Haitians Need to Stop Sewing Seeds of Discord in The Bahamas and Focus on Assimilaton Into The Bahamian Society

STOP XENOPHOBIA IN BAHAMA LAND!

By Dedrie Woods

Last month, Louby Georges posted on his page a Post of a Bahamian Soccer Team which won the overall prize after defeating three other Caribbean Teams.

Rather than CONGRATULATE The Bahamas Team, some in the Haitian Community went out of their way to diminish the Bahamian Team's success by telling the public that the success was due to the Haitian and Jamaican Descents on the team.

I found that repulsive and expressed my views on the Post.

Now, today, Monday, Nov.7, THE PENDULUM has swung the other way and non other than Louby Georges is now calling Bahamians "XENOPHOBIC", because they are now expressing their views on the "Bahamians of Haitian Descent" passing out, as full fledge Immigration Officers.

The Bahamas Constitution gives Citizenship access to every child born in the Bahamas after 1973 to FOREIGN PARENTS. Once that child reaches the age of 18 yrs old, they can apply for Bahamian Citizenship. Once that child has pledged allegiance to this nation, they become a full fledge Bahamian Citizen with all the rights and privileges afforded to ALL BONIFIED CITIZENS.

When a Bahamian Citizen of Haitian Descent achieves an award or honour, WE NEED TO STOP THIS NONSENSE OF DIGGING UP their parents nationality to give credence of their success to Haiti. Only the Haitian Community does this. We do not hear this from nationals of other nations.

The Haitian folks "cook their own Goose" now, and cry fowl when they have to eat their own meal.

I want ALL HAITIANS living in the Bahamas to know that you cannot "Eat your cake and have it to", because THE PENDULUM DOES SWING BOTH WAYS, as it has done with the Soccer Team vs The Immigration Passing Out. Both Haitians and BAHAMIANS are XENOPHOBIC, if you want to use that word. Do not throw up your Haitian Nationality in the faces of BAHAMIANS and expect them to accept it lying down. It won't happen. When you kick up dust, it will fly in your face.

When Miss Bahamas Universe, Miss Shantell O'Brien won her title at the Miss Universe Pageant, the Haitian Community jumped on Social Media and told the World that Shantell was a Haitian. They basically killed that young Lady's accomplishment, because most BAHAMIANS no longer saw her as one of us.

You Haitians need to stop sewing seeds of discord for yourself. You need to focus on ASSIMILATION into Bahamian culture, or just leave The Bahamas and go to Haiti and be happy.

Source/Comment 

Bahamians of Haitian descent in The Bahamas political arena

Smith: No Problem With Idea Of Haitian-Bahamian Political Party

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

HUMAN rights activist Fred Smith, QC, said he sees no problem with Bahamians of Haitian descent organising to form political parties, insisting that the country is on its way to this group of society emerging as parliamentary leaders.

Mr Smith, who is also the president of the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association (GBHRA), told The Tribune yesterday that the stigma in the Bahamas that Haitians are of lesser value should be done away with.

He again chastised the Christie administration over its immigration restrictions maintaining that the government has encouraged a culture of hatred toward Haitians.

“Bahamians of Haitian descent are a large part of our society,” Mr Smith said. “So without doubt you will see people of that heritage as members of parliament and at the forefront of the political arena.

“I don’t see what is wrong with it. People have the freedom of association under the Constitution.

“I see nothing wrong with people promoting self interest in political parties for social benefits for different parts of the community.”

Mr Smith said it is time for the conversation in the country to focus on how immigration can create diversification.

He called on the government to follow the example of countries, including Canada and Korea; countries he said encourage different nationalities to contribute to shaping society.

“The Bahamas should have a different conversation. We should be saying yes to a form of immigration that creates diversity and multilingualism in the same way that Canada, Korea and China does.

“I think the Christie administration has done a great disservice. It is awful to be maligned and treated as second-class citizens.

“This kind of mentality that the Cabinet of the Bahamas is promoting is dangerous. We are hating our own people,” Mr Smith said.

He insisted that these latest comments should not be construed as supporting illegal migration.

Mr Smith and the GBHRA have been involved in an ongoing row with the government over its newest immigration restrictions. Mr Smith has likened the Carmichael Road Detention Centre to Auschwitz, a former Nazi concentration camp. He has also suggested that the Bahamas government is carrying out ethnic cleansing with the restrictions.

However, Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell on Monday shot back at those criticisms calling them a “highly personal campaign” against him.

