Brent Symonette - Minister of Immigration: Bahamians "cannot continue to employ non-Bahamian labour and complain at the rate of unemployment."

Deputy PM: we cannot employ non-Bahamian labour and complain about unemployment
By ALISON LOWE
Tribune Staff Reporter
alowe@tribunemedia.net:



BAHAMIANS should take a hard look at the realities behind the immigration of foreigners into their country and accept that their own behaviour and choices sometimes play a part in the situation about which many complain, the Deputy Prime Minister suggested.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Immigration, Brent Symonette, said that Bahamians "cannot continue to employ non-Bahamian labour and complain at the rate of unemployment."

"We either have to accept that there are certain jobs Bahamians are unwilling, unable or are not being suitably paid to do or else we have to move on," he said.

"A Bahamian will work in a hotel, but yet we're importing maids to work in private homes. What's the difference between them? Why are we prepared to do one and not the other?" asked the Minister and MP for St Anne's.

Under Bahamian immigration law, a foreign person can get a work permit from the Department of Immigration to fill a job in the Bahamas if no suitably qualified Bahamian can be found to do the job. In some cases, this may mean those who apply for the job are not necessarily holding the skills or qualifications the position demands, and in others, foreigners are able to gain legal authorisation to work in The Bahamas when no Bahamians actually apply for certain jobs when they are advertised.

He suggested that not only does the level of foreigners employed to do these jobs in The Bahamas mean some Bahamians remain unemployed while jobs exist that they could do, but "you have to ask the question what other burdens do (immigrants) put on the system."

Meanwhile, Mr Symonette said there has been a "gradually growing" number of cases of suspected sham marriages between Bahamians and foreigners seeking "papers" in The Bahamas - primarily Haitians and Jamaicans.

"A number of persons of non-Bahamian citizenship come to the Bahamas, overstay their welcome, when caught get deported and coincidentally marry a Bahamian the next day in a country south of us then come back as the spouse of a Bahamian. The cases are far too common to be real. And that's an issue we all have to face. There are a number of marriages that we question," said Mr Symonette.

He said that where the Immigration Department suspects that a marriage is one of "convenience", lacking authenticity, it has denied the right to the usual work and residency related benefits that extend to the spouses of Bahamians and some fraudulent cases have been prosecuted. However, he added that the situation is a tricky one as the government must extend these benefits to the spouses of Bahamians or else face the likelihood that Bahamians who go abroad and marry will not return home. Referring to the employment of foreigners, mainly Haitians and Jamaicans, in relatively unskilled jobs such as housekeeping and gardening -- thousands of permits are approved each year for foreigners to work in posts like these when Bahamians cannot be found to do the work -- and the fact that there is "on a daily basis a demand for skilled labour at the Department of Labour." Mr Symonette said the Bahamas needs to "start looking at the whole immigration policy in this country."

"Do we have enough skilled labour in the Bahamas or don't we have enough? Are people applying for work permits with job descriptions that don't necessarily fit the job in hand? These are issues I think we need to get out for public discussion," said Mr Symonette.

June 16, 2010

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