The Tribune

YES, the Bahamas has a problem, a major problem that started slowly many years ago but has grown to such proportions today that sound decisions have to be made to contain it. Bahamians call it “the Haitian problem”.

However, in dealing with this problem we have to remember that we are dealing with human beings — human beings like ourselves, who have feelings, who have hopes, dreams and aspirations for their families in a land that they now call “home”.

We have reached the point in our development today that many of these people – most brought into this country to do jobs that Bahamians felt were beneath them – are now going into the third, if not the fourth generation. Today they are one of us— whether Bahamians like it or not, it is a situation that has to be accepted. However, government must concentrate on the protection of our borders to make certain that the illegal invasion does not continue — economically this country cannot absorb any more immigrants of whatever nationality.

After the November 1 round-ups, a 23-year-old Haitian woman complained that Haitians were being treated unfairly. She is especially upset that Immigration has not given them enough time to obtain the documents required under the new regulations to avoid repatriation to a county that is as foreign to them as it is to the rest of us.

“I didn’t come to Nassau on a plane and I didn’t come on no boat,” said Nastasha Pillsnor. “I came through a woman.

“You know what makes the Bahamas?

“The Bahamian, that’s you and that’s me.

“I don’t know anything about Haiti, the government of Haiti cannot speak to me or speak for me.

“My (prime minister) is Perry Christie whether he likes it or not, I’m a Bahamian. Too much immigrants on the island, period. If the Haitians came here illegally, carry them home. They business home.”

Mr Hubert Chipman (FNM–St Anne’s), after the November 1 round-up in central and southwestern New Providence said: “I don’t know how many round-ups were conducted Saturday (Nov 1) or over the weekend. However, we’ve gone through this situation before and we got a black eye for it, you know, where we rounded up people, waking kids and their parents out of their beds. I don’t agree with that even though they may be here illegally. There must be some humane way that you can conduct these round-ups.”

Many Bahamians agree with him. However, there are others who — forgetting their common bond in the human race — want them chased out of the country regardless. Many of these tote their Bibles, thump their chests, and cry, “Jesus, Jesus”, but have no compassion for their less fortunate brothers. When they get to the Pearly Gates, let’s hope they have concocted a plausible tale to get those gates opened for them. They might find an angry St Peter, who will shoo them off to the t’other place.

When the round-ups started in Nassau on November 1, there were reports from Freeport that the Haitian community there was so “terrified” that many, with their children, were going into hiding.

“They are terrified of being separated from their children – some are begging to be hidden by Bahamian families and some are going into hiding,” Mr Joseph Darville, of the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association, told The Tribune.

“There is an incredible blight on this nation, and I am begging that, for God’s sake, that my country do the right thing by these people. I do support my government in trying to bring some semblance of normalcy to the invasion of non-Bahamians in the country, but at the same time it must be done in a very humane manner.”

The stepped-up influx of Haitians started when, on coming to power in 1967, the late prime minister Sir Lynden Pindling promised Bahamians that no longer would they be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Manual labour was not only demeaning, but abhorrent to Bahamian ears — “that’s Haitian work!” And so Bahamians left the farms. Slowly Haitians started to fill the gaps. This was a different type of Haitian — they were even unsettling to their better educated Haitian brothers who had quietly settled here and become Bahamians. Haitian-Bahamians feared that the spotlight would also be turned on them. They, like many Bahamians, did not welcome the unskilled who had started to infiltrate the country, and who, as the illegal numbers increased, grew into what is today the “Haitian problem”.

In 2006, Paul Cumberbatch, describing himself as a “small farmer” with more than 200 acres of land, took to the airwaves to complain that Immigration would not give him permits for 500 Haitians for his farm. He did not agree with the Christie government’s plan to send all Haitians, then in the Bahamas, back to Haiti.

“When Sir Lynden was prime minister,” Mr Cumberbatch told his radio audience, “no minister could do what Shane (Gibson) is doing now.” He said that when then deputy prime minister Arthur Hanna, who had Immigration in his portfolio, and later when the late Sir Clement Maynard headed Immigration he was given whatever work permits he needed for his Haitians. Those were peaceful days, he said.

And so this is how Haitian immigration grew into today’s social problem — Bahamians refused to work the land — labelling it as “Haitian work”. And PLP politicians, pandering to the needs of their supporters, gave them permits to bring in unlimited numbers of unskilled workers to replace Bahamians on the farm. These Haitians, according to Mr Cumberbatch, were landed at the Coral Harbour Defence Force base. Some Bahamians, who were able to get unlimited numbers of permits, developed side businesses by farming out their Haitians to other Bahamians who had no political godfathers — at a good price, of course.

While the Defence Force concentrates on preventing boat people landing on our shores, Immigration should spend their time getting Haitians who have been here for many years regularised. Those with criminal records and new arrivals without jobs will have to be repatriated.

And it should be made known that no new illegal arrivals will be accepted and the birth of a baby here will no longer be a passport to citizenship.

This government should try to get the cooperation of the Haitian government to get the message to their citizens that from now on their boat trips headed to the Bahamas will be in vain. And boat captains caught in human smuggling should be severely punished.