A crisis in the Dominican Republic is coming to a boil, as tens of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent are in danger of being expelled to Haiti or of facing lives of effective second-class citizenship in the Dominican Republic, without the documents they need for their daily lives.The issue began in 2013, when these Dominicans were stripped of their citizenship based on a retroactive reinterpretation of provisions in the Dominican constitution concerning nationality law. Although the government passed a law in 2014 to resolve the problem, bureaucratic inefficiency and a lack of political will have left this category of Dominican citizens unable to secure the necessary documentation to enroll in school or college, get jobs in the formal economy, register children at birth, or travel around the country without risk of expulsion. Many have already been swept up by police and troops based on racial profiling and forced over the border to Haiti, according to a new Human Rights Watch report, We Are Dominican: Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality in the Dominican Republic. Others live in daily fear of being rounded up and pushed out. A Human Rights Watch fellow, Celso Perez, talks to Kathy Rose, a Human Rights Watch editor, about what’s happening to Dominicans of Haitian descent, and their charged relationship with other Dominicans.
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