602 Wendy Hunter and Francesca Reece on the issue because the Dominican government halted the most flagrant abuses. The 2014 law deprived activists and journalists, who thrive on high drama and crises, of necessary fuel for at least two years while the burdensome bureaucratic procedures it established unfolded.24 This time span time virtually guaranteed that the international media would move on to other crises and would not return to the issue until another flagrant human rights violation occurred. A sharp uptick in media coverage between 2013 and 2015 represents the height of attention paid to the denationalization of Dominico-Haitians. After the period to register as “foreigners” ended, the government expelled thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent (Dominicanos por Derechos 2018, 12; Ahmed 2015; Human Rights Watch 2015, 29–30). In the wake of the renewed media outcry over the 2015 expulsions, the DR suspended deportations later in the year—yet another tactical concession that succeeded in reducing unwanted international attention from 2016 onward.25 A time line encapsulates the major events in the denationalization saga: 2004: Codified exclusion of Dominico-Haitians begins. Law 285-2004 creates “nonresident” designation for migrants, making the citizenship status of future children of migrants unclear. 2005: Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) rules in Yean and Bosico vs. República Dominicana that the DR intentionally excludes Haitian descendants from citizenship via the new nonresident designation. 2007: Administrative obstructionism emerges. March: Circular 017 issued, allowing officials to prohibit migrants and migrant descendants from accessing their government records. December: Resolución 12 issued, allowing officials to suspend “irregular” identity documents. 2010: Administrative obstructionism fully employed. New constitution excludes the future children of undocumented migrants from birthright citizenship. 2013: The Dominican Constitutional Court ruling—TC-168-13 (La Sentencia)—backdates to 1929 the exclusion of the children of migrants from birthright citizenship, rendering hundreds of thousands of migrant descendants stateless. 2014: May: Law 169-14 passed to allow migrant descendants the opportunity to reestablish Dominican citizenship through a registration and naturalization process. August: The IACtHR finds that the 2013 ruling (La Sentencia) and 2014 Naturalization Law violate the rights of Dominico-Haitians. November: The DR withdraws from the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction and proceeds to implement Law 169-14. 2015: Deportations of Haitian migrants and descendants begin after the registration period for Law 169-14 concludes. Deportations subside later in the year. 2017: Administrative obstructionism limits successful restoration of citizenship. Approximately 20,000 of the 55,000–60,000 in group A were issued new documents that restored their citizenship under the terms of Law 169-14. Some 6,000 of the roughly 8,500 individuals who applied (of an estimated 55,000 to 180,000 individuals in group B) were issued the documents necessary to take the final step toward naturalization under the terms of Law 169-14. Roughly 750 people in group B eventually were naturalized. In principle, the 2014 law provided a pathway back to citizenship for people in both groups, allowing the DR to get closer to being within the boundaries of international 24 25 Yanilda María González, activist of We Are All Dominican, interview with author, September 14, 2016, Skype. Ariel Dulitzky, interview. https://doi.org/10.1017/lar.2022.48 Published online by Cambridge University Press