Chapter 2 The Right to Nationality and Judgment TC/0168/13 of the Constitutional Court | 59 migratory situation, has been shaped by the historical construct of the national identity and anti-Haitian rhetoric, which has resulted in laws and court rulings that assimilated the practices already established by Registry officials who refused to register or issue identification documents to the children of Haitian migrants in the belief that they were not entitled to Dominican citizenship because they were children born of Haitians in an irregular migratory situation. 112. This process of denationalization has been percolating for a number of decades. Official documents dating back to the 1960s reveal that even then the Dominican authorities were aware of the multiple problems that Haitian migrants and their children born in the Dominican Republic encountered. 115 In a 1969 memorandum, the official in charge of the Office of the Director General of Immigration, Manuel de Jesús Estrada, informed the President of the Republic, Joaquín Balaguer, that: The serious problem the country is facing because of the many Haitian nationals, who have passively invaded our territory in massive numbers, is compounded by the fact that they are having children with Dominican women, children who, because they were born here, are Dominicans. Their numbers are an alarming magnification of the invasion that ultimately poses a real threat to our nationality. With the passage of time, the enormous nucleus of Haitians (estimated to be some 250,000 at the present time) will increase in number for the reasons previously explained, and the day is not far off when they will number one million. If this situation is not somehow stopped in time, it will –I repeat- pose a real threat to our nationality and to the very security of the country and the State. 116 113. In 1976, a communication from the then Secretary of the Armed Forces, Major General Juan Rene Beauchamp Javier, to the President of the Republic, Joaquín Balaguer, discussed the need to draft a law under which migrant workers could be classified as “foreigners in transit”. This due to the fact that the Constitution in force at the time provided that the children of foreign nationals in transit did not qualify for Dominican nationality based on jus soli, therefore this change would have had the effect of limiting the acquisition of Dominican nationality in the case of children of 115 116 In a 1967 communication from the Director General of Immigration concerning the problems and abuses that Haitian migrants faced when repatriated in mass numbers, he stated that: “one cannot discount the possibility that Haitian nationals could qualify to obtain their permanent residency in the country, whether because of the activities in which they engage or because they marry Dominican women and have children who were born in the country, the only exception, of course, being the latter, if the status of their presence in the country has not been defined.” See, Dominican Republic, Comunicación 06365 de Juan Estrella R., Director General de Migración al Secretario de Estado de las Fuerzas Armadas [Communication 06365 from Juan Estrella R., Director General of Immigration, to the Secretary of State of the Armed Forces]. Santo Domingo, November 14, 1967. Dominican Republic, Memorándum de Manuel de Jesús Estrada Medina, Subsecretario de Estado, Encargado de la Dirección General de Migración al Doctor Joaquín Balaguer, Presidente de la República. Exposición sobre el grave problema que ocasiona al país la gran cantidad de haitianos existentes en nuestro territorio [Memorandum from Manuel de Jesús Estrada Medina, Under Secretary of State in charge of the Office of the Director General of Immigration, to Dr. Joaquín Balaguer, President of the Republic, Exposition on the serious problem posed by the large numbers of Haitians present on our territory]. May 6, 1969. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights | IACHR