency to get documents of some sort that identify a person (whether legal or not ) they do exist - they are not ghosts.
Imagine you educate a child through high school then deny them records !
Talk about perpetuating poverty.

Seriously I see more compassion emitted from the Haitians than the Dominicans toward their fellow man.

 

[drstock]

I know someone here who has no DR ID. She is Dominican and born here but has never been properly registered. She doesn't worry because she has never had any problems with it because she "looks Dominican", yet another friend of mine, who is also Dominican and has real ID has been stopped several times and even locked up because she "looks Haitian".

 

[chico bill]

I know a Haitian woman who has no ID. She's older, in poor health, and basically in limbo waiting for the lord to give her an ID card

 

[CristoRey]

I've only met a few people in the country who didn't have any form of ID/ legal documentation. All of them were women and all of them were born to one Dominican parent with one Haitian parent/ mixed.