The Ongoing Under-Registration of Children of Migrants and Their Descendants

The study COVID-19 Impacts on the Haitian Population and Their Descendants in the Southern Area of the Dominican Republic had a sample of 50 mothers and fathers of children born in the last 5 years, with several documentation profiles (for example, regularized and non-regularized Haitian migrants, descendants with restored documents, and descendants of the so-called group B who still remain in a situation of statelessness).

It should be remembered that people in the so-called Group B are persons without Dominican registration but with the right to acquire Dominican nationality under the Constitution in force at the time of their birth. These 50 people have had a total of 196 living children, 111 of whom have never obtained any birth registration either in Haiti or in the Dominican Republic (57% of the total). Among those born in the last 5 years, 51 out of 80 (64%) have no registration.

It is important to disaggregate the sample in order to consider the different documentation profiles of the parents and thereby distinguish the effects produced by the National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners (PNRE) for migrants or Law 169-14 on Naturalization for descendants with regard to the possibilities of registering their newborn children.

Mothers and fathers of migrant origin

For mothers and fathers of Haitian nationality, the PNRE seems to have facilitated access to registration only for those children born while their regularization card was valid, and not necessarily for the purpose of late registration for children born earlier or later. Thus, 5 of the 14 children of regularized migrants (36%) had not obtained birth registration, while the percentage doubles for migrants in irregular status: 12 of the 17 children born in the last 5 years (71%) had no registration of any kind. One limitation of the study was that it was not possible to verify whether the registration obtained was a Dominican birth certificate (for those who obtained residence through the regularization process) or a foreign certificate (for those who obtained a permit of temporary stay).

Mothers and fathers who are descendants born in the Dominican Republic

For descendants of the so-called Group A (that is, Dominican persons with registration who were denationalized by Judgment 168-13), only one interviewee had problems with the registration of his child, because his identity card had still not been restored, even though he had previously registered the births of his earlier children without any problem. It should be mentioned that this interviewee's wife has a Dominican identity card; however, because they are legally married, the civil registry office does not allow her to record the certificate without the father's / husband's data. This type of practice shows, on the one hand, that arbitrary suspensions of identity documents of Dominicans of Haitian descent continue and, on the other hand, that children of couples with mixed status continue to face a risk of statelessness.

Perhaps the most striking finding was that the situation for descendants of the so-called Group B was the same both for those persons who had managed to register under the operation of Law 169-14 and for those who had not. In other words, 100% of their children born in the last 5 years (10/10 for registered descendants and 6/6 for unregistered ones) still had not managed to obtain any birth registration. Apparently, the documents received by people who went through the registration process under Law 169-14 have not been recognized as valid for birth declaration purposes by a large part of the civil registry offices. The lack of naturalization and/or a positive resolution for the descendant population causes the intergenerational transmission of statelessness.

A more detailed analysis of the findings will be available in the doctoral dissertation entitled Birth Registration as Bordering Practice by associated researcher Allison Petrozziello, a doctoral candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University / Balsillie School of International Affairs. The case study on birth registration was prepared with assistance from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. Its content is the sole responsibility of the authors / OBMICA and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the views of IDRC (or its Board).