Thousands of foreigners, including Haitians, are facing deportation from the neighboring nation of Dominican Republic (DR) as the deadline for the Haitians to legalize their immigration status is scheduled to expire on July 17.
Tens of thousands of Haitians, and others, who have been living as undocumented residents in the Dominican Republic are registered under the DR’s National Plan to Regularize Foreigners (PNRE).
The PNRE is a special provision to grant identity documents and residence permits to foreign nationals who have not been living legally in the DR.
Of the 238,000 Haitians who opted for regularization, in the last deadline issued by the DR government in 2015 – the card of 143,000 individuals expires July 17.
However, only 53,000 of the Haitian nationals registered for the PNRE were registered with the Central Electoral Board (JCE), and of those, only 15,000 have been identified by the electoral board.
In May, the Dominican Directorate General for Migration (DGM) reported that citizens from 12 countries were repatriated to their country of origin.
According to the agency, the repatriated foreigners, who were living in the Dominican Republic illegally, came mainly from Haiti but there were other migrants also from Armenia, Canada, China, Colombia, Spain, Greece, India, Italy, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
Copyright 2017 – Caribbean National Weekly News
