The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I saw quite a few comments by irate Bahamians on a popular political Facebook page calling for the immediate revocation of prominent attorney and QC Fred Smith’s Bahamian citizenship after the Supreme Court “ordered the unconditional release of five persons and two minors from the Carmichael Road Detention Centre,” as per the February 27 edition of The Tribune. Judging from the names of the former detainees, they all appear to be Haitians. Earlier in the month of February, the Supreme Court ordered the release of three other Haitian detainees from the Detention Centre. The one common denominator for each of these immigration case is that Smith, who apparently knows the ins-and-outs of the Bahamian Constitution and the judicial system, was the attorney who represented all of the persons. Bahamians are gravely concerned over what they interpret as a subtle effort to undermine the sovereignty of The Bahamas and its government by bombarding an inefficient judicial system with a plethora of immigration cases that could take years to get a hearing. Smith knows this. Bahamians know this. The country is already home to tens of thousands of illegal and legal Haitian migrants with more making the dangerous journey from their impoverished homeland on rickety vessels to The Bahamas. It is simply humanly impossible for each and every last one of these cases to be given a hearing by a judicial system which already has a huge backlog of cases. If Smith challenges the lawfulness of the detention of each suspected Haitian immigrant arrested by the Immigration Department, he will undoubtedly make the Bahamian government look like an incompetent, bumbling fool in the courts where he is at his best. Bahamians feel as if Smith is attempting to Haitianise their country. They are angry. They are upset that Haitians and their partisans such as the QC seems more determined to Haitianise The Bahamas than in fixing their own broken country. They are now calling into question the QC’s patriotism for The Bahamas. That is why angry Bahamians are now calling on the government to revoke Smith’s citizenship.

Under the Bahamian Constitution, however, such a move would be impossible, unless there is an amendment to Chapter II, under Article 3, which states: “Every person, having been born outside the former Colony of the Bahamas Islands, is on 9th July 1973 a citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies shall, if his father becomes or would but for his death have become a citizen of The Bahamas in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph, become a citizen of The Bahamas on 10th July 1973.” While Smith was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his native Bahamian father, Frederick Charles Smith, was born on the island of Andros. The outspoken QC is also of Middle Eastern extraction. His mother, Julia Richards, was born in the Middle Eastern country of Jordan. Based on my maladroit understanding of the Constitution, Smith’s Bahamian citizenship was automatically conferred to him by his father, who, like the framers of the Constitution, officially became a Bahamian citizen on July 10, 1973. I wholeheartedly agree with Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Chairman Fred Mitchell, who has called for both the Free National Movement and the PLP to have a “common face” against those people who would seek to undermine this country and our government. The Bahamas is all we have. Bahamians, generally speaking, are not xenophobic. Many native born Bahamians have engaged in intermarriage with Haitians. Bahamians do not mind Haitians coming here legally. But they want them to assimilate into Bahamian culture. Bahamians want Haitians to come through the front door; not through the back door.

Legal experts from both sides of the political aisle must come together and work out a feasible plan in order to plug whatever gaps there are in our laws in order to prevent this immigration travesty from ever occurring again. As for Smith’s citizenship being revoked, that is only the wishful thinking of patriotic Bahamians who are annoyed with the recent judicial manoeuvrings of the prominent QC. Unless Smith wakes up one morning and decides to renounce his citizenship, he will remain a Bahamian for the remainder of his life.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama.

March 4, 2018.