With the CSME debate sort of pushed back to The Bahamas Trade Commission I was thinking, and in conversation with a friend, whose daughter is married to a foreigner, raised the following ﾗ I am very annoyed, seemingly we were willing to give all the rights to set up businesses in The Bahamas to those folks from The Caribbean whilst denying basic fundamental rights to men married to our own women!
I was really taken aback and argued that I thought a husband married and living with his Bahamian wife, had almost every right, except to vote. Not so.
I checked around and discovered that foreign spouses married to Bahamian women are second if not third class people ﾗ they need Central Bank approval to buy a house for their family even if all the funds are his or he generates to service a mortgage ﾗ he needs Central Bank approval to own the roof over their head ﾗ they need Cabinet approval to own a business and without that they must give 60 per cent to their wife or a Bahamian.
Minister Mitchell and those supporting CSME were quick as lightening willing to legally allow any citizen of a CSME country to set up shop seemingly with none of these restrictions ﾗ restrictions on a partnership where one is a Bahamian.
The majority of these foreign spouses have Permanent Residence, with the right to work, but that seems to be restricted to working for someone else and only omits the requirements to have a work permit.
In 2005 do we need to treat our women this way? It is certainly time we gave equal rights to these foreign spouses up to not being able to vote unless they become a citizen. It is so degrading to our Bahamian women who simply fall in love!
Canﾴt Government take immediate steps to exclude all these ugly provisions with a simple amendment to Exchange Control Regulations and Business Licence Act?
Letter to the Editor of The Tribune
J. JOHNSON
Nassau,
June 23, 2005
