The Tribune

EARLIER this month, The Tribune reported on how a 12-year-old boy was left with his two siblings to care for themselves after his mother was detained by immigration.

Today, The Tribune reports on the story of a ten-year-old girl who was in school when her mother was taken in a raid last Thursday.

The girl cried when she found out her mother had gone. She talked of how she didn’t want to go to Haiti, a place she has never been having been born and raised in The Bahamas.

The new – or old, as he is returning to his previous post – acting Immigration Director, William Pratt, says it is policy to deport children born in The Bahamas to Haiti with their parents if the parents lack legal status to be in the country.

The Tribune has been told that the mother has a work permit application which only requires a payment to complete – and Mr Pratt said that would be investigated.

However, he said that the child, who would have the right to apply for citizenship when she turns 18, could put in her application at the embassy in Port au Prince, after she is deported with her mother.

It raises questions of constitutional rights – Human Rights Bahamas has already argued that children born in The Bahamas should not be deported regardless of their parents’ legal status.

It reinforces the urgency of closing citizenship loopholes that leave women unable to pass on their citizenship status.

It highlights the need for quick processes in order to deal with citizenship applications.

And it all still leaves a ten-year-old Bahamian-born girl crying for her mother.

In our previous article following the posting of notices warning of shanty town demolition, we posed the question “what next?” and asked where the people in these properties would end up living with a property market already short of homes. It is not unlikely that another shanty property would spring up somewhere else instead – and some without money might find themselves falling towards crime.

Asking the question “what next?” for Bahamian-born children who are deported is also valid – how will these children come to regard the nation of their birth if it kicks them out and will not let them back in until they turn 18?

We know that those who apply at 18 are often made to wait years for the resolution of their application, sometimes many years.

In the meantime, they must exist in a kind of limbo – rejected by the place they were born, forced to integrate into a place they have never known.

Some would counter that having a baby cannot be an option to secure the right to stay in the country. In the United States, it has become known by the phrase “anchor baby”, with the suggestion that parents become safeguarded from deportation by having a baby on US soil. It is also something of a myth, though often trotted out by those who would point at foreigners as the source of all a nation’s ills in order to earn political favour.

Politics, sadly, does rear its head in this conversation – with being tough on immigrants an easy way to win support, even if it is just words and no action.

We also hear people say often that The Bahamas is a Christian nation – pointing to the Preamble of the Constitution as evidence. Taking mothers away from children sits uncomfortably with such a claim.

We hope that the child in this case can be reunited with her mother. We hope if all that is required for her mother to stay is payment that an intervention of some kind can be arranged. Perhaps our churches can offer both mother and child some support both resolving this matter and going forward.

But beyond this particular case, a discussion on the broader situation would be merited. Being tossed out of the country you were born in seems like no solution at all.