Home About Chat Users Issues Party Candidates Polling Firms Media News Polls Calendar Key Races United States President Senate House Governors International

New User Account
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource." 
Email: Password:

  There’s a Vicious, Slow-Motion Pogrom Happening a Few Hundred Miles From the US
NEWS DETAILS
Parent(s) Container 
ContributorRP 
Last EditedRP  Jun 15, 2015 12:52pm
Logged 0
CategoryLegal Ruling
AuthorGreg Grandin
MediaNewspaper - Los Angeles Times
News DateFriday, June 5, 2015 03:45:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe Dominican Republic is preparing to deport more than a hundred thousand people to Haiti. Born in the Dominican Republic, the targets for expulsion are descendants of Haitians who came to work in sugar plantations in the early 20th century yet never legalized their residency status. They are nearly all poor, street venders, peasants, domestic servants, laborers, mothers and fathers.

Like most every other nation in the Americas, the Dominican Republic defines (or did until recently) citizenship according to a version of jus soli—“right to the soil,” what in the US is often called birthright citizenship. Who is a Dominican? “Persons born in the national territory,” says the 1980 constitution. But that charter, as do many other jus soli constitutions, lists exceptions, usually related to the children of diplomatic personnel or of persons “in transit.” In September 2013, the Dominican Republic’s top constitutional court interpreted those exceptions to apply to descendants of undocumented migrant workers.

According to Rachel Nolan, writing in a recent excellent Harper’s essay (behind a firewall), the ruling applies “to all Dominicans with undocumented foreign parents, most of whom…have no family in Haiti, speak little or no Creole, and are not eligible for Haitian citizenship. The decision was retroactive, affecting anyone born in 1929 or later. Two hundred ten thousand people were suddenly stateless.”
Share
ArticleRead Full Article

NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION