LOS JOVILLOS DE YAMASA, Dominican Republic — When Jenny Sarita Emanier Previlma finished high school, she was the pride of this small rural town, one of only a handful of high school graduates. She dreams of continuing her studies and becoming a doctor. But because Emanier, 24, lacks a national identification document, she cannot enroll in a public university. “I feel sad," she says. “My friends who I finished school with, they’re already finishing university.”

Emanier is one of an estimated 210,000 people who have been stripped of their Dominican citizenship because of their parents’ immigration status. She was born in the Dominican Republic, but her mother emigrated from neighboring Haiti in 1982 with a government-issued work permit.

In September, the Dominican Constitutional Court ruled that another resident of Emanier’s town, Juliana Deguis Pierre, 30, did not have the right to Dominican citizenship because her parents were “irregular” migrants. It also ruled that the findings in the case should be applied not only to Deguis but to all descendants of irregular migrants — with or without proper documents — born in the country since 1929.

The court specified that Deguis’ parents — Haitians who crossed the border with government permits to work in the sugarcane fields and have lived here for decades — were “in transit.” Under the constitution in place at the time, children born in the Dominican Republic were granted citizenship unless they were born to diplomats or people in transit, a term generally applied to people passing through the country for fewer than 10 days. But the September ruling broadened it to mean those without legal permanent residence.

Los Jovillos, where Emanier was born and raised, is a batey, a town built for sugarcane workers. The sugarcane is now gone, but the community remains, a sleepy collection of small colorful homes sitting off a potholed dirt road. Three hundred and sixteen families live here. Some residents travel to work in construction in Santo Domingo, 28 miles away; others grow corn, beans and fruit in converted sugarcane fields.

Many from younger generations have been caught up in the legal battle. While the ruling, which cannot be appealed, has shocked many Dominicans, it legalized actions the state has been carrying out for many years. Since the 1990s, thousands of people have been refused national ID cards, necessary to work, register children, get married, open bank accounts, attend public universities and participate in many other civil activities.

Emanier made it halfway through the application process. When she was 18, she filled out the necessary paperwork. But when she went to pick up her plastic ID card, the office staff refused to give it to her, saying she was ineligible because of her parents’ nationality.