Huffington Post
(Op-Ed):
By Ediberto Roman
August 24, 2015
Over
the past few weeks, virtually every American has heard, or heard of,
Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric. Without addressing facts, Trump
plays to our most base
and racist instincts. Disdainful of evidence that immigrants are less
likely to commit crimes than citizens, he continues to allege mass
numbers of rapists and drug dealers are being "sent" across our border.
On August 19, two South Boston brothers attacked
a homeless immigrant, claiming they were inspired by Trump .
Hatemongering
can incite individual acts of violence and can also inspire policies
threatening to immigrants and citizens alike. Trump is not only
scapegoating immigrants,
he is calling for an end to birthright citizenship. If his plan somehow
succeeds, it may jeopardize the human rights of millions, particularly
members of minority communities. If this prognosis seems alarmist, we
need look no further than the Caribbean region.
Thousands
of citizens of the Dominican Republic were recently denationalized and
threatened with mass expulsion and the prospect of statelessness. As a
result of a 2013
ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, described by many as motivated
by racial animus, the country did away with birthright citizenship by
limiting Dominican nationality to individuals with one Dominican parent,
regardless of their own birth on Dominican
soil. Despite the language of the Dominican Constitution, this decision
stripped the citizenship of generations of Dominican citizens, applying
retroactively to 1929 onward.
The
vast majority of these newly undocumented former Dominican citizens are
dark-skinned people of Haitian descent. In a country where the poor
typically have a very difficult
time obtaining birth certificates, the decision effectively singles out
poor Dominican-born children whose ancestors have resided in the
country for several generations.
The
Dominican Government for its part has mounted an initially effective
public relations campaign. It has characterized this human rights
tragedy as an internal immigration
matter by pointing to the United States' own immigration problems. In
fact, in a letter from the Dominican Ambassador chastising over 100 law
professors for urging President Obama to act on the matter, the D.R.
government purposefully confuses the issue:
Over
the past month, much attention and criticism has come to the Dominican
Republic as it begins the difficult and sensitive process of
implementing a policy to bring
undocumented residents into a legal framework that regularizes their citizenship status.
Just
look at the United States. One of the most vexing public policy
conundrums in this country is how to manage a long-broken immigration
system that has left over 11
million undocumented persons living and working across the U.S.
The
Dominican Government improperly characterizes its recent
denationalization policy as an immigration matter when it is, in truth, a
matter of discrimination, a poorly-veiled
program to cleanse the country of many of its citizens of Haitian
descent. In fear of the threatened mass deportation of undocumented
individuals, by the Dominican government's own estimate as many as
30,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent have "self-deported."
In
response to a letter to Secretary Kerry from several US Senators, on
August 14, 2015, the U.S. Department of State urged the Government of
the Dominican Republic "to
avoid mass deportations and to conduct any deportations in a
transparent matter that fully respects the human rights of deportees."
Despite condemnation by the United Nations, current estimates from the
U.S. State Department of "voluntary departures" from
the Dominican Republic range from 35,000 to 70,000 people.
The
stripping of Dominican nationality from Dominicans of Haitian descent
makes Haitian-Dominicans, or those deemed by appearance, skin tone or
circumstances to be of
Haitian heritage, vulnerable to deportation in violation of the
prohibition against mass expulsion found in the American Convention on
Human Rights, Article 22(9), and Articles 47 and 146 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention of 1949. Moreover, ethnicity-based denationalization
is a violation of the norm against discrimination found in Article 1 of
the American Convention, Article 13 of the Fourth Geneva Convention,
and Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, to
the extent that denationalized Dominicans are
not recognized as citizens of Haiti, this perfect storm of
discrimination, denationalization and mass expulsion tends toward
statelessness, in violation of the right to nationality itself, also
recognized in Article 20 of the American Convention, and Article
15 of the Universal Declaration.
As
two U.S. citizens and legal scholars in the fields of immigration and
international law, one focused on human rights in the Americas, and one
on human rights in Africa,
we stand with the poor, marginalized, and denationalized in the
Dominican Republic. And in a political season in which presidential
candidates call for an end to birthright citizenship in the U.S., we ask
our fellow citizens to expose and reject the use of
immigration reform rhetoric in the service of racial inequality or
ethnic cleansing. In solidarity with the stateless and near-stateless in
the Dominican Republic, we call on the US government to oppose the
denationalization and expulsion of Dominicans of
Haitian descent and to affirm birthright citizenship in both the United
States and the Dominican Republic.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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