No papers mean no school, no job for 70,000 youngsters of Haitian descent

Santo Domingo.- The Integral Ethnic Foundation (FEI) and the Haitian International League (Lihaiti) on Thurs. said that more than 70,000 young people, children of Haitian descent, can’t go to school or get a job for lack of an identity document.

In a press conference FEI executives blamed the Central Electoral Board and the Immigration Directorate for the legal limbo in which those young people find themselves for failure to qualify under Law 169.14 on Special Naturalization.

William Charpantier and Zacarías Toledo García, executive director and president of FEI, as well as Ocelois Celestin, of LIHAITI, expressed their concern for the fate of that population which they label as increasingly vulnerable, since they are excluded from the country educational and productive system.

“Most of these young people finished high school, where the state invested large sums of economic resources, but now for lack of identity card cannot continue in the universities, but not for decent work that allows its development and the country,” they said, quoted by Hoy.

They warn that failure to seek a solution under the spirit of Law 169-14, “this vulnerable group could become a social problem with unpredictable consequences.”