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NEW YORK — Black activists and immigrant groups across the country are pressing the Obama administration to take a stronger stand on what they call a human rights crisis for Haitian migrants and stateless people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic.
Groups from New York, Philadelphia, Miami and other U.S. cities have banded together in a loose coalition called #Rights4AllInDR, holding sit-ins and organizing protests ahead of an Aug. 1 deadline for those without papers in the Dominican Republic to finish registering as foreigners with the government. The groups plan to hold a march toward the White House on Saturday.
The most controversial issue driving the protests is the Dominican government’s decision to revoke citizenship from the children of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are of Haitian descent and black, fueling charges that racism played a role in creating the policy.
While the organizations agree that the international community should respond, they don’t necessarily agree on tactics. Opal Tometi, the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, said the Dominican government was using Haitians and Haitian descendants as a “scapegoat for poor economic policy,” and called on Americans to withhold their tourist dollars unless the island’s government changed course.
“It’s important that people of conscience in the international community put pressure on the Dominican Republic,” Tometi told The Huffington Post in an email.
