Caribbean & Central America - March 2006 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Haiti's president-elect René Préval has come up with an approach that he feels could go some way towards solving the acute migration problems shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As a signal of his intent to improve relations between the two countries he made Santo Domingo his first port of call after being declared winner of Haiti's presidential elections.

Dominican President Leonel Fernández greeted Préval, whose first term in the second half of the 1990s coincided with his own, with a hug when he touched down on 2 March for talks. Préval said he wanted to visit the Dominican Republic before his investiture to demonstrate the importance he attaches to establishing close ties between the two countries. "It is a way of saying we are convinced about our friendship," Préval said.

Relations between the two countries have been very tense over the last year with the Fernández administration conducting an aggressive immigration policy, under which thousands of Haitians are being "repatriated". Préval expressed his concern about the current situation and suggested that it could be resolved by allowing dual citizenship for Haitian migrants. He said he would submit a bill to the national assembly when he takes office legalising dual citizenship status in his country, something which the Haitian Constitution currently precludes.

Préval's proposal was dismissed by the Dominican foreign minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, one of the fiercest advocates of the current "repatriation" programme. Troncoso said that, regardless of whether Haiti altered its constitution to allow dual citizenship, the issue was non-negotiable as the supreme court ruled in December that only children born to legal foreign residents in the Dominican Republic have the right to Dominican citizenship.

Pelegrí­n Castillo, a Dominican legislator, said that dual citizenship would pave the way for the "Balkanization" of the Dominican Republic. He proposed toughening rather than relaxing legislation required for naturalisation as a Dominican, including having knowledge of the Dominican constitution and history of the country and "feeling" Dominican. He did not propose how these criteria would be assessed. Others suggested that dual citizenship would prompt Haitians to move en masse to the Dominican Republic, obtaining the right to vote and thus enabling Haiti to "annexe" the country.

Ironically, while Haiti struggles to get its migrants recognised in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican authorities are desperately pushing for an estimated 75,000 illegal immigrants in the US to be granted US citizenship.

The Siméus scenario

Another reason why Préval could be keen to change the constitution to allow dual citizenship is to appeal to the large Haitian diaspora in the US. Dumarsais Siméus, the Haitian-American businessman, was constitutionally barred from running in February's elections because he possessed dual citizenship. Changing the constitution would allow the Haitian diaspora, which provides more than 30% of Haiti's GDP through remittances, to vote in elections and run for office.

* Other issues covered by Préval during his visit included ways in which the Dominican Republic could help Haiti boost tourism and create jobs. Fernández said it would look into ways in which Haiti might be able to benefit from DR-Cafta, the free-trade agreement the Dominican Republic has signed with the US and five Central American nations.