PORT-AU-PRINCE: A flood of people leaving the Dominican Republic for Haiti could grow into a humanitarian disaster and regional security threat, Port-au-Prince warned Tuesday.

The crisis at the crossroads of the Northern Hemisphere’s poorest country and its Dominican neighbor that is not much better off echoed in Washington.

The Organisation of American States said it would dispatch a delegation to assess what it called an alarming situation.

The OAS wants the Dominican Republic to stop sending people to Haiti, Secretary General Luis Almagro said.

“The situation has been deteriorating as the days go by,” he told an OAS Permanent Council meeting.

Since June 17, when a registration program for undocumented foreigners ran out in the Dominican Republic, more than 17,000 people have poured across the border into Haiti.

The Dominicans insist those who have left did so voluntarily.

The prototype is a person of Haitian heritage but born in the Dominican Republic, now being forced to relocate to a place where they have perhaps distant roots but little else.

The countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

What is worse, Haitian Foreign Minister Lener Renauld suggested they are not entirely welcome.

“This situation represents a risk of humanitarian catastrophe, a destabilising factor for the country, a serious threat to domestic and regional security,” he said.

He spoke to a gathering of UN officials and the diplomatic corps in Port-au-Prince.

Renauld said Haiti wants to have some say beforehand as to who comes in and reach an accord to this effect with the Dominicans. Haitian security forces dealing with the influx are overwhelmed, he said.

“Who are these people? Are they criminals? Have they run afoul of Dominican law?” he asked.

“We cannot be saddled with criminals that we do not know.”

Haiti is destitute, riddled with crime and still struggling to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake. UN peacekeepers who have been here for the past 11 years are beginning to pull out.

This crisis stems from a Dominican court ruling in 2013 that children born in the country of undocumented foreigners do not have Dominican citizenship.

The ruling was made retroactive to 1929. So overnight more than 250,000 people – mostly those born of Haitian parents – became stateless.

Under international pressure, the Dominicans set up a program to register people of Haitian origin who have been living in the Dominican Republic for years.

But with documents slow to arrive from Haiti and Dominican registration offices overwhelmed by the crowds of applicants, more than 180,000 people were still unregistered by the June 17 deadline, according to the Dominican government.

They now risk expulsion. – AFP