The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE League of Haitian Churches has asked the government to introduce a policy that will provide some relief to people not covered by the Belonger's permit and who, in some cases, have been rendered stateless.

More than 70 pastors from across the country attended the league's monthly meeting at East Street's Church of the Nazarene on Monday, where Immigration Minister Brent Symonette was a special guest speaker.

League President Dr Jean Paul Charles said the issues of migrant rights and statelessness, raised at the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) meeting in Geneva last week, were on the agenda.

"The position is we are working with the government to regularise people who need to be regularised, and those who are here illegally need to go," he said.

"We can't dictate to the government what to do, but we are working to see as much as we can accomplish."

Other matters covered include the increase in immigration fees, belonger's permits, illegal immigrants' concerns and the importance of pastors partnering with the government to educate the Haitian community, he said.

"Before they used to give them some type of passport for identity, but since the last government changed that to Belonger's permit, they have nothing to identify who they are until they are like 25 or 30 years old. The deadline is 18 but sometimes it takes years for approval. And until then, they have no identity, nothing to prove who they are."

Social Services Minister Frankie Campbell sought to clarify the government's position as it related to statelessness during the country's review at the 71st Session of CEDAW in Geneva last week.

Mr Campbell was responding to questions from Austrian CEDAW expert and former judge Lilian Hofmeister, who was critical of the country's efforts to bring its legal framework in line with several international conventions, namely conventions on the Rights of the Child and protections for migrant workers and their families.

The minister acknowledged there was a specific grouping of people born in the Bahamas who were stateless because of limitations in Haiti's constitution on the transference of citizenship, and dependent on the irregular status of their parents.

"Now the person who is actually stateless is the second generation," Mr Campbell said, "because the constitution of Haiti does not recognise that individual as being able to get the citizenship of the parents, and because the parents are not legal, then that person is in that state of statelessness.

"However, the state party, the government has recognised that and that is a part of our conversation even now as we speak. We have convened an immigration board, we are looking as I would have indicated at amendments to the Nationality Act to ensure that no one falls through that crack of statelessness."

Immigration Minister Brent Symonette has declined to comment on those remarks; however, sources close to the matter have told The Tribune the government is currently seeking legal opinion on the matter.

In an interview with The Tribune earlier this week, Mr Campbell defended his performance in Geneva.

"I was sent to represent my country," he said, "I was not given any instructions to deceive or mislead. I went there with a view of telling the truth as I know it to be. I am liable to be corrected later on, I could be shown where what I thought was the truth was not necessarily so - as I knew it to be at the time."

Mr Campbell continued: "What I know to be the case is there are persons who don't qualify for the nationality of their parents by virtue of the nationality act and the Constitution, and who don't automatically qualify for Bahamian citizenship. So what do you want to call them?"

Mr Campbell noted the size of this grouping was not demonstrably large.

Yesterday, Mr Charles implored the government to take note of the plight of those who fall in the stateless category.

The pastor said: "They have nothing to prove who they are even to get a Haitian passport. The process to get a passport from the Haitian government is so slow also. We are asking the government to give them something, because even if they try to get a Haitian passport they still can't travel. If the parents want to go to Miami, the kids the child won't be able to go.

"With the Belonger's permit, the US government don't give any visa for that. They said it's not sufficient. I think they can go to Haiti but they cannot go to us with that. We ask the government to do a little bit more since they were born here in this country it is a complex thing, but if they can try to fix it once and for a while the next generation will not have this problem."

The league was formerly called the League of Haitian Pastors, but has since been changed to reflect the expanded grouping of some 56 pastors in New Providence and more than 30 pastors in the Family Islands from various denominations ranging from Catholicism to Seventh-Day Adventists.