PORT-AU-PRINCE (AP) — Haiti is launching a program to register its migrants who live abroad without documentation, including in the Dominican Republic where thousands of people of Haitian origin are in danger of being left stateless by a court ruling.
Government workers will travel to the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which also has a large Haitian population, to register Haitian citizens residing there without legal papers, Baptiste Saint-Cyr, director of the country’s National Identification Office, told private Radio Metropole.
The $2.5 million project begins next month and will be carried out in other countries where Haitian migrants live, Saint-Cyr said.
Haitian immigrants will be identified with the help of neighbors.
The program comes after a Dominican constitutional court last fall moved to revoke the citizenship of people of Haitian descent even if they were born in the Dominican Republic.
The ruling aggravated already uneasy relations between the neighbors who share the island of Hispaniola and it drew condemnation from human rights groups while spurring protests and boycotts in Haiti.
No Comment