The court reached this ruling after studying the rules for issuing birth certificates and passports in the country, which since 2010 has abandoned the mandatory granting of citizenship to all born on its territory. The decision to strip citizenship from all children of illegal immigrants is expected to affect several thousand people. The Constitutional Court's ruling cannot be appealed.
This measure is mainly aimed at natives of the Dominican Republic's neighbor on the island – the Republic of Haiti, notes the Dominican publication El Día. Human rights activists accused Dominicans, who are mostly Spanish-speaking mulattoes, of intolerance toward Haitians, who are of the Negroid race and speak Haitian Creole.
The two states located on the island of Hispaniola are in tense relations. The Republic of Haiti is recognized as one of the poorest countries in the world. Many Haitians seek to move to the Dominican Republic, and currently about 500,000 natives of Haiti live there. How many are legal immigrants and how many are illegal is not specified, writes Lenta.ru. Meanwhile, the population of the Dominican Republic itself is about 10 million people.
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