Bahamas Immigration Dilemma

The Immigration Dilemma
By JUAN MCCARTNEY
Guardian Senior Reporter
juan@nasguard.com:



Back in the 1980s when the name Loftus Roker, then minister responsible for immigration, was spoken in the Haitian community, it was done so in hushed tones with an underlying sense of impending doom.

Illegal and legal Haitian migrants, adults and children alike feared Roker. And for good reason.

During Roker's heyday many in the Haitian community referred to him as"Daddy".

And many of those same Haitian migrants were constantly looking over their shoulders, fretting that'Daddy'and his team of eager immigration officers might swoop in at any time or place at schools, at the hospital, at church, in the middle of the night and have them swiftly back on Haitian soil.

Just as many Haitians feared Roker, many Bahamians at the time considered him a savior come to rid The Bahamas of undesirable aliens who"messed up their own country and were now coming to take over ours".

Conversely, there were those Bahamians who viewed Roker's reign at immigration as one of terror.

The Roker style is not in practice today.

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, when asked by a reporter a couple of years ago if the Department of Immigration should conduct raids'Roker-style', replied:"We are not of that ilk."

While there is no denying Roker's zeal and popular appeal at the time, in the end it should be noted that Roker was about as effective as every other minister of immigration The Bahamas has ever seen; which is to say that he was not very effective at all.

Nothing Roker did actually helped stem the tide of illegal Haitian migrants into the country. Illegal Haitian migrants as they have been doing for the past 30 years still flock to our shores today.

Fast-forward to the 21st Century, when just recently, Immigration and Royal Bahamas Defence Force(RBDF)officials(with some help from the United States Coast Guard)apprehended over 500 illegal migrants within several days.

Five-hundred Haitian men, women and children paid what would be considered a vast amount in their home country to cram like sardines into unseaworthy vessels, with little food or water and a high probability of drowning in a summer of record heat, in search of a better way of life.

One would recall the case of an alleged murderer reportedly of Haitian descent, who eluded police several years ago only to be recaptured upon trying to reenter the country at a Family Island port.

When recaptured, the young man reportedly told police that he had been hiding in Haiti, but things were so rough in that country that finding food on a daily basis was never assured. He reportedly told police that he knew that if he were imprisoned in The Bahamas, he would eat every day.

That a man facing the death penalty would reportedly utter such comments, also speaks volumes about our justice system, but immigration policies are the focus at the moment.

The point is that illegal Haitian migrants come here unabated, knowing the chance of being caught is slim and even if they are deported, they could always risk their lives again.

Many Haitians apparently believe they can enter The Bahamas almost at will. This may be because they are aware that like Roker, all immigration ministers in recent memory have subscribed to the policy of'round-up and repatriate'as the solution to the illegal immigration problem.

Round-ups(or apprehension exercises as the politically correct prefer to term them)alone have failed to solve the problem.

They are at best ineffective stopgap measures that have mainly been used as a publicity tool for the government.

But they are better than nothing.

How the administration of Prime Minister Ingraham has flip-flopped and mishandled the illegal Haitian migration issue since that devastating January 12 earthquake in Port-au-Prince would have been amusing to watch had the implications not been so serious.

First the government ceased repatriations and apprehension exercises in light of the earthquake. Then the government, in a move that prompted a firestorm of debate, released more than 100 illegal Haitian migrants from the Carmichael Road Detention Centre and gave the less than 60 former detainees who bothered to show up to register at the Department of Immigration, six months temporary status. To this day, the current status of those immigrants remains unclear.

From there the policy became even more muddled.

About two weeks after Ingraham declared the shift in policy, Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette(the substantive minister responsible for immigration)and the then junior immigration minister Branville McCartney had two different views on what should happen to a group of illegal Haitian migrants that landed in the Coral Harbour area of New Providence since Ingraham's announcement.

Symonette, who was interviewed as he was going into a Cabinet meeting, said the immigrants would"more than likely"be released.

Minutes later McCartney-who was not yet aware of what the senior minister had told reporters-said he planned to stick to the prime minister's previously stated policy of charging the immigrants with illegal landing before the courts.

Not long after that, Prime Minister Ingraham showed up and said that his policy of charging the immigrants still stood.

Ingraham's word of course superseded Symonette's and the immigrants were charged with illegal landing that day.

Little else was heard about illegal Haitian migrants since.

Now, after having done little for the past seven or so months, Symonette admits that there has been an uptick in illegal Haitian migration into The Bahamas and has urged that all illegal migrants turn themselves in to immigration officials to be returned home forthwith.

After Symonette communicated the words in English and Creole, a collective roar of laughter must have risen out of the Haitian community.

