Dominican Republic ‘pressed from abroad’ on Haitian offspring row

Santo Domingo.- Dominican Republic receives pressure from abroad after the Constitutional Court handed down ruling 168-13 which stipulates that persons in transit aren’t entitled to a Dominican nationality.

The affirmation is from president Danilo Medina, who’s consulting various leaders and organizations leading to a draft of the naturalization bill, which seeks to regularize the status of thousands of offspring of undocumented aliens, mostly Haitians.

In related topic, Medina said that he has yet to receive any official accusation from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) on alleged violations of human rights of descendants of undocumented Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

He said while the Commission has issued comments, but they’ve yet to send any record, for which the Government doesn’t know what such violations consist of, prior to a response. "We don’t have any document from the IACHR, they came here and said they were going to make a report, but we have not received it.

Medina spoke after a 35-minute meeting with Luis Abinader, former vice presidential candidate of the opposition PRD party in Piantini, as part of his consultations leading to a naturalization bill to submit to Congress.