Dominican ambassador to the United States, Anibal de Castro has explained the 23 September decision on Dominican nationality by the Constitutional Court, in his answers to questions by Inter-American Dialogue, the Washington, D.C.-based center for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on Western Hemisphere affairs.
De Castro challenged speculation that hundreds of thousands of people will be left stateless, that there will be mass deportations of Haitians, and that Haitians and their descendants would be denied health and education benefits as a result of the decision to issue temporary resident permits rather than nationality to people without legal status in the Dominican Republic.
The ruling puts in writing the long-standing common practice of not issuing Dominican birth certificates to children born to parents without legal status. The Constitutional Court decision follows a thorough effort by the Central Electoral Board (JCE) Civil Registry to clear the records of documents found to have been issued to people involved in crime, sport (baseball players) and migration fraud.
In his answers in the Inter-American Dialogue’s 18 October bulletin, Ambassador Anibal de Castro says:
“A number of crucial aspects of the Constitutional Tribunal’s Sept. 23 decision have been misunderstood and misrepresented.
First, this is not a new policy but rather a reaffirmation of a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, which clarified the nationality provisions of the Constitution in place since 1929. The court did not declare that all undocumented workers and their children born in the Dominican Republic were in a permanent state of transit. Rather, it said that children of foreigners illegally in the country could not have a greater right to citizenship than those legally in transit. If the children of the latter cannot be Dominican, neither can the children of the former. When it comes to nationality, foreigners illegally in the country are in the same position as non-immigrant transient foreigners like tourists rather than persons in transit.
Second, the ruling does not affect all children of Haitian migrants. Children with at least one legal-resident parent were and remain eligible for Dominican citizenship. The numbers involved are a fraction of the alarmist estimates.
Third, the children of Haitian migrants are entitled to Haitian citizenship through ‘jus sanguinis;’ they are not stateless when they have a legal claim to their parents’ nationality.
Fourth, the tribunal’s ruling emphasizes the need to provide those affected with a temporary resident permit until a regularization plan is in place. Speculation about possible mass expulsions is baseless; individual cases will be carefully examined and subject to judicial due process. Finally, basic human rights must be respected whatever a person’s nationality. Indeed, the decision does not curtail most civil rights enjoyed by anyone in the Dominican Republic, including access to free public services such as health and education.”