Vice President and Minister of Education Milagros Ortiz Bosch announced her department would soon issue a resolution instructing public schools nationwide to admit all children, regardless of whether they have a birth certificate or not. The announcement was made during the First International Symposium on Diversity and Exclusion Problems organized by the Institute of Dominican Studies of the New York City College. The measure will primarily benefit the children of indigent Haitian migrants. While many schools in the past have been flexible about admitting children without birth certificates, some have imposed the ruling. The mere existing of the ruling has served as a deterrent for parents to try to enroll their children. As a result, thousands of the offspring of Haitian immigrants have been left out of school, reducing their chances of doing better than their parents. Hundreds of thousands of indigent Haitian immigrants arrive and live in the DR without any documentation whatsoever. The parent’s lack of documentation makes it difficult for the children to get documentation. Efforts of the Haitian Embassy to this end have been very timid, leaving the burden of the undocumented persons on the DR. Several non-governmental agencies, are lobbying for the Dominican government to issue Dominican citizenship to the thousands of Haitian immigrants, so as to regularize their status. Dominican governments have chosen over the years to not do so under the understanding it would only serve as an incentive for an increase in the immigration of thousands of more indigent Haitians. The Mejia administration is supporting business initiatives to create jobs for Haitians in Haiti and along the frontier so as to reduce migration to other areas of the DR.
