Former US ambassador Bernardo Vega is advising the Dominican-American National Roundtable on the setting up of a Washington, D.C. office. The office will serve as a national forum for the analysis and strategic planning regarding topics of interest to the Dominican community in the United States. The group seeks to unite voices of the Dominican community to further the Dominican resident cause. To this end, the Roundtable is organizing the III Annual Conference in October at the University of Columbia in New York City. Vega explained that by organizing themselves politically, the Dominican community will be able to lobby for legislature changes that will benefit the Dominican-American community, like Cuban-American, Haitian and Central American nationals have already done. Vega mentions that Dominicans were affected by a 30% reduction in the number of residence visas issued, as per the 1996 migration revision. He estimated that the DR needs to lobby to achieve benefits such as those achieved by the Central Americans, Cubans and Haitians in order to regularize the status of an estimated 75,000 illegal Dominicans in the US. Vega explained that it is important to present these initiatives in districts where there are large concentrations of ethnic voters in order to get the support of congressional representatives. He said there are large concentrations of Dominicans in 15 US states.
