Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) Luis Almagro says that his comment regarding there not being able to be two countries on an island was taken out of context. He said he used the word “generally” which was not carried over in the transcription by the media.
“… after all, it [Hispaniola] is an island, and generally when there is a single island there should not be two countries, but rather only one country, even if it is big island, such as Australia,” Almagro told CNN Espanol.
In an open letter to the government of the Dominican Republic on 17 July 2015 following a press conference called by Foreign Minister of the DR to reject his statement, Almagro again called for a meeting at the OAS of the two countries.
The bilateral talks between both countries were discontinued after the government of Haiti demanded that the Dominican government accept their protocol for deportations and appealed for international support for their demands.
The statement by Almagro to CNN Espanols, led Foreign Minister Andres Navarro of the Dominican Republic to decline an invitation to a meeting in Washington, D.C. to deal with Dominican migratory affairs with Haiti. High-ranking officers of the Medina administration said the statement showed the bias of Almagro and thus doubted any objectivity in the report to be presented by the OAS mission after visits to the Dominican Republic and Haiti 10-13 July 2015.
In the past, the OAS has openly backed the position of Haiti that returning Haitians would create a humanitarian crisis and has called for a stop to any voluntary or non-voluntary return of Haitians from the Dominican Republic.
Locally, the remarks by Almagro were protested. The president of the Association of Industries of Herrera (AEIH), Antonio Taveras Guzman said that if there is a humanitarian crisis in Haiti it is not a phenomenon created by the National Foreigner Legalization Plan (PNRE) but one that has historic reasons and institutional and political causes in the present. He said that contrary to generating a crisis to the neighboring country, the Dominican Republic has maintained an attitude of cooperation and solidarity before the situations in Haiti.
Haiti has been called a failed state for decades. Given the high cost and inefficiencies of its civil registry, it is also called a “factory of stateless people” which has created major problems when those who migrate to the Dominican Republic.
One of the first rulings of the Constitutional Court in the Dominican Republic since its creation was to implement the National Migration Law that has called for the regularization of all persons living in the Dominican Republic. The main beneficiaries are hundreds of thousands of Haitians that had migrated without documentation and lived here without documentation. Foreigners were given 18 months to regularize their status, with lesser requirements. At expiration, the plan calls for the deportation of illegal aliens but this part has yet to be implemented by the Dominican government. One of the main reasons the Haitians were not able to complete their migratory status was that the government of Haiti did not cooperate issuing essential documents. In Haiti most people do not have legal documentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXfRxlv52jY
http://dr1.com/premium/news/2015/dnews071715.shtml
http://www.oas.org/documents/spa/press/carta-sg.pdf