The Tribune

PROPOSALS to make changes to citizenship and immigration laws in The Bahamas have already caused some concern – not least among those who are directly affected by the changes to come.

The situation with regard to applications has long been a mess – but one of the problems that leaps out from the proposals to begin with is that the onus seems to be placed all on the applicant without any guarantees of what can be expected from government agencies in response.

One of the proposals surrounds the right of people born in The Bahamas – whose parents are not Bahamian – to apply to be registered as a citizen when they turn 18 or within 12 months after that.

The law didn’t speak too clearly about what happened before 18 or after 19 – and into those loopholes, people’s lives fall.

Those cases have appeared frequently in this newspaper – such as Wilken Garson, a 28-year-old man who we reported earlier this year claimed he was deported to Haiti. He was born and schooled in The Bahamas – but he says he was detained and sent to a country he’d never known. Haiti turned him right around and sent him back and he spent months in limbo in detention.

It’s not an isolated case – there was also the instance we reported last November of Bahamas-born Louisbin Foreste, aged 24, who was deported to Haiti in violation of a Supreme Court order. On the plane as he was deported, he told another man on the flight that he had no one, had nowhere to go. That stranger offered him mercy – inviting him to come and stay with him – that the country Mr Foreste was born in had failed to offer.

Then there’s the case of Jean Rony Jean-Charles, who is seeking $1m damages from the Bahamas government after being deported to Haiti in 2017 – only to return after a judge ordered the government to issue him documentation and bring him back. His case continues to rumble through the courts.

These cases – among others such as teenager Taranique Thurston, who struggled to travel to the United States for urgent medical care because of a lack of documentation – are both damning of the current Immigration structure, and evidence of the need for change.

Those changes must be balanced, however, helping those who are caught up in loopholes rather than cutting them off completely.

For example, the changes suggest a period of six months be given for those who didn’t apply when they were 18 to sort out their documentation. A few years ago, we knew a brother and sister who applied at the age of 18. They came from a well-off family, were well-educated, and complied with every request in a timely manner. It took until each was 23 for their application to finally be sorted out. Five years, for those in the position of being able to deal with every financial cost and every document request quickly. Do we really think the government will be able to deal with a flood of requests in six months? What duties will the government have to live up to in order to deal with applications in a timely manner?

Those quoted in our story today highlight the current problem – some got Haitian passports as required in the 2014/15 policy change, but find it of little use in dealing with Immigration, and securing appropriate documents, such as birth certificates for parents born in other countries, can be a challenge both in time and money. Then Immigration itself loses documents from time to time, forcing applicants to try to find them again.

This feels like the government is trying to draw a line with regard to applications in later life – but for those who fail to apply in time, what will happen next?

These people are still born in The Bahamas, they may still have never set foot in another country – where do they go when the nation of their birth tells them to leave?

Can we find a solution that helps those who are struggling to meet the requirements demanded – or are we intent on merely telling those affected to go away?

And let us paint one scenario, based on the experience of Mr Foreste. Haiti, one of the poorest countries on the planet, is in no position to accept into its borders thousands of people who have never lived there. The only reason The Bahamas is sending them there is because their parents or grandparents or some other relative once boarded a boat north in hope of a better life.

Why should we expect a country - which would appear to have no responsibility for the people “pure” Bahamians don’t want - to accept them?