[WM]On June 17, hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent will be stateless.
Last week, I wrote that the Dominican Republic has summarily stripped over a hundred thousand Dominicans born in the DR of Haitian parents of their citizenship and is threatening to deport them to Haiti. And though initial reports suggested that the deadline for deportation might be delayed, it now seems to be going forward as planned: In four days, hundreds of thousands of people in the Western Hemisphere will become stateless.
Where is the US press? Why aren’t they covering it? And why the silence from human-rights groups? The main page of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch has three posts on Venezuela. Nothing on the Dominican Republic. HRW’s director Ken Roth is a prolific voice on Twitter—yet nothing on the topic since November 11, 2014 (but do a Twitter search for @KenRoth and Venezuela and bathe in the stream).
The pope has spoken out, sort of. He told Dominican bishops that they “cannot be indifferent to the plight of Haitian immigrants.” Yet the impending expulsion will not be of immigrants but Dominicans of Haitian descent, born in the Dominican Republic, with family and friends and property and work in the Dominican Republic; many of them have never been to Haiti or know anyone in Haiti (though the Dominican press insists on calling them “Haitians”).
The Dominican government has set up a number of centers where Dominicans of Haitian descent can try to “regularize” their status, and thus avoid being expelled. It’s a charade. The offices are overcrowded, understaffed, and the needed paperwork doesn’t exist (many Dominicans of Haitian descent were born in rural areas, since their parents came to work the sugar fields, with midwifes and not in hospitals, and were therefore never issued birth certificates).
As of the 17th, hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Dominican-Haitians here will be rendered stateless and eligible for summary detention and deportation. The Dominican government maintains that they will not delay implementation of the law, despite pressure from the US, the UN, the OAS, and the Pope.
The government also announced last week that they do not intend to deport those who have already registered for legalization. However, I am documenting dozens of personal accounts from Dominican-Haitians who have gone to great lengths to register, some as much as 8-9 months ago, and as of today have not received any type of confirmation that their paperwork has even been processed. Without confirmation, they are still eligible for deportation. This does not even consider the hundreds of thousands of others who lack birth certificates and thus could not register in the first place.
Given the common practice of nightly police sweeps, the government solicitation of passenger buses, the official declaration of intent to pass Law 169-14 without delay on June 16, and the general history of anti-Haitian abuses on the part of law enforcement and government authorities, it is reasonable to assume that the infrastructure is now in place for mass detention and deportation of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic. The general attitude among this vulnerable subpopulation is a mix of fear and resignation.
This aid worker is asking for contacts in the US press; he wants to stay anonymous but wants to report on what he sees over the next week, especially in poorer neighborhoods, where he has contacts and first-hand experience. If you are a journalist and interested, e-mail me at grandin@nyu.edu and I’ll put you in touch.