Thousands Of Dominicans Woke Up This Week Without Citizenship In Any Country

Thousands of Dominicans woke up stateless on Monday, after the deadline expired for people born to undocumented parents to apply for migrant permits under a widely criticized 2014 law, according to human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

The result of a longstanding political battle against illegal immigration from neighboring Haiti, the vast majority of those affected are descendants of Haitian migrants. Without citizenship in the country of their birth, the newly stateless people will be subject to deportation.

It remains unclear precisely how many people failed to secure citizenship in the country of their birth by last night’s deadline, but Amnesty cited Dominican government figures showing that only 5,345 people had applied to normalize their status as of Jan. 9, out of an estimated 110,000 people estimated to qualify.

“This could leave thousands at risk of possible expulsion from the country,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s America’s director, said in a press release issued Sunday, adding, “The simple fact is that when the vast majority of these people were born, the Dominican law at the time recognized them as citizens. Stripping them of this right, and then creating impossible administrative hurdles to stay in the country is a violation of their human rights.”

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