A piece in The Economist addresses the controversy over the Dominican Republic’s attempt to deny citizenship to the children of Haitian immigrants born in the country.

LUISA FRANSUA was born in 1959 in the Dominican Republic (DR), has never left her country and her social-security card reads “Nationality: Dominican”. But she has not been able to get a licence to practise as an educational psychologist, nor renew her passport in order to visit her daughter in Germany. The government says she is a foreigner because her parents were Haitian.

For 75 years the Dominican Republic’s constitution granted citizenship to almost everyone born in the country. But since 2007 the government has sought to deny the citizenship of people whose parents were illegal migrants, a policy incorporated in an amended constitution in 2010. Up to 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian origin may be affected. Almost 500 of them have complained to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that they have been left stateless. The IACHR has condemned the new policy. But on December 1st the DR’s Supreme Court endorsed the new rule by rejecting a Dominican-born man’s request for a birth certificate.

Relations between the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola have often been tense. Haiti occupied the DR for part of the 19th century. Rafael Trujillo, a Dominican dictator, ordered the murder of thousands of Haitian migrants in 1937. Ties have improved of late: Leonel Fernández, the DR’s president, was quick to send aid after Haiti’s earthquake in 2010. But anti-Haitian sentiment in his country remains strong.

In the DR birth certificates are needed for such matters as buying a mobile phone, enrolling in school or getting married. Absurdly, they must have been issued no more than 90 days before; the state makes money by charging to renew them. People who had previously replaced their certificates many times were suddenly rejected.

Officials deny that these people are stateless, saying that as the children of Haitians they can apply for Haitian citizenship. But many no longer have any ties to the country of their parents’ birth. The DR’s ambassador to the Organisation of American States says that the new policy is intended to “clean up irregularities”, not to discriminate. Dominican-Haitian activists disagree. They protested on the steps of the Supreme Court a week after the ruling. They plan an international campaign to push the government to change its mind.

NOTE: The embassy of the Dominican Republic in the United States has written a letter in response to an earlier Economist blog post on this topic. Read it here.

For the original report go to http://www.economist.com/node/21542182

Photo by Greg Constantine from his “Nowhere People” series. For more go to http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/09/11079