Major powers, NGOs seek a Haitian minority on Dominican soil, top official warns

Santo Domingo.- Immigration Agency director Jose Ricardo Taveras affirmed Sunday that major powers and NGOs try to create a national minority in the Dominican Republic with undocumented Haitian immigrants, and warned that it wouldn’t be allowed.

He said the initiative aims for that minority to have representation in powers of the State and cautioned against a “Balkanization” in the Caribbean with all its potential consequences.

Interviewed by Héctor Herrera Cabral on Telesistema Channel 11, the official said the pressure NGOs and the powers bring to bear is to obtain the Dominican nationality for all children born to Haitian immigrants since 1966. He didn’t specify which are the powers allegedly exerting that pressure.

Taveras said the foreign entities argue that the 1966 Constitution stipulates that right, but don’t realize that a Supreme Court ruling clearly established who has the requirements to be a Dominican citizen.

“But the idea of those NGOs and powerful countries is for the nationality to be granted to the children of undocumented people to create a Haitian national minority and for them to have the right to representation in the Powers of State, that is to say that they can seek congressional and municipal posts, among others.”

Taveras said the Catholic Church’s Jesuit Service has a false solidarity with the Haitian immigrants.