Juliana Deguis Pierre, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, was born in the Dominican Republic on April Fools Day in 1984. In 2008, Pierre simply applied for a cédula (a Dominican national ID card) so that she could get a birth certificate when she was pregnant, and work legally as a maid and nanny in her native country.
Her dark complexion, Haitian features and immigrant parents resulted in her being denied a cédula, which to Pierre was no laughing matter, because that means she will have no rights whatsoever in the Dominican Republic.
Therefore, she sued the Dominican Republic for discrimination. Instead of receiving a card smaller than the palm of her hand, she received La Sentencia, which denied her and about 500,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian migrants citizenship. Last year, after a six-year uphill battle she finally received that ID, but since then only 300 others have received their cédulas and the rest started being deported to the Haitian border on Wednesday, June 17, 2015.
(Photo courtesy of El Nacional)
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