LUISA FRANSUA sold clothes on the street to support her four children. Once they left home, she got a degree in educational psychology. But she has not been able to get a licence to practice her new profession, or renew her passport to visit her daughter in Germany. She was born in 1959 in the eastern Dominican Republic (DR), has never left her country, and her social-security card reads “Nationality: Dominican”. But the government now says she is a foreigner because her parents were Haitian.
For 75 years, the Dominican constitution granted citizenship to almost everyone born in the country. But since 2007 the government has sought to undo this legacy and annul the citizenship of people born to parents lacking legal residency, who are overwhelmingly Haitian. In October the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) received 457 complaints from people who say they have been left stateless after being recognised as citizens for decades. Some 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian origin could be affected. The IACHR has already condemned the policy. But on December 1st the Supreme Court gave the new rule constitutional sanction by rejecting a Dominican-born man’s request for a birth certificate so he could move to Florida after marrying an American.
Ever since Haiti, fresh off its slave rebellion, occupied the DR from 1821-44, Dominican leaders have stirred up anti-Haitian sentiment for political gain. In 1937 the dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered a mass murder of Haitians near the border. Joaquín Balaguer, his successor as strongman, famously warned of a “peaceful invasion” from the west. Relations improved when the Dominican government sent plentiful aid to Haiti following its 2010 earthquake. But the death on December 4th of Sonia Pierre (pictured), a renowned activist for Dominicans of Haitian descent, has refocused attention on the DR’s citizenship policy.
The only exceptions to the DR’s longstanding birthright-citizenship rule were for children of diplomats and people “in transit”—classified in 1939 as those who spent no more than 10 days in the country. Yet in 2004 Congress redefined “in transit” to include everyone without legal residency. And last year a new constitution denied citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
Most legal experts assumed the policy would only apply to future newborns. But four years ago the government began using the criteria for everyone, without any public announcement. In the DR, birth certificates are required for tasks ranging from buying a mobile-phone contract to attending school to getting married, and they expire after 90 days (making them a moneymaker for the state, which charges to renew them). People who had replaced their certificates numerous times were suddenly rejected, and sometimes told to get their documents from Haiti.
The Supreme Court’s approval means the policy is unlikely to be reversed soon. In theory, the government could pass a law stopping it from being applied retroactively. But Leonel Fernández, the president, won a close 1996 run-off by running a campaign (with Mr Balaguer’s support) that warned that his dark-skinned opponent—whose Haitian parents fled Mr Trujillo’s massacre—sought to reunite the DR with Haiti. The DR’s representative to the OAS insists “there is no discriminatory state policy” and that the country merely wants to “modernise and clean up irregularities in its civil registry system”.
Yet Dominican-Haitian advocacy groups insist they will regain their rights eventually. The followers of Ms Pierre—who herself faced a request to annul her birth certificate— protested on the steps of the Supreme Court a week after the ruling. At her wake, they spoke of lobbying the United States to pressure the DR to comply with IACHR rulings. At the very least, they have symbolism on their side. The only splashes of colour in the drab yellow room where it was held were the sashes on the flower bouquets, the rouge on Ms Pierre’s cheeks as she lay in state and the brilliant blue and red of the Dominican flag draped over the foot of her casket.