Huh? Dominican Ambassador to US Tells Jorge Ramos His Government Doesn’t Give a Shit About Haitains Born in DR

Dec 8, 2013
2:49 PM

How did we miss this from Al Punto and Jorge Ramos last month?

That was Aníbal de Castro, Dominican ambassador to the United States, basically saying that this is all about nationality and that there any undocumented in the DR and their offspring aren’t Dominican. He also said that this doesn’t affect 200,000 people, just 13,000. Oh, ok. But he pretty much admits that pushing someone out of the country who was born there is cool. (By the way, Ramos misnamed the DR’ president. It’s Danilo Medina.)

He also said this, “That person, if their parents are not documented correctly, are not Dominican.” Ouch. Guess de Castro might have issues with Dreamers.

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De Castro craps on birthright citizenship, too. He also admits that United States can push for that, including Dominicans born there. His reason? Because the United States is vast, unlike the DR. By the way, Ramos is right. If the U.S. did the same thing to Dominicans here in this country, de Castro would pull a nutty.

There is a dangerous line b/w nationalism and straight-out racism.

De Castro scoffs at Mario Vargas Llosa’s criticism. In fact, he doesn’t even address it. Castro also said that his country is not rejecting people of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republican. There will not be mass deportations, but a humanitarian solution to this. Huh? We won’t deport you, but you need to leave. Makes no sense.

The baffling one is that de Castro said that those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic can remain in the country if they can prove that their family was registered correctly, which basically is his argument for justifying that the policy is a good one. But, psst, you were born in the DR. You know no other country, and de Castro is really referring back to 1929? Can you imagine how accurate all these records are?

De Castro also said that his country was unjustly criticized. He also respected the fact that Haiti is building a wall on the DR border.

That entire interview was just flipping insane.

By the way, there were protests in Haiti on Friday:

Hundreds of protesters gathered Friday to criticize a recent court decision in the Dominican Republic that could strip the citizenship of generations of people of Haitian descent living in the neighboring country.

The crowd peaked at about 2,000 people but thinned out during the march uphill to the Dominican Embassy to protest the decision passed two months ago by that country’s court. The demonstrators urged people to boycott travel to the Dominican Republic.

Riot police set up metal barricades on a major thoroughfare that block protesters from reaching the district where the diplomatic mission is located.

You can read the entire court decision here in Spanish. Here is perhaps the best synopsis we have read about it ever since news of the ruling came out:

The 11-2 decision of the constitutional court, dated September 23, found that the provision on citizenship in the 1929 Dominican constitution, which recognizes as a citizen anyone born in the country, should not apply to the children of parents who were not “legal residents” at the time of their birth, on the basis that their parents were “in transit”.

It further ruled that as a result these children, and subsequent generations born on Dominican soil, are excluded from the citizenship guarantee provided by the constitution.

The order effectively strips citizenship rights from the descendants of Haitian migrants settled in the Dominican Republic since the start of the 20th century, despite the fact that the current constitution declares as Dominican anyone who enjoyed Dominican citizenship prior to 2010. The vast majority of these individuals will be left stateless.

By the way, this whole DR-Haiti thing has a history. Like the time Haiti invaded that part of Hispaniola.