
Witness - Stranded - The Stateless Haitians
Haitians who crossed into the Dominican Republic to escape poverty at home have spent years working the sugar cane fields on the country's plantations, some for generations. A Dominican government policy tightening citizenship and residency rules now threatens many of them with deportation to a Haiti they may never have lived in, while others are left in legal limbo: unable to return, unable to gain DR papers. The film follows workers in the cane-cutting communities known as bateyes, hearing directly from people facing expulsion or statelessness, and from families split by the ruling. Without legal status, these Haitians and their DR-born children lose access to schooling, healthcare, and formal employment, pushed into informal work with no protection from exploitation. The film, part of Al Jazeera's Witness series, stays close to individual testimony rather than official statements, tracking what a change in immigration policy means for people who have spent their working lives in the fields of a country that no longer recognizes them.