Protests hit Dominican Republic’s expulsion of Haitians

New York — Imagine waking up to the news that the only country you have ever known has officially rejected you by a 9 to 2 vote.

That is what will potentially happen to hundreds of thousands in the Dominican Republic in the coming year.

The status of Dominicans of Haitian descent (born in the Dominican Republic) has mainly been one of marginalized, second-class citizenship. But on Sept. 23, the country’s Constitutional Court decided, with passage of the TC/0168.13 decision, that even that humiliating classification was not enough. The court ruled that “the children of undocumented migrants, who have been in the Dominican Republic and registered as Dominicans as far back as 1929, cannot have Dominican nationality as their parents are considered to be ‘in transit.’”