The Dominican government’s plan to address the existing backlog involves offering services in decentralized locations and extending hours of operation (UNHCR and OAS 2020a: 27). A good practice is the extension of the time allowed to register vital events in a timely manner. Presidential Decree 137-20 modified the time allotments so that any vital event that occurred between January 21 and July 3, 2020 could be registered, without a penalty for the delay, up to 60 days after July 3, 2020. However, the flexible measures did not apply when it came to people who had not been able to naturalize, and who continue to be subject to denationalization. Let us consider the example of Marcos, who is a young man registered in Group B who became a father during the pandemic. He wanted to see if he could use the documents he had acquired when he applied under Law 169-14 (birth certificate, foreigner identification card and regularization card that is now expired) for the purposes of declaring his son, but “at the beginning of the pandemic everything was closed.” Although they live in a batey that is part of Independencia, his wife had to go to Barahona to give birth at the Jaime Sánchez Hospital due to the pandemic. They were unable to register the birth of their 9-month-old son, because the Registry Office questioned the validity of his wife’s identity card. Apparently, the civil registration system is suspicious of her maternal great-grandmother’s migration status, demonstrating how denationalization continues to occur along the matrilineal line (Petrozziello et al. 2014/2017). Documentation renewal for regularized migrant parents, which could eventually favor the naturalization of their stateless children, was also affected. Closures, curfews, and other limitations on mobility have prevented Haitian migrants and their descendants from being able to retrieve civil registration documents for themselves and their children. In the words of one participant: “After the coronavirus started, people did not go out, that’s why I’ve not been able to go to the Junta [Central Electoral Board] to get it.” New COVID prevention protocols limit the number of people who can congregate, complicating the process of providing and receiving service. Haitian migrant parents report difficulties obtaining passports and renewing regularization status due to pandemic-related office closures. In turn, this negatively affects their ability to meet the documentation requirements for registering their children’s birth. The economic impact of the pandemic on Haitian migrant parents and stateless people already living in poverty puts civil registration out of reach. Costs related to local transportation have risen at a time when many are unemployed and unable to access government assistance programs due to their own documentation issues. According to one participant: “Right now, the money problem is worse than the COVID-19 problem, because if I had money I could go to the [Registry] office.” Another stated the same: “Whether the [Registry] office opens isn’t what prevents me from going. I don’t have the money to do what I need to do. I would be happy if the kids had papers to be able to walk around, so that they could be free in the country. They live in this country.” In addition, this study found that arbitrary investigations and practices of cancellation of documents and denationalization continue, under the pretext of modernization and securitization of the civil registry. There are many spelling errors, duplications, and cardboard identity cards scattered around the countryside during electoral campaigns of yesteryear (Riveros 2014). Yet, when it comes to racialized and ethnically Haitian people, these errors become insurmountable because the authorities label them as “fraud” and justify the suspension of documents as if it were a “cleanup of the Civil Registry” (JCE 2009:25). Let us consider the story of Doña Angelina’s, who is a descendant in the Group A category and a mother of 9 unregistered children. With the assistance of one of the social organizations, she managed to obtain her own birth certificate and ID through a late declaration process in 2016. Then she began filing for the late declaration of her children, some of whom had reached the age of majority. They went to have their biometric data taken supposedly as part of the verification to check whether they had previously obtained another document. The data became part of a file that would not end up advancing any further. In 2019, Doña Angelina’s ID was cancelled along with all of her children’s applications. Those who had accompanied her throughout the process were dumbfounded: “…So we were like, ‘But what happened? It’s not a 2000 [birth] certificate that was issued under the Sentence. This one was issued after the Sentence. She already complied with the procedure and the test and then they come and cancel the [birth] certificate. It all comes to a head when she tries to register the birth of her children. That’s how it happens. Research Brief: COVID-19 Impacts on Haitian Migrants and their Descendants on the Southern Border of the D.R. 31