48 | Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic while other countries recognize at least permanent resident status, yet this is not the case of the Haitians in the Dominican Republic.” 68 Elaborating, the IACHR wrote that: 85. 86. some 500,000 undocumented Haitian workers reside in the Dominican Republic. In several cases these persons have lived in the Dominican Republic for 20 to 40 years, and many were born there. Most of them confront permanent illegality, which is passed on to their children, who cannot obtain Dominican nationality, because according to the restrictive interpretation by the Dominican authorities of Article 11 of the Constitution, they are the children of "foreigners in transit." It is not possible to consider persons who have resided for several years in a country in which they have developed innumerable contacts of all types to be in transit. Consequently, numerous children of Haitian-born parents are denied fundamental rights, such as the right to nationality of the country of birth, access to health care, and access to education. 69 Because so many Haitians were in an irregular migratory situation – one, in many cases, fostered by the actions and omissions of Dominican and Haitian authorities, as well as private business – Civil Registry officials, at their discretion, began to refuse to issue identification documents to children born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian migrants in an irregular migratory situation. Thus, the effects of the parents’ irregular migratory status began to extend to their children, particularly when it came to recognition of Dominican nationality, even though the children were born in the Dominican Republic. When it examined how this situation evolved over the years, the Commission was able to discern how the practice that Civil Registry officials initially used to refuse to register the birth of children born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian immigrants on the grounds of the latter’s irregular migratory situation, gradually spread to the point of being assimilated into different measures, laws, and decisions introduced by the other branches of the Dominican State. The Inter-American Commission distinguishes the following stages in the denationalization of Dominicans of Haitian descent: 1. The Civil Registry officers’ de facto refusal to register the birth of the children of Haitians in an irregular migratory situation, at least as far back as the 1980s. 2. With enactment of the 2004 Immigration Act, the adoption of stricter nationality criteria that put any non-resident, including temporary workers, in the same category as a person in transit so that their foreign nationality would pass down to their children. 68 69 IACHR, Report on the situation of human rights in the Dominican Republic. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.104 Doc. 49 rev. 1, October 7, 1999, par. 350. IACHR, Report on the situation of human rights in the Dominican Republic. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.104 Doc. 49 rev. 1, October 7, 1999, par. 363. Organization of American States | OAS