President Danilo Medina used the forum of last week’s the Central American Integration System (SICA) Summit in Guatemala City to highlight the efforts being made across government agencies in the Dominican Republic to address the country’s immigration issues through the implementation of the National Foreigner Legalization Plan (PNRE) and the Immigration Law. The President called for a fair assessment of what has been achieved to date with immigration reform, highlighting that the country is committed to legalize the status of all people residing in the Dominican Republic.
For decades, previous governments had ignored the large number of undocumented persons living in the Dominican Republic. This also includes the children of hundreds of thousands of parents who had never registered their children.
In the case of foreigners, the Constitutional Court Ruling 168-13 ordered in October 2013, the implementation of the 2004 Immigration Law. The decision to comply with the order on behalf of the Medina administration is a major step in favor of affirming a persons’ human rights after years of governments’ laissez affair attitude regarding the mass immigration of undocumented persons into the Dominican Republic, primarily from Haiti.
These efforts to legalize all those who reside in the Dominican Republic have exposed centuries of government negligence and has forced the Medina administration to confront this complex and deep-rooted issue. Normalizing immigration in the country is made even more difficult given that of the approximately 10 million people that live in impoverished neighbor Haiti, more than half do not possess any legal documentation whatsoever. To make matters worse, the efforts of the Haitian government to issue birth certificates to its citizens have been inadequate, at best.
Large numbers of undocumented Haitian citizens who migrate across the extremely porous Dominican border have overloaded social service programs in the Dominican Republic. For years, health and medical services have been free to the immigrants, but only since 2013 when the Constitutional Court ordered the implementation of the Immigration Law, has there been a serious effort been made to regularize the status of all those living in the Dominican Republic.
In his speech explaining the immigration policy decisions of the Dominican Republic to his colleagues from Central America, President Danilo Medina defended the immigration plan and its achievements. He highlighted that 350,000 people have already seen progress in the regularization of their situation and will be provided with the official, documented status they deserve.
President Danilo Medina announced that implementing Law 169-14, some 55,000 persons have benefitted with the restitution of their Dominican identity. A JCE civil registry investigation had previously determined that Dominican identity had been issued to persons that did not meet Dominican citizenship requirements that are that at least one parent be a Dominican citizen or that the parents possess documents providing their legal status in the country.
President Medina said that another 8,755 persons who were determined to be born in the Dominican Republic to foreign parents with irregular status will be able to obtain their Dominican citizenship by naturalization in two years time.
He also announced that through the National Foreigner Legalization Plan (PNRE) some 288,486 persons registered at 24 centers nationwide over an 18-month period. During this time, the Plan ordered that all deportations of foreigners be suspended while the status of those who registered is being reviewed.
President Medina addressed the media storyline that 200,000 persons were left stateless by the plan and could be deported from the Dominican Republic. “That is completely false. Since we do not want to think the statement was made maliciously, but rather in error, we are going to examine the origin of this statistical error and clearly present the reality of the situation,” he told the audience of Central American heads of state in Guatemala.
He explained that originally the statistics used to estimate the immigration status of people residing in the Dominican Republic were taken from the National Immigration Survey carried out in 2012 by the National Statistics Office with the collaboration of the United Nations. He said the results of the survey showed there were 244,151 offspring of foreigners living in the Dominican Republic. “But from that information nothing could be deduced about the immigration status of these people, let alone support claims that they were stateless,” said the President. He explained: “It happens that of this total, 105,381 have at least one Dominican parent, and therefore they have the Dominican nationality as called for in the the Dominican Constitution. In other words, we already know these individuals are not stateless. The remaining, or 138,770 are children born to foreign parents, but they also are not stateless,” he said.
He explained that of that group, 20,213 say they possess a valid foreign identity document, 16,556 say they have a valid foreign and Dominican document, in other words, they have their nationality situation resolved on both sides.
He explained that the potential number of “stateless” then is reduced to around 100,000 persons. He explained that to resolve the situation of these people, the JCE has already acknowledged as Dominicans the before mentioned group of 55,000 and the group of 8,775.
He said that in the case of Juliana Deguis and her four children has been resolved, with the issuing of Dominican nationality to Deguis.
“Let us be clear: in the Dominican Republic the case of stateless is zero,” said President Medina. “That is the reality and it can been verified by the specialized United Nations offices in the country.”
Medina said that the mechanisms to achieve legal order in the country are established. He admonished those who have been blasting the country in the international media. He speculated that the reality is perhaps less interesting for the media because it does not make for alarmist headlines or a storyline of persecutors and persecuted. “It immigration issue in the Dominican Republic demands thorough analysis and research conducted in an environment of rigor and honesty. And those are precisely the virtues that journalists should exercise,” he commented. He invited the international press to exercise this these journalistic virtues in regards to the Dominican Republic.
He highlighted that on 17 June 2015, the registration period for the National Foreigner Legalization Plan expired. “With its end, despite what many may have expected, there has not been a humanitarian catastrophe, or a witch hunt. Simply, the only thing that happened is that the normal migration legislation is again being observed. Not more, nor less.
In his talk at the Central American heads of state summit, President Medina stressed that the reality is that in the Dominican Republic more than 350,000 persons have normalized their situation and will receive the corresponding documents, including legal residence or Dominican nationality. “I can say confidently state that fewer countries can produce similar results in such a short time,” said Medina.
He also highlighted that in the Dominican Republic there will not be indiscriminate or collective deportations. “There have not been since democracy started here, we do not need them, and there will not be in the future,” he stated.
Nevertheless, he said: “The law will be applied, yes, individually with safeguards and providing facilities for voluntary return, which is being done by thousands who did not meet the requirements of the plan.
He stressed that in the Dominican Republic there have not been cases of statelessness despite efforts of many to invent these. “As I have said, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has not found any and precisely to eliminate the danger that there be any cases, Law 169-14 was approved and successfully implemented,” he said.
“The reality, in short, is that in 2015, in our country, hundreds of thousands of people will possess proper documentation and be afforded the rights that they did not have in 2013. And this is, make no mistake, a big step forward for human rights in the region,” said the President.
He stressed that each country has the sovereign right to regulate migratory flows according to its laws, the same way as the United States and Europe exercise this right. “We are not going to tolerate this smear campaign, that turns a deaf ear to all the guarantees we have put in place to protect people, and prefers to announce a non-existent humanitarian crisis.”
“Neither are we going to bend to false accusations of racism or xenophobia that lack any base in a country characterized by mix races throughout the centuries,” he stated. “We are not going to accept this blackmail that threatens us with international penalties based on false accusations.”
Medina said that the Dominican Republic is the leading tourism destination in the Caribbean and also the country that has received the most foreign investment in the region in the past years precisely because of the warm hospitality and the judicial security offered to individuals and business. He concluded with the statements:
“Nevertheless, you can be sure that our sovereignty will not be put into question, not because one less tourist arrives nor for one cent lost in investment. Those that prefer to believe what they are told by those who feed prejudices and live in deceit, are free to do so, but we will not play their game.”
Medina invited all to come to see with their own eyes the reality, the goodness of the Dominican people and the opportunities that the Dominican Republic offers.
http://presidencia.gob.do/noticias/presidente-retorna-al-pais-defiende-ante-sica-regularizacion-de-extranjeros