Dominican officials say the country’s laws were never meant to grant birthright citizenship to the children or descendants of illegal immigrants. And they argue against the term “stateless” as applied to those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. José Ángel Aquino, a magistrate for the country’s civil registry, the Junta Central Electoral, said Haitian descendants can go back to Haiti and obtain citizenship as long as they can prove their parents are Haitian. Miledis Juan lives with her husband, Henry Claude Joseph, and 1-year-old son, Henry Alberto, who was also denied a birth certificate. Photo by Brandon Quester “Because of this, in the case of the Haitians, for us, you can’t speak of the ‘stateless,’” Aquino said in Spanish. “These Haitian citizens always have the possibility of declaring themselves in their consulate…or simply in Haiti.” But for many Haitian immigrants, like Juan, the situation is more complex. Born in December 1985 when laws and attitudes were different, Juan was granted a Dominican birth certificate and a national identification card. She has no papers proving she is from Haiti, and to become a naturalized Haitian citizen, she would have to go through a five-year application process, said Liliana Gamboa, a project director for the Open Society Justice Initiative in Santo Domingo. Besides, Juan doesn’t want Haitian citizenship; she has never lived in the country. “I know that Haiti exists because there is a map that I can see where it is, but I actually have no connections with it,” she said. Her life is in Batey Esperanza, a poor, mostly HaitianDominican community just outside the nation’s capital, Santo Domingo, where she works long days at an embroidery machine in a free-trade zone. Although she went to college to become a teacher, she is unable to get a teaching job because she can’t get a new copy of her birth certificate. The country’s civil registries retain every citizen’s original birth certificate Henry Claude Joseph holds his son at home in Batey Esperanza. and issue duplicates upon request. Official duplicates Photo by Brandon Quester are necessary for every legal act, from applying to a university and purchasing property to obtaining a marriage license and securing most jobs. Each duplicate can be used for only one purpose and expires in a few months. Juan said that when she went to the civil registry, she was told her she should never have been registered as a Dominican citizen because her parents came without documents from Haiti. “Practically, my hands are tied,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do because without that birth certificate, I’m paralyzed.” She also needs her birth certificate to get Henry one of his own. Without it, he cannot access public health services or attend school past the eighth grade. “My biggest fear is that he’s in the country without documents,” Juan said. “He is nobody in the country.” 79