None of us worry much about existing legally in our country. At our birth, our parents had us registered and we immediately had an identity as citizens - the government knows we exist and what family we come from. But this is not the case for the children of undocumented Haitians born in the Dominican Republic. Dominican laws do not extend Dominican nationality to them. While some countries maintain the right to citizenship based on soil (territory), other do not. The Dominican Republic falls into the second. The regretable consequence of this is that day by day the majority of children born in the DR to undocumented Haitians parents have no country that recognizes them, as their parents do not go to the Haitian consulates for fear of being deported. Thus, legally, these children do not exist.
From within La Sagrada Familia Parish, we are now collaborating the the Haitian Consulate closest to Sabana Yegua (Barahona), in order to register children under the age of three. This collaboration is the fruit of two years of negotiations and relationship building with the consulate, and organizing within the Haitian community in the parish.
At the end of June 2013 we were able to obtain the first 25 birth certificates emitted by the Republic of Haiti. This means that 25 children who did not exist to any country now have documentation... this is a big first step. Hopefully, some day there will be more flexibility in the Dominican inmigration laws and they will be able to obtain recognition from not only the country where their parents were born, but also from the one where they were born, grew up, and will work. But there is a long way to go.
Awesome, great work...
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