Almost 50,000 immigrants rejected by controversial Dominican plan

Almost 50,000 foreigners are excluded from the Dominican Republic's plan to normalize the status of undocumented immigrants, an official has said.

Washington Gonzalez, deputy interior minister tasked with overseeing the immigration plan, said on Saturday evening that 49,466 people had not met the needed requirements and could not have their immigration status normalized.

The National Regularization Plan for Foreigners, or PNRE by its Spanish acronym, was launched in 2013 alongside a legal change in the requirements for Dominican nationality. The change was aimed at resolving the problem of those who were born in the Dominican Republic but whose parents are undocumented immigrants.

A total of 239,000 immigrants were accepted by the PNRE and will be able to get their new migratory documents in the next few weeks, according to the authorities.

On June 17, after the conclusion of the first phase of the PNRE, the Dominican Republic announced that anyone who did not qualify for the program would be repatriated to their country of origin.

According to international organizations, this policy could concern over 200,000 Haitians or people of Haitian origin living in the Dominican Republic.

On Saturday, however, Gonzalez announced that no repatriations would happen until the accepted immigrants obtain their new documents and the rejected immigrants are well-informed.

He added that after the current phase of the PNRE is completed, the accepted immigrants can visit any of the 25 designated offices around the country to get their new documents.

This new immigration policy has sparked a severe diplomatic crisis between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which has accused the former of "violating human rights," leaving certain Dominicans with Haitian ancestry stateless, and not honoring a repatriation protocol signed by the two nations in 1999. Endi