The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Anytime I see all of these people and the frequency numbers, I admit that it causes me to panic. As in anything, if you have a lot of children, you would have to expend more energies, shout more and discipline even more...and the coffer would have to have more in it... these were just laws of nature, you cannot do more with less, unless Father God steps in and places His Miraculous enabling hand out to you, otherwise it will not happen.

If you were the Bahamas Department of Immigration, responsible for the entire Commonwealth of The Bahamas that means all of the land and sea coasts you have superintendence for. The next point, to do this you must have the human capital to carry out this function adequately. And the Director of Immigration has to ensure that he has what it will take to address this mandate. And from where does he get this help in economic financial enabling?

I believe the Parliament of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas has a chief role to play. And if given the realities of the situation, the parliament falls short of projections, then what? But as a director you must, or ought to know what it would take for the Bahamas Department of Immigration to police the entire land and sea coasts of this Commonwealth otherwise, you are not fit for that Office, period.

What am I saying? For a country that boasts a population of 350,000 people...and over 100,000 foreigners in the land on work permits, is problematic. We have in excess of 200,000 give or take illegal immigrants we suspect in the land. We, being retired law enforcement officers, estimate of those numbers there is another dynamic attached - and it has to do with the viable young enough females among the group of illegals, who were having babies twice a year adding to the problem, but nothing is being said about this category and many have been here for better part of 10,15, and 20 years.

And to have between 15-20,000 females dropping these unwanted individuals to the furtherance of the problems must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Now, you cannot tell me that the duties of the Bahamas Department of Immigration were being served with a skeleton complement of only 400 officers?

I call on the Hon Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis to visit this threat to the national security of the Bahamas even if it means that you demolish the Immigration Department and re-establish a joint task force comprising the Royal Bahamas Defence/Police Forces to staff and the new Royal Bahamas Immigration Service (R.B.I.S).

You cannot tell me that for the last two decades those with oversight for that Department were doing so in fairness to the country?

Also adding to this disheartening episode while we sympathise with the decayed or decaying economic and financial conditions in some of the Caribbean countries and have helped them as a Christian nation what we cannot do is allow them to overrun the country to the extent that we end up in the state they’re now in? For we must leave The Bahamas, our country, for the next generation of Bahamians unborn and to do so in a state that they can reasonably carry on, is our duty and responsibility, I think.

FRANK GILBERT

Nassau,

July 6, 2022.