I even told her, ‘Look, you’re going to have to bear with this, but you have to know that you’re even going to have to subject the children to the Board’s [JCE] torture.” Thus, instead of identifying solutions that safeguard the best interests of the child and protect the human right to an identity, in line with guidance by the Committees on the Rights of the Child and Migrant Workers,25 exclusionary practices continue to prevail. Another novelty that occurred during the pandemic was the issuance of Decree 262-20 at the end of President Danilo Medina’s term, in July 2020. Decree 26220 authorizes the naturalization of some 749 persons who registered under Law 169-14 as part of Group B, mainly children and youth. Almost all the decree beneficiaries were assisted by various social organizations that work on the issue, including our counterpart in this study, CEDESO. However, neither the families nor the beneficiaries have knowledge of when nor how they will receive the necessary documentation to prove their status as naturalized persons. For example, Antoine is a 39-year-old Haitian migrant, who worked for 21 years in agriculture and who is registered in the PNRE. He is the father of six children born in the Dominican Republic, three with birth registration and three without registration. His wife is also from Haiti and has a passport and PNRE sticker. The three unregistered children were born between 2010 and 2012, after the entry into force of the new Constitution that restricts jus soli and before the PNRE. Antoine and his wife were able to register their youngest, who was born in 2017, when the regularization sticker was valid on their passports, and thanks to CEDESO’s assistance they were able to register their children born in 2004 and 2008 for naturalization under Law 169-14. These latter two children were named as beneficiaries of Decree 262-20. In regard to his current situation, Antoine commented that: “I have the certificate there for when they ask for it. I don’t know if they’ll exchange it to give you the See joint general comment no. 4 (2017) of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and No. 23 (2017) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the obligations of States regarding the human rights of children in the context of international migration in countries of origin, transit, destination and return, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1323015?ln=en ­25. country’s real documents [he is referring to the birth certificate that the Dominican authorities issue to foreigners]. They told me that they gave it to them and that one can get the child’s papers, but that they won’t have the same rights as those children whose parents have an ID from the Dominican Republic. But they told me that it is a birth certificate, it’s there in my house. Now I don’t know what’ll happen later for them, but the youngest ones still have not been registered, and those who benefited [from Decree 262-20] I don’t know if they’ll give them another paper, or if they’ll come up with a better one.” The uncertainty about the implementation procedures for Decree 262-20 is evident from the Central Electoral Board (JCE, in Spanish) itself. The JCE received the list of the 749 beneficiaries of the Decree on August 4, 2020, from the then Vice Minister of Migration Management and Naturalization of the MIP, Mr. Luis Fernández. At the time of this publication, the JCE had not received guidelines on the procedure to follow in these cases, although they anticipate continuing with the practice of transcription to a special registry. Thus, the beneficiaries of the decree who have reached the age of majority would receive a valid foreigner’s identity card for one year, renew it once, be transcribed into a special registry, and eventually be granted a Dominican identity card. Once again, the delivery of the documentation proving their Dominican nationality is postponed indefinitely in time through these manifestly burdensome processes. At the end of April 2021, the new President Luis Abinader issued another Presidential Decree, no. 29721, which grants Dominican naturalization to 50 more people who had applied under the special regime for Group B of Law 169-14. At the time of writing, civil society organizations accompanying the population were analyzing which of the people on the decree’s list corresponded to the cases they are handling, and what the next steps would be. It is worth recalling that Law 169-14 stipulates that people who were registered in the so-called Group B could opt for naturalization after a period of two years. This means a process should have been in place by 2016. As it stands, seven 7 years have passed and an administrative procedure has yet to be determined. In addition, there is continued debate among government actors with contrary positions regarding how to proceed. On May 20, 2021, the new Vice Minister of 32 Research Brief: COVID-19 Impacts on Haitian Migrants and their Descendants on the Southern Border of the D.R.