The Dominican Republic and Haiti: one island riven by an unresolved past
When Haiti was hit by the devastating earthquake in 2010, its island neighbour, the Dominican Republic, rushed to help. It was among the first to send rescue workers, food and water, and also allowed overseas relief agency flights to land at Santo Domingo airport.
But three years on, the goodwill seems to have dissipated and old tensions resurfaced. Just over a week ago the Dominican Republic's highest court ruled to revoke the citizenship of children of illegal Haitian migrant workers – a measure to be applied to anyone born after 1929, and thus affecting not only migrants' children, but their grandchildren and, in some cases, even great-grandchildren.
This is the latest legal attack on the rights of Haitians and their descendants; measures in the past few years have included reclassifying migrant workers as "in transit" rather than legal residents. This meant any child born in the Dominican Republic – which had been one basis for citizenship – also needed one Dominican parent, or one who was a legal resident.
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