The whereabouts of the daughter of Haitians whose situation has been used as a test case in the Constitutional Court ruling 168-13 that reaffirmed that the children of foreigners who do not have legal status in the Dominican Republic are not entitled to Dominican nationality at birth are unknown. Immigration Department director Jose Ricardo Taveras says that they have not been able to locate Juliana Dequis Pierre to notify her that she has been granted a temporary residence permit. Taveras says that her address is “the best kept secret in the Caribbean,” as reported in Diario Libre. He said that the department then chose to notify her through her lawyers that she has a 15-day term to retrieve her temporary permit. The permit is a first step for her to secure her residence permit. “Nobody knows where she lives, no one wants to say anything about her. He said she has been notified using the procedure of unknown domicile and to the address of her lawyers and was invited to drop by the Department of Immigration.
Dequis Pierre’s case was the one used as a test case in the Constitutional Court’s September judgment. The court established that she obtained her documentation as a Dominican irregularly and ruled that people in her situation who have been living in the Dominican Republic for several years will be offered the option of fast-track regularization of their status as foreigners.
Dequis Pierre’s lawyer Genaro Rincon, of the Haitian Workers SocioCultural Movement (Mosctha) said that the documentation would be used as proof in the case they have against the Dominican government before the Inter-American System of Human Rights. He said that the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights has already issued a decision that favors 48 people, including Juliana, to protect them from what he describes as “arbitrary abuses” by the Dominican government.
Taveras rejected a proposal that the National Congress grant amnesty to issue Dominican nationality to people born to illegal foreigners in the Dominican Republic. He said the National Congress should not legislate to violate the Constitution. “One cannot go from a media crisis to a constitutional crisis,” he said. He said the Constitutional Court is the court of last instance.
Speaking on the same topic, PLD legislator Orlando Espinosa said that the Constitutional Court ruling is already an amnesty because it orders a fast-track process for people who do not have documents to obtain them and even get Dominican nationality afterwards, as reported in El Caribe.
Minister of Interior and Police, Jose Ramon Fadul said that they would convene the National Immigration Council to start preparing the National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners Living in the Country Illegally. The Constitutional Court ruling gave 90 days for plan to be prepared. The judgment ordered the Central Electoral Board (JCE) to audit the registration of births in the country since 1929 to date to identify the foreigners who have been registered in the civil registry of the Dominican Republic and draw up a list of those who have been irregularly included in the registry.
www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2013/10/11/i406112_convocaran-consejo-migracian-para-plan-regularizacian.html
www.elcaribe.com.do/2013/10/11/director-migracion-dice-que-una-amnistia-imposible