Several sectors of the Dominican Republic insisted today on denouncing the supposed massive influx of Haitians in the country and demanded concrete actions by the Government to confront the situation, which they described as “worrying”.
Dozens of people demonstrated today in front of the General Migration Directorate (DGM) to demand the repatriation of undocumented Haitians who are in Dominican territory.
For several days some media and people in particular have reported, especially in social networks, an unusual influx of Haitians and even have published photographs and videos where foreigners are allegedly trying to enter the country, but the Government said last Monday that these images are not current.
“The Dominican Republic is a sovereign country and we have the right to establish our migration policies,” Roberto Cabral, speaking on behalf of the so-called National Coordinating Committee, told press in front of the DGM.
This group, which considered the migration of Haitians to national territory “out of control”, asked the authorities to discontinue the application of the National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners, launched by the Government between 2014 and 2015 and in which 249,950 People, according to official figures.
The Dominican authorities implemented the Plan after a controversial sentence of the Constitutional Court in 2013, which set the parameters for acquiring nationality and that affected especially the children of the citizens of the neighboring country.
The Dominican Republic “has to continue working for the millions of Dominicans excluded from the minimum welfare. We can not carry another country,” said Tony Peña Guaba, general secretary of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), in his Twitter account. Of the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD).
Meanwhile, ex-deputy Vinicio Castillo Semán of the National Progressive Force (FNP) accused today the Minister of the Presidency, Gustavo Montalvo, and “foreign powers”, which he did not identify, of wanting to “build an ethnic minority with special rights” In the country, and demanded the repatriation of the undocumented.
For his part, the director of the Specialized Border and Terrestrial Security Corps (Cesfront), Sugar Frugis Martínez, said today in statements to the press that “they should not faint” in the surveillance of the Dominican-Haitian border.
The Haitian ambassador to the country, Idalbert Pierre Jean, acknowledged the right of the Dominican Republic to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, since, he said, it was a matter of “total sovereignty.”
“The only thing we can do is ask for respect for the civil rights of immigrants,” the Haitian diplomat told reporters at a meeting of the House of Representatives’ Border Affairs Committee.
Defense Minister Rubén Darío Paulino Sem Monday guaranteed security at the border with neighboring Haiti, after the country’s president, Danilo Medina, was consulted by journalists on this issue and said that it would be the official who would talk about This particular.
According to the Minister of Defense, so far this year, the military and migratory authorities have returned 140,171 undocumented people to Haiti through the different border points.
“That means efficient and effective control of our borders,” said the Dominican official.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a border of nearly 400 kilometers where complaints of human trafficking and smuggling of arms and animals are frequent. EFE
