A Bahamian cargo boat owner claims he is being put out of business by an alleged visa scam which enables unchecked Haitians to enter the Bahamas for $1,000 a time.
Mr Bruce Bain told The Tribune he is repeatedly being blocked in his efforts to get crew visas by legitimate means for the standard $55 fee.
Instead, he claimed, preference is being given to Haitian human traffickers who can get same-day processing for their visa claims by paying large amounts of cash to certain government employees.
Now Mr Bain, 40, a father of six, is appealing to the government to launch a proper investigation into the alleged racket, which he says is going inside Norfolk House.
“I can’t get the visas I need to crew my boats,” said Mr Bain, whose three craft operate between Nassau and Haiti. As a result, all are now docked with no men to operate them.
“I can’t pay school fees. I have six children, all in private schools, and am four months behind with my payments to the Development Bank,” he said.
“I can’t sleep. It is worrying my wife as well. She has just had a baby. Yet I have a boat sitting at Arawak Cay and two more in Haiti because I can’t get visas for the crew.
“I am being put out of business because I had to pay $15,000 back to customers when one of my boats was unable to travel. I am the only Bahamian boat-owner going to Haiti, but I can’t get what I need to run the business.
“Yet Haitians come here and make a living without any trouble. I am made to wait for weeks, yet some of these guys can come here and get passports stamped within five hours.”
Despite denials by Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell that such a visa scam exists, Mr Bain claims he knows of several instances where Haitian crewmen have paid middlemen $1,000 for visas and $500 for renewals.
“There are people in government service who are selling the country down the river,” Mr Bain alleged. “The nation is for sale again.”
Mr Bain and a well-placed contact have both given The Tribune names of three employees who, they claim, are at the centre of the alleged racket.
As Mr Bain and the contact are not known to each other, their information was passed on independently, yet all three names matched.
“Mr Mitchell has said an investigation is underway, but I see no sign of that,” he said. “The government needs to act now to bring this scandal to an end.”
The Tribune is constantly receiving information from wellplaced sources offering eye-witness accounts of illicit transactions.
One trafficker allegedly takes up to 40 visa-stamped passports at a time to Arawak Cay to meet incoming sloops.
Theoretically, the visas are for 90 days, but The Tribune’s contacts allege that many of the Haitians coming ashore are never seen again, having been absorbed into local immigrant communities.
“I never get more than 12 visas at a time, yet these guys can walk away with an armful of them,” said Mr Bain.
“There are two men – one of them doesn’t even have a boat – who regularly take piles of Haitian passports in for visa stamping. Yet I have had problems since last May when I first reported the underhand transactions.
“It was obvious to me that a racket was going on, so I told the government about it.”
Mr Bain said he has a taperecorded conversation between himself and a government employee who is heard to ask for money in exchange for visas.
“This tape-recording was made early in January,” said Mr Bain, “The person concerned had already taken $700 from me, but they wanted more.
“They told me I was being cheap and wanted $1,000. They were then obstructive and since then I have received no visas.”
Mr Bain said that, under the law, he had to check his boats into Inagua customs and immigration on trips from Haiti, but Haitian sloops were allowed straight through to Arawak Cay. Here, the crews – up to ten on each boat – collect their visas from one of the middlemen.
Mr Bain said his family’s boutique business in East Bay Street was forced to close because his boats were draining away the money.
“I’ve never worked for anyone else in my life, but now I have to go and look for work while government employees are filling their pockets,” he said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through a spokesman said they prefer to wait until this story is published to determine if a response is warranted.
Source: The Tribune
