Dominican Haitians are people without a country: US newspaper

Santo Domingo.- One of the United States’ leader news outletson Tuesday railed against the Dominican Republic over its immigration policyaffecting mostly Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent.

“President Obama has been very critical of Republicanpresidential candidate Donald Trump’s threat to arrest and send home millionsof undocumented immigrants, but his administration has said little about adeplorable deportation program affecting Dominican-born Haitians, the largeststateless population in the Western Hemisphere,” says an Op-Ed in the PhiladelphiaEnquirer (Philly.com) titled: Dominican Haitians are people without a country.

In affirms that a 2010 Dominican constitutional amendment, denied“citizenship to anyone born in the country who didn’t have at least one parentwho was born there too. Overnight, 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent werestripped of citizenship. The country’s Supreme Court upheld the amendment in2013, and in the past year more than 60,000 people have been deported.”

“Some deportees moved into pop-up shantytowns on Haiti’sborder without anyone to contact on that side of the Caribbean island ofHispaniola. Neither did they speak Creole, as Haitians do; Dominicans speakSpanish. Quener Joseph, a Philadelphian of Haitian descent, says "a lot ofkids with ID now can’t go to high school, definitely not college. They can’topen a bank account or buy a car. It’s shameful, and humiliating."

The outlet adds that the Dominican Republic did allow abrief period in which some of the affected population could apply forcitizenship, but that window closed in June 2015. “The United Nations and theInter-American Commission on Human Rights have spoken out against the DominicanRepublic’s actions. In response, it has dropped out of the IACHR.”