On Mon., Aug. 17, some 2,000 Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic demonstrated in front of the Haitian Embassy in Santo Domingo to demand identification papers so that they can obtain residency permits in the Dominican Republic.

The demonstration comes after about 15,000 Haitians demonstrated last Wed., Aug. 12 in front of the Dominican National Presidential Palace demanding permanent residency for and no deportations of Haitian cane cutters and their families.

Both actions were organized by the Union of Canecutters of the Bateys (Unión de Trabajadores Cañeros de los Bateyes or UTC), the largest social movement in the Dominican Republic with about 500,000 members, according to Haitian Pastor Ignace Cadet, the group’s vice coordinator.

In November and December 2014 and from March to May 2015, under a Haitian government program called PIDIH (Program to Identify and Document Haitians in the Dominican Republic), some 46,800 Haitian members of the UTC paid 1000 pesos each (US$22) to the Haitian Embassy to receive their passports, election cards, and birth certificates.

“Until today, we had not received any documents,” said UTC coordinator Jésus Nuñez, a tall, wiry, black Dominican from Santo Domingo, in the union’s dusty, disheveled 2^nd-floor headquarters at the gritty, noisy intersection of Avenues Nicolas de Ovando and Maximo Gomez in the capital after Monday’s demonstration. Many Haitian migrants waited on the outdoor concrete stairs leading to his office where, with an assistant, he prepared UTC membership credentials. “Today, because of our demonstration, 21 people received the documents they need from the Haitian embassy to get their residency permits. We will continue our demonstrations in front of the Haitian embassy, the Parliament, and the Presidential Palace until our people have received the rest of the documents and their residency.”

The “UTC is an independent organization,” Nuñez said, not affiliated with any Dominican or international union confederation. It is a “well-organized and disciplined social movement,” proclaims the billboard on its headquarters.

“Supplice was fired probably because he was denouncing the PIDIH as having been started too late and incompetently run,” explained Pierre Richard Cajuste, a Haitian diplomat on leave who runs an immigration assistance center next to the Haitian Embassy. “His predecessor, Fritz Cinéas, did virtually nothing to implement the program” which was launched in July 2014.

Up until his replacement by Supplice in February, Cinéas received 42,000 applications under the PIDIH, but only provided 2,000 passports, 15,000 electoral cards, and 15,000 to 18,000 birth certificates, according to Cajuste.

“So Haitians were not able to get their work and residency papers in the DR because the Haitian government was not delivering the necessary documentation under the PIDIH,” Cajuste said. “Then Supplice came in, and he managed to deliver papers to 30,000 in two weeks.”

Last week, the Dominican Interior Ministry announced that it had given 38,000 residency permits (called carnets) to foreign migrant workers. That is only about 7.2% of the estimated 524,000 foreign migrant workers in the DR, about 470,000 of whom are believed to be Haitian.

On Aug. 14, the Dominican government officially resumed its deportation of Haitian migrants from Haiti, putting five people it claimed were Haitians across the border in the northwestern town of Dajabon. Human and immigrant rights activists say that many more have been unofficially deported, many of them black Dominicans of Haitian descent.