Santo Domingo.- The Immigration Agency director on Wednesday said it collaborated with companies and producers to register 380,000 Haitians who work in all of Dominican Republic.
Jose R. Taveras announced advances in the National Foreigners Stabilization Plan, which he affirmed will solve the status of people who were born and live in the country, but don’t have family ties in their nation of origin, commonly known as “stateless.”
He said the Plan will regularize the situation of hundreds of Haitians and other of nationalities, who reside in the country illegally.
“There’s an entire blackmail industry around the Haitian immigration in the country,” the official said, interviewed by Huchi Lora and Patricia Solano on Telesistema, Channel 11. “I’ll neither tolerate blackmail nor extortion of immigrants by Immigration agents or officials in my tenure, and proof of that is that we charged 17 inspectors and agents who worked in the agency last month, who are being prosecuted for breaking the General Immigration Law.”
Taveras said the agents were charged for shakedowns of illegal Haitian immigrants to let them work in constructions and sell trinkets in the traffic lights. “In an operation with undercover agents, we managed to surprise and file charges against 17 inspectors who went out in the Immigration bus to gather undocumented people and if these paid they were released.”