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Born Foreigners

Thousands of descendants of haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic are suffering from different discriminations as they are not considered eligible for dominican documents. They were born in Dominican Republic but are systematically declared Haitian by the government. At the same time, they have never been to Haiti, and most don´t know family there. Also in Haiti, a part of the population do not consider these people as haitian and the government has talked low mouth about them as foreigners. The DR government opened a regularization process recently, and it has just ended. Many people have not been able to bring any proof of birth in the country, and they should leave soon as they are not granted residency. Many of them do not want to travel, as they feel dominicans. This people have suffered during all their lives from severe restrictions in access to sanity, education, travel, property owning, bank accounts, or legal marriage. So if they stay, they will face social invisibility if they don´t manage to change the situation. If they go, it is still unclear if Haiti will recognize them as nationals or not. This parallel world of people born in the country from migrants without legal documents has existed for a very long time in the Dominican Republic. Many of those haitian migrants came to the country to work for the Consejo Estate de Azucar CEA, a government agency that was in control of the total of the sugar cane production for decades until the 70´s, and they were never granted basic services nor documents. They were usually placed in villages built for them in the middle of the sugar fields, without any electricity, sewerage system, and with little services, in a kind of silenced isolation. -- Juliana Deguis Pierre was born in the Dominican province of Monte Plata in 1984, from haitian migrant parents. In 2008, she entered la Junta Electoral Central, the agency in charge of documenting every Dominican with an ID. Government workers took away her Birth Act,

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