Does Symonette really expect Haitians who had come here illegally to all of a sudden do an about-face and volunteer to be returned home?

Surely not, considering that Symonette admits that apprehension exercises were still on hold and Director of Immigration Jack Thompson could up to last week give no firm timeline on when the exercises would resume.

And it is this ever-shifting, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude as it regards Haitian migration since the beginning of the year that has conclusively shown that the current administration has never really had an actual workable plan with definable goals in place to deal with the issue.

And if we are mistaken and Prime Minister Ingraham and the Free National Movement actually have a plan in mind, then it seems that they lack the political will or courage to attempt its implementation.

Either way, this latest incarnation of the Ingraham administration, like all administrations since Independence, has failed the Bahamian people on the immigration front.

Ingraham's bark is worse than his bite

Some people criticize Ingraham for being too direct and gruff at times.

It's what some Bahamians would term as too"no manners".

Despite the'pit bull'persona Ingraham has generated, if you observe him carefully, you would see that at heart he is really a soft touch for those who find themselves particularly disadvantaged.

After Ingraham's 2002 referendum was rejected in spectacular fashion, he vowed that no more referenda would be held under his watch.

That referendum was rejected for numerous reasons: a terrible public awareness campaign; Ingraham's aggressive(and perhaps off-putting)selling of its agenda; an about-face by the Progressive Liberal Party(PLP), which voted for it in Parliament, but while on the campaign trail, advised Bahamians to shoot it down; and then there was the perception by many that the then government was trying to amend too much too fast.

If you watch the House of Assembly as intently as those in our profession do, you would sometimes catch Ingraham on the floor digressing in a retrospective manner about what he tried to do for women, for the tens of thousands of people out there who are technically Haitian but know no other home than The Bahamas.

Ingraham did try his best to bring some sort of major immigration reform, but in the end his best was not good enough and he seems to have still not fully gotten over that defeat.

But if that is the case, it's about time that he does.

The PLP not much better

True to form, the Opposition under the leadership of former Prime Minister Perry Christie has taken no clear position on the immigration issue since it once again became front and center earlier this year.

The Progressive Liberal Party(PLP)has sat idly by twiddling its thumbs in classic fashion, crying about non-consultation, hoping that the FNM will ultimately look so inept that the Bahamian people will give the party another shot at government.

Perhaps the issue is too big for the PLP, which has trouble making up its mind on various issues that have widespread implications--legalizing numbers, the marital rape issue, Baha Mar and Chinese labor to name a few.

The Opposition seems to be more suited to complaining about the landscaping of beaches, the direction of roads and the appointment of foreigners to public office.

Far be it from the PLP to actually propose an alternate immigration plan.

The only person in the Opposition who seems to have any focus on the issue is Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell, who while proposing no new ideas per se, at least has the issue on his radar.

Alas, Mitchell is even more of a soft touch than the prime minister.

Christie meantime has not shown a particularly keen interest in even acknowledging the problem.

Voices within the party that actually propose ideas about the issue such as former chairman Raynard Rigby are often met with derision.

That the PLP has not put the services of people as intelligent as Rigby(of which there are many in the party)to use in crafting a new national platform for the party, makes one wonder what, aside from ratifying candidates and throwing jeers at Cabinet members, has the party been doing for the past three years.

As the PLP learned when it was defeated amidst an economic boom in 2007, the Bahamian electorate is fickle.

The party must propose alternate solutions to the policies of the Ingraham administration if it is to set itself apart and regain the government.

Make the hard choices

Although the world and The Bahamas have made exponential progress in the past 30 years, little has changed since the 1980s regarding illegal migration.

The most notable immigration ministers since Roker have been Golden Gates MP Shane Gibson and Bamboo Town MP Branville McCartney, both of whom resigned in the midst of their respective tenures.

Gibson, who was widely compared to Roker in his aggressive approach, resigned amid the Anna Nicole-Smith scandal.

McCartney reportedly became fed up that Ingraham found his stance toward illegal Haitian migrants too aggressive and flashy.

Since McCartney's departure we are now left with Symonette, who seems to have too much on his plate.

He is the deputy prime minister, the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of immigration.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants perhaps sit in shanty towns across the country mocking Symonette's recent hollow threat.

Ingraham seems content to leave this issue to the next generation of Bahamians.

Meantime, The Bahamas immigration policy cannot be clearly defined and the Bahamian people remain adrift in a sea of uncertainty, much like the Haitian sloops that depart Port-de-Paix and Cape Haitien, filled with human cargo in search of a better life.

However, the major difference between us and them is that the Haitians at least have some idea of their destination.

8/23/2010

thenassauguardian

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