The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

THE recently passed amendment to the Immigration act will not only threaten to “dilute the Bahamas’ sovereignty” but will further deprive families of their right to earn money, Long Island Opposition MP Loretta Butler-Turner said yesterday.

Mrs Butler-Turner made the submission as parliamentarians debated the Bill to Amend the Immigration Act.

This Bill would do away with the five-year limitation period in which a Bahamian can apply for their husband or wife’s spousal permit. Such permits would be granted indefinitely and give an earlier opportunity for foreign spouses to apply for citizenship, Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell said.

However, the MP urged the government not to proceed with its passing. She suggested that marriages of convenience could also escalate.

“I think this amendment is ill conceived and poorly thought out,” said Mrs Butler-Turner. “I think that it needs to go back to the drawing board. I think that the government needs to re-evaluate it.

“One of the things that we have found with this open ended, without losing or expiring status, we find that it does open our borders to the abuse of marriages of convenience.

“They talked about the backlog of the files that need review, after the five-year period it is up to the husband and wife who reside to ensure that the marriage is subsistent. There should be all kinds of checks and balances. Many times they (immigration officers) go unannounced. Many times they go where a woman and her children are and there is no sign of a husband, no clothes, no toothbrush nothing. So at the end of the day there was no marriage.”

If the marriage is legitimate, neither spouse should have reservations of the constitution’s current provisions, Mrs Butler-Turner said.

She said the new amendment would also displace Bahamians lacking a tertiary level education who might seek blue collar employment.

“When you have about 70 per cent of your work force not having tertiary education then obviously you note where their work is going to take them. In these same areas of what we consider housekeepers (or fishermen). These are the same people that we feel are being displaced in our society in terms of job creation, by persons who are using this piece of legislation to their advantage.”

Opposition St. Anne’s MP Hubert Chipman, too agreed that the government should look closer at the issue of convenient marriages.

The Bill was passed during the afternoon sitting of the House despite the FNM’s strong opposition to its new provisions. The Opposition abstained from voting.