Yesterday, Monday 15 September 2014, in The Hague, Juliana Deguis Pierre began to describe all of the obstacles the Dominican Republic allegedly made her overcome in order to regularize her migratory status.
Deguis was invited by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the meeting behind closed doors taking place from 15-17 September.
Deguis, 29, was born to Haitian immigrants and brought to the Dominican Republic by her mother. She was affected by Constitutional Tribunal ruling 168-13 on Dominican nationality that confirmed an earlier sentence that legal residence status of parents was necessary. The ruling determined that she had been irregularly issued Dominican citizenship. For humanitarian reasons, President Danilo Medina later issued Naturalization Law 169-14 that enables people who had been irregularly issued Dominican nationality to undergo a fast-tracked procedure to maintain their citizenship. Deguis was one of the first people to benefit from the law.
El Dia comments on the topic in an editorial today:
“It is nothing short of outrageous that the representative of an international organization such as UNHCR should present Juliana Deguis as a stateless person in an international forum, which has never been the case.
The editorialist writes that in all scenarios Deguis has always had a nationality. The discussion centered on whether she had acquired the nationality of her Haitian parents by jus sanguinis, or Dominican nationality by jus solis. “In either case she would have obtained a nationality, and thus was never stateless,” concludes the editorialist.
“The UNHCR representative seems to ignore the fact that one does not choose to be stateless. No one can simply decide to be stateless, let alone demand a nationality in violation of the juridical order of a country,” says the editorial.
The editorial writer concludes that:
“Ruling 168-13 and Law 169-14 that creates a special naturalization regime, together with the National Foreigner Legalization Plan ordered by Ruling 168-13, are valuable judicial instruments for the Dominican Republic to bring order to the chaos in migration and civil registry.”
La posición que había fijado la ACNUR sobre el caso Juliana Deguis