Thousands of Haitian undocumented immigrants on Tuesday lined up outside government offices in the Dominican Republic, racing a deadline to register with the authorities or face deportation.
The government has given undocumented immigrants — the vast majority of whom are from neighboring Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas — until yesterday to submit papers under new rules to regularize their status.
However those standing in the long lines under the hot sun said the deadline was impossible to meet, as rights groups estimated that about 200,000 Haitians would be left facing deportation.
Photo: Reuters
“I’ve been coming here for five days, and haven’t managed to get in,” said Jean Claude Jodias as he stood outside the Dominican Ministry of Interior and Police.
“In the morning, I got through the entrance, but the police kicked me out and I couldn’t fight them. I gave a man 500 pesos [US$10] to get me in, but I never saw him again,” said Jodias, a construction worker who has lived in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, for the past 10 years.
An estimated 458,000 Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, often laboring in the sugar cane fields or as domestic workers. They make up nearly 90 percent of the country’s immigrants and 5.4 percent of the total population. Just one in 10 has legal status.
As the deadline approaches, Haitian men, women and children have been lining up outside the ministry’s gates day and night, through drizzling rain, morning chill and midday heat of 35?C.
Similar scenes have played out at registration centers across the country, where the immigrants had until 7pm last night to turn in their paperwork.
“Those who do not register under the regularization plan ... are subject to deportation,” Dominican Deputy Minister of Interior and Police Washington Gonzalez said.
The so-called National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners is the latest source of tensions between the Dominican government and Haitians who have sought to carve out a better life in the country next door and escape chronic poverty and instability at home.
Mariamis Crousef, who had spent the night in line, was awaiting her turn with her 18-month-old daughter. She complained, like many of those waiting, that Haitian authorities were dragging their feet in delivering her the required identity document.
“I applied for our papers in November and I still haven’t received them,” she said.
The ministry estimated that 250,000 foreigners would register, the majority of them Haitian.
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