Interior and Police reiterates there will be no extension of Law 169 - 14 on Naturalization

SANTO DOMINGO. After assuring reporters that there will be no extension of Law 169 - 14 on Naturalization, the Minister of Interior and Police, José Ramon Fadul, announced yesterday that in 15 days they would announce the number of foreigners that qualified, of the 8755 that registered to normalize their status in the country.

The official responded to criticisms from agencies such as Amnesty International that the Normalization Plan and Law 169 - 14 have been a failure and he said that those that failed are entities such as this one that have not helped the foreigners to normalize their situation.

"Amnesty International is an agency with its own interests, led by Mexicans that want to drag down the country so that there is no successful tourism and the tourists go to Mexico and to the Riviera Maya, where they hang people in the streets, this you can see on the (light) polls," he said.

He insisted that there will be no extension, and that the Law came to an end and that only the Normalization Plan continues until 15 June, besides the process in the Central Electoral Board.

"What they should do is take the people that they say exist in the country, (undocumented), where are the hundred thousand?.... Where are the 200,000, where are these people? Because ,after all, we have opened three processes.

Fadul recalled that the persons who could not choose Law 169 - 14, can still choose the National Plan of Normalization which ends on 15 June. He warned that when this deadline expires they will begin the process of repatriation.

He recalled that those registered for the Normalization Plan amount to 132,757 persons without including those registered in the Central Electoral Board.

Flexible authorities

The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Abel Martinez, said yesterday that there probably won't be a new extension for the application of Law 169 - 14 on Naturalization which expired yesterday.

He assured the reporters that those who could not be accepted for the benefits of this Law can apply to the Normalization Plan of Foreigners.

"The authorities are inflexible regarding the application of this legislation, providing an opportunity to thousands of foreigners so they can normalize their status in the country, so that we do not see the need to extend the deadline, because of pressures from international agencies," the legislator explained.

Sovereignty in danger

The president of the Reformist Party, Federico Antun Batlle, said that the Dominican sovereignty is in danger with the unstoppable flow of illegal Haitian immigrants, who occupy complete communities and barrios in different parts of the national territory. He said that the PRSC has the commitment to fight the battle to preserve the national sovereignty.