YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. 2017] The Risk of Statelessness VOL. XIX 65 migrant population was common throughout this period,110 and this ethnic tension influenced immigration and nationality policies. Memos recently opened to the public from the Dominican National Archive demonstrate this relationship. For example, a memo from the State Secretary of the Armed Forces to President Joaquin Balaguer and other members of his cabinet in 1976 proposed a reform to Dominican laws to address the problem of Haitian migration.111 The specific proposal was to redefine the status of Haitian workers who arrived in the Dominican Republic to labor in the agricultural sector as foreigners “in transit,” thereby creating a legal barrier to their children becoming Dominican nationals.112 This memo emphasized that such a change would require “substantial” alterations to laws governing national identification documents and immigration.113 This proposed legislative change was never made, but it helps to explain events that unfolded over the years that followed. Throughout the 1990s, societal discrimination began to manifest more regularly in the civil registry, and Haitian migrants who sought to register their children as Dominican began to encounter problems.114 Legal challenges became more common, and one appeals court published a decision in 2003 declaring that the “in transit” exception did not encompass the children of irregular migrants.115 Nevertheless, stories of the children of Haitian migrants being denied birth certificates in civil registries became increasingly widespread, as did the stories of missed educational and other opportunities that accompanied these denials.116 Then, in 2004, the Dominican legislature passed a new immigration law in which it explicitly defined categories of “non-resident” migrants as “in transit” under the Constitution.117 Among these categories of non-residents 110. Perhaps the most troubling manifestation of this sentiment was the massacre of an estimated 15,000 Haitian migrants in 1937, an effort at ethnic cleansing initiated by the dictator, President Rafael Trujillo. See Richard Lee Turits, A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Massacre in the Dominican Republic, 82 HISP. AM. HIST. REV. 589, 589-91 (2002). 111. Comunicación 4411 del Secretario de Estado de las Fuerzas Armadas, Mayor General Juan Rene Beauchamp Javier al Presidente de la República, Joaquín Balaguer [Communication 4411 from the Secretary of State of the Armed Forces, Major General Juan Rene Beauchamp Javier, to the President of the Republic, Joaquín Balaguer] (Mar. 2, 1976) [hereinafter Communication 4411] (Dom. Rep.); see also Inter-Am. Comm. H.R., Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic, ¶ 113, OEA/Ser.L/V/II, doc. 45/15 (Dec. 31, 2015), http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/DominicanRepublic-2015.pdf [https://perma.cc/96MB-KJJ4] [hereinafter 2015 IACHR Report on the Dominican Republic] (discussing the content of Communication 4411). 112. Communication 4411, supra note 111. 113. Id. 114. See Case of Expelled Dominicans and Haitians ¶¶ 163-66. 115. See La Cámara Civil de Corte de Apelación del Distrito Nacional [The Civil Chamber of the Appeals Court of the National District], 16 octubre 2003, Sentencia No. 453 [Judgment No. 453] (Dom. Rep); see also Case of the Girls Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 130, ¶ 154 (Sept. 8, 2005) (discussing Judgment No. 453). 116. See The Girls Yean and Bosico ¶¶ 144-47. 117. Ley General de Migración, No. 285-04 [General Migration Law, No. 285-04], art. 36. (G.O. No. 10291) (Aug. 15, 2004) (Dom. Rep.). Note that this appeared to be the same legal proposal that had been made in the Balaguer-era memo, but that was never implemented. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529