First phase of Normalization Plan comes to an end

SANTO DOMINGO. The first phase of the National Plan of Normalization of Foreigners concluded yesterday at 12 midnight. Before the close, the Minister of Interior and Police, José Ramon Fadul Fadul, said that on the last day they would be working with everyone who was online until after seven at night: "because the alternative is repatriation, the intention of the plan is to normalize them," declared Fadul during a press conference at the headquarters of this ministry with the presence of the Director General of Migration..

Fadul said that before yesterday's count, some 275,000 foreign immigrants had registered in the Plan. The top official stressed that once this stage is over, Interior and Police has 45 days to provide an answer (document) to the immigrants who filed their documents and completed the process; while those that registered and had not completed depositing all of the documents, will be able to complete this during this period and obtain their ID documents.

And Fadul rejected that the process has been a fiasco. He said that those who have bet on this, presented numbers that they cannot back up, and if they knew these persons that remain outside they should have supported the National Plan of Normalization by taking these immigrants to the offices distributed throughout the country, in total 24 plus 3 mobile offices.

"The reality is what is registered here. This is a census. The other numbers I don't know where they get them, if they had them they should have brought these persons that they knew that existed," said Fadul while he considered that the process was "transparent, open to anyone who wanted to participate and open to the international community, the participation of the NGOs, the neighborhood boards, the social organizations of the country, the media and respectful of human dignity and human rights."

While Fadul made these statements, several hundred Haitian immigrants gathered around the headquarters of Interior and Police hoping to be given the opportunity to register in the Normalization Plan for Foreigners while another group was demonstrating for an extension of the deadline.

The principle complaint from those who were in line was the small number of persons that were being received each day. Persons that said they had been waiting for several days from the early morning hours and leaving in the afternoon waiting for their turn to come up. The waits were even longer for the number of pregnant women and those with children in their arms to whom the Dominican authorities gave priority; this occurred in the Los Angeles Urbanization in East Santo Domingo, and in Sabana Perdida in North Santo Domingo.

Haitian citizens such as Witelson Louis, Joseph Elever and Tany Reul alleged that they had been in the line for three, four and five days waiting to enter the center without their turn coming up, because of the slowness of the process. They said that the principle worry was abandoning their jobs.

Another of the obvious problems in the lines located in the center of Greater Santo Domingo was the absence of guides from Interior and Police or from some NGO interested in helping who could accompany those interested in registering.

In the service center of Sabana Perdida more than one person came to normalize the situation having the work documents up to date, with visas and passports. In the meantime, others came who lacked the knowledge that the plan only applied to persons who can demonstrate their stay in the country before October 2011.

At the same time, while the Ministry of the Interior and Police said that the priority was to register the greatest number of first time visitors as possible in this first step, on occasions the lines were full of persons who were going to bring documents in order to support their cause.

Boycott

The Minister of Interior and Police stressed yesterday that over the last five days before the end of the National Plan of Normalization actions to boycott the process were developed." The ministry has evidence of this. These actions," said Fadul, "were commanded by "tonton macoutes" and members of local organizations for the defense of the rights of the Haitian immigrants." Fadul said that the intelligence agencies participated in the detection of this plan that sought to bring about the failure of the "most ambitious project of normalization of foreigners ever done in the country."