Ripples of Fear After Dominican Citizenship Ruling

In a house with no running water surrounded by vast stretches of sugar cane, Abelinda Yisten Debel studies for a high school graduation exam she might not be allowed to take.

It's not just her diploma that's uncertain. The 19-year-old Yisten also faces the prospect of not being able to marry, get a formal job, or go to a public hospital if she gets sick.

She is one of an estimated 200,000 people who were born in the Dominican Republic and now may lose their citizenship, and the rights that go along with it, because of a recent Constitutional Court decision.

The court ruled that people who were born in the Dominican Republic to parents who were neither citizens nor legal residents are not automatically entitled to citizenship under a new constitution adopted in 2010. The effects of the decision are retroactive, and come as a particular shock to people like Yisten, who has rarely ventured beyond the dirt streets of her village and never traveled farther than the capital.

"It's sad because I'm not a foreigner. I'm from here," she said at her home — two rooms in a concrete barracks-like structure, built by the government for sugar workers, where 10 families share a bathroom.

Many in her central Dominican village, Los Jovillos, and across the country are waiting to learn their fate, some afraid to leave the house for fear they may be deported by immigration authorities — most likely to Haiti since most are of Haitian descent — because they have no papers. Some have lived in the Dominican Republic for generations.

"If they grab me, I'll be in trouble because I don't know where I would go. I've never even been to Haiti," said Juliana Deguis Pierre, the woman whose legal challenge resulted in the Constitutional Court ruling Sept. 23.

The court ordered the government and the Electoral Council to compile a list within two years of people who should be stripped of their Dominican birth certificate and identification card, known as a cedula, a document issued at age 18 that is required to participate in any public activity, from holding a job to casting a ballot.

Now, fear and uncertainty grip many in the country of 10 million. The government has said it will come up with a path to legal residency, but no details have been released. It may not come in time to help those whose papers have already been confiscated. President Danilo Medina has expressed sympathy for those affected but not said how, or if, he will help them.

The government meanwhile is under fire from human rights advocates at home and abroad for a ruling seen as racist. Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and soon-to-be chairman of the Caribbean Community, urged Medina to find a solution.

"Surely, this ruling by the court is unacceptable in any civilized community," Gonsalves said in a letter to Medina. "It is an affront to all established international norms and elemental humanity, and threatens to make the Dominican Republic a pariah regionally and globally."

Nadine Perrault, a senior regional child protection adviser for UNICEF, said she remains hopeful the government will find a way to avoid what would equate to rendering thousands of people stateless, depriving them of basic social protections.