“The question is this, which must be put to them: whose side are you on?” Mr Mitchell asked.

“The side of Bahamians and our national patrimony (or) are you siding with enemies of the country who would undermine the country’s security and well-being?

“These activists like to portray this as some poor migrants who are simply trying to make a better life, but increasingly this is a portrait of a sophisticated smuggling operation which is big business and in the process is threatening to swamp our country.”

With six more months to go in the fiscal year, repatriations conducted as of December 2014 have exhausted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration’s deportation budget.

Mr Mitchell has revealed that the Department of Immigration has spent around $1.7m to repatriate 4,628 foreign nationals in 2014.

February 18, 2015

Tribune 242

The issue of Haitian migrants and persons of Haitian descent living in The Bahamas

Call To Stop Discrimination

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Staff Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas government must work to address discriminatory practices towards persons of Haitian descent who apply for regularisation, an official from the Haitian Embassy said yesterday.

Wallenson Nobert, first secretary of Legal Affairs at the Haitian Embassy, charged that the “real problem” faced by the Haitian Bahamian community in the Bahamas stems from the absence of a clear legal framework to process migrants.

In response to a panel discussion hosted by the College of the Bahamas on the complex issue of statelessness within the Bahamian context, Mr Nobert challenged that the use of the term “stateless” to describe unregularised persons of Haitian descent was “inappropriate” given Haiti’s citizenship laws.

However, Mr Nobert said there was an inherent “hypocrisy” in the Bahamas’ handling of citizenship that allowed for a peculiar stratification of rights, adding “either you’re a part of a country, or you’re not”.

Led by Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, associate professor in the School of English Studies, presenters focused on the effectiveness of citizenship and related immigration policy, and its application in respect to Haitian migrants and persons of Haitian descent living in the Bahamas.

The panel discussion is the second of its kind for the college, which hosted the first panel on the issue in 2012.

COB student Fiona Joseph argued that the regularisation process has deferred the dreams of many persons of Haitian descent born in the Bahamas, who are forced to wait until they are 18 to begin a lengthy application process.

Ms Joseph gave a personal account of her regularisation process as an individual born in the Bahamas to Haitian parents in her presentation entitled, Stateless and (Ba)Haitian in The Bahamas.

She admitted that she did not apply for Haitian citizenship because it would have further complicated her bid for Bahamian citizenship by forcing her to seek naturalisation instead.

Earlier this month, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell confirmed to The Tribune that the government does not issue certificates of identity.

He said: “I do not believe that there is a large group of stateless people. What we have is people born to foreign parents who don’t want to get the passport of their parents. We have stopped issuing certificates of identity.”

In his presentation entitled “Statelessness: Real or Imagined?” Dr Bethell-Bennett charged that while states argue over whether or not statelessness exists, and what type, the reality remains that a large group of people in the Bahamas are trapped in a “grey zone”, disfranchised and unable to access basic rights attached to citizenship.

The large population of unregularised persons represents a critical national security issue, according to Dr Ian Strachan, COB’s vice president of Advancement, who stated that progress on the issue has been stalled because of citizenship’s value as a political bargaining chip.

In his presentation, “Ugly Politics: Haitians and Power in the Bahamas”, Dr Strachan argued that immigration policy and procedures have been used for political advancement over the last 30 years, perpetuating negative stereotypes towards persons of Haitian descent while exploiting the migrant community during the election period.

Presenter Stephen Aranha, assistant professor in the School of Social Sciences, provided a critical review of citizenship as defined by the Bahamas constitution, and the recommendations given by the 2012 Constitutional Commission.

Although Haitians represent the largest migrant community, Mr Aranha argued that Immigration processes in the Bahamas were arbitrary, and open to legal uncertainty for all migrants.

Haiti’s constitution affords individuals born of a “native born” Haitian parent automatic entitlement to citizenship, if they choose to accept it, according to Mr Nobert, who encouraged individuals of Haitian lineage to seek assistance from the embassy regardless of their status.

However, presenters argued that the law is not clear on whether or not this right is passed on to third generation descendants whose parents were not born in Haiti, or have no legal documentation.

Presenters called for the government to either lower the age requirement for persons to begin applications for citizenship, or do an overhaul of the requirements to bring them in line with migration realities.

Mr Nobert’s comments echo concerns raised by the United Nations Human Rights Council, most recently the need for strengthened reporting mechanisms and statistical research on migrant communities in the Bahamas.

April 11, 2014

Tribune 242