Dominican ambassador in London Federico Cuello responds to an article in The Economist that echoes misinformation on the efforts being made by the Medina government to implement longstanding laws to organize immigration chaos in the country after years of a laissez-faire approach.
The Economist maintains the commonly held misconception that the Dominican government is denationalizing Haitians when applying Constitutional Court ruling 168-13. The position of the Dominican government is that the ruling of the new court just confirms a previous position in place since 1929 and confirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice in 2005 that established who gets Dominican nationality. The Dominican government has announced plans to regularize immigrants by granting them residency, and fast tracking procedures to naturalization for whoever qualifies.
In his response, Cuello refers to the insistence on the claims of statelessness by people of Haitian descent who have immigrated to the Dominican Republic. He writes:
“No Haitian descendant can be stateless in the DR, unless of course its own government refuses to provide the documentation it has failed to issue to millions of Haitians in their own country.”
Cuello makes the point that “unlike Haiti the DR is a multicultural, multiracial country.” He lists several of the reasons for the chaos in Haiti that has spurred mass migration to the DR as Haitians seek opportunities not available in their home country.
“Unlike Mandela, who chose reconciliation to avoid the economy of the graveyard, Haiti chose upon independence to destroy its colonial production, redistribute land in micro-sized lots, practice slash and burn agriculture and chop down 98% of its forest coverage. So now they have no farms of adequate size, no fertile lands, no trees and of course no rural jobs,” he writes.
He says that the international campaign against the DR has failed to recognize that the DR is the foreign country that generates more jobs for Haitians than the entire rest of the Caribbean. And he mentions that Haiti is a member of Caricom that despite the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that provides for free movement of skilled and professional personnel as well as for contract workers on a seasonal or project basis for all members of Caricom, the member states have not implemented this.
Cuello makes the point that the DR “has a longstanding tradition of non-discriminatory access to public services” n one out of every five children born in Dominican public hospitals are born to Haitian nationals who come here because most hospitals in Haiti are private. He points out that there is no mention that 18% of the Dominican health budget covers the needs of Haitians seeking services in Dominican hospitals. Or that two out of every five children in public schools are Haitian, since most schools in Haiti are private. He added that thousands of Haitian students attend Dominican universities paying local rates. Another 15,000 attend with full scholarships from the DR government.
“It is in the DR that Haitians are exercising most of their civil rights, including access to the judiciary on a non-discriminatory basis, given the fact that many judges have yet to be appointed in Haiti. Moreover, Haitians suffer from longstanding difficulties in obtaining birth certificates, identity cards, voter-registration cards or passports, which, when issued, cost in excess of US$500 altogether, in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere. It is because of these difficulties that elections in Haiti are decided by just 12% of the voting age population,” he points out.
www.economist.com/news/americas/21591203-and-no-agreement-how-many-have-been-cut-citizenship-storm-hispaniola/comments#comments