The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

MANY would welcome giving citizenship to a Harvard-educated scholar like Dr April Finlayson, but seven months after the Privy Council ruled that people like her are citizens at birth, she still can’t get a Bahamian passport and limits her visits to The Bahamas to avoid being warned again that she overstayed her time in the country of her birth.

Since the Privy Council affirmed in May that people born out of wedlock to Bahamian men are Bahamians at birth regardless of their mother’s nationality, hundreds have had their passport applications approved.

People such as Dr Finlayson are in limbo because their father’s name is not on their birth certificate, and affidavits are not accepted as proof of paternity. The Davis administration said it will require DNA tests in such instances.

Attorney General Ryan Pinder said in June 2022 that the administration would push legislation allowing Bahamian men and women to pass citizenship in all circumstances. He later said this would happen after the Privy Council ruled on the status of children born out of wedlock to Bahamian men.

Despite the pledges, meaningful work from the government on the protocol for people like Dr Finlayson appeared only to begin after the Privy Council delivered its ruling this year.

Mr Pinder reiterated last month that officials are working on legislation to address citizenship inequalities. People born outside The Bahamas to a Bahamian mother and foreign father are not automatically citizens, and Bahamian women do not have the same rights as men to get citizenship for their foreign spouse.

Health Minister Dr Michael Darville told reporters in October that he hoped DNA testing protocols would be finalised by the end of this year, but nothing has yet been announced. He previously said officials must find ways to prevent DNA fraud.

The wait has muted the excitement Dr Finlayson and others felt when the highest court affirmed the landmark citizenship ruling.

Dr Finlayson, 37, told The Tribune in May that she had applied five times for a passport before leaving the country, moving to the United States after being excluded from the privileges of being a Bahamian.

 She said yesterday she went to the Passport Office in September and was told she was ineligible for a passport.

 She has been trying to get a Bahamian passport since she was 15. Before her recent visit to the Passport Office, she went through the process of compiling her “original documentation”, such as hospital and school letters. 

 “When you put it all together, it’s like a three-week process,” she said yesterday. “When I went through all of that just to find out yet again I’m still not eligible, it was frustrating.”

 She said while visiting her family in New Providence for this year’s holiday season, she was anxious about whether an immigration officer would interrogate her.

 She recalled a brief visit in 2022, where an officer warned her that she previously overstayed by several days. She noted she could only stay in the country for six months, and officers often assume she denounced her Bahamian citizenship and now holds American citizenship.

 “The hassle of even visiting sometimes is a lot,” she said, adding that the system marginalises people like her.

“It was very annoying to have someone like, highlight two days, three days, however many days that they claimed I overstayed when you can see it says born in The Bahamas.”

 “I need to be able to come in and out of The Bahamas comfortably because this is where my family is, and this is where I was raised.”

 “I feel as though there has not been consideration for the fact that people do not choose how they get here,” said Dr Finlayson, an assistant lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Our humanity is not taken into consideration, like the way it affects our lives on a day-to-day basis.”