I welcomed the appointment of Shane Gibson to the immigration Department due to his promise to clamp down hard against illegal immigrants.
I for one believe that a country such as ours with relatively small land mass and resources cannot and should not become a haven for economic immigrants who choose to invade our country illegally.
Having said that, I am very troubled by Prime Minister Christie’s decision to instruct Minister Shane Gibson to cancel the work permits of thousands of legal immigrants who have not committed any crime since they were legally issued their work permits since 2003.
I cannot make sense out of this mass denial of renewal for legal immigrants who were issued work permits by this same PLP government.
However; I have a few theories that I suppose, may have necessitated this action by Prime Minister Christie using Minister Shane Gibson.
Serious corruption at Immigration?
Is it possible that the Prime Minister and Minister Shane Gibson believe that there was corruption or incompetence involved in the process by which work permits have been granted under this government? Does – this have anything to do with missing files and mysterious fires at the Department of Immigration? Is it possible that Minister Gibson, under orders from Prime Minister Christie, is bent on reversing everything done by his predecessor?
Election Year Politics
There is a sense in the country right now that this new PLP government has performed below an acceptable level, even by those of us who voted them in power. The promise of jobs has not materialised and some young people who had hoped to change their lives, with the promised honourable jobs, have returned to business as usual either by bumming around or committing crimes.
Hence with nothing concrete to present to the people as a reason to return my party to power, this New PLP government want to play on the phobia and prejudice of some of our Bahamian people by finding a scapegoat – the Haitians.
Or is the government hoping that after years of its inability to create meaningful jobs, by driving away legal residents will create some vacancies for Bahamians, thereby creating the appearance of a job boom just before the elections?
Or perhaps do they want to return to the only proven method that seems to fool Bahamians, including myself, most of the time: Conspiracy Theories?
Right now we are being warned to beware of a devilish plot by Hubert Ingraham and the white Knight bogeymen who want to return us back to slavery. There are also subtle warnings about Evil Haitians taking over the country. I won’t be surprised if ZNS starts showing the Alex Hailey’s Movie “Roots” just before the next elections.
Blatant Xenophia
There is one thing that seems to confound me about us as Bahamians. We welcome the foreigners to bring in their dollars so we can maintain our relatively high standard of living, but we hate to see any foreigner take a dollar out of the country. For too long we have been eating our cakes and having it. The decision by the Prime Minister and Mr. Shane Gibson to return thousands of foreigners, mainly Haitians who were once given legal status by our government back to the illegal market just makes my point.
Could you imagine if a Bahamian who has lived in the United States for many years and has legally acquired their green card, one day wakes up and is given a letter to leave the country within 21 days without any explanation as to why? All of us in the Bahamas would be screaming “racism”. We will be telling this person to fight for their “rights” and sue the authorities.
However, each time a Haitian fights back when they are either wronged or abused in this country, we tell the government to “send them back” irrespective of their immigration status in the country hear Haitians talk about their “right” in this country. Even so called Christians are ready to spill blood when they hear a Haitian has dared to stand up – for his or her rights.
Granted, Haitians, and indeed all foreigners, who live in this country do not have the right to be here. It is a privilege granted to them by the government of the Bahamas for them to live and work here. But one can say the same thing about Bahamians living in the United States or any other country in the world. But, like I stated before, do we lose all our rights when we visit or live in the United States? No, far from that! We demand our universal human rights as human beings no matter where we are in the world, except if we are in Cuba, Afghanistan or a few other communist, dictatorial or Ideological Islamic nations.
Does the Bahamas want to class itself with Cuba and other non-democratic nations? God forbid! But the recent action by the PLP government to disenfranche thousands of legal immigrants shows that perhaps we are less than a strand of hair from drifting into this league of dishonourable nations.
My Advice
I wish to urge Prime Minister Christie, who is the ultimate decision maker for his government, my Progressive Liberal Party, to instruct Minister Shane Gibson to rescind this arrogant, shameful and inhumane decision. The Bahamas is a signatory to the articles of Universal Human Rights. We should not act like a pariah state and arbitrarily disenfranchise thousands of people with legal status without any option for a remedy. Some of these people have families at home who depend on them for survival.
There are others who may have qualified for and acquired loans or mortages in their home countries due to their legal residency and jobs in the Bahamas. How do we as a so-called Christian nation feel about the plight of the little children and families who depend on these people to live? Yes, there is an illegal immigration crisis in this country. I am of the opinion that no new work permits should be issued for at least another two years unless there is a specific need that Bahamians are not available or willing to fill those positions.
But the government should not take away the status of legal residents who have not committed any crime during their residency without explanation or another opportunity to reapply.
My Prediction
I am of the opinion that this inhumane decision by Prime Minister Christie to unleash Minister Gibson blindly on legal residents will backfire. For example, many of these legal residents who have had their status stripped without justification will remain in the country illegally. Immigration officers will now have more illegal immigrants newly created by Minister Gibson to deal with. The $650 work permit fees plus over $500 in national insurance payment, paid annually by thousands of these former legal residents, will cease. Individual Bahamians and companies who depend on the reliable services of these former legal immigrants will have their life and schedules disrupted.
The cost of living will rise as Bahamians will be forced to pay $100 or more for someone who may or may not clean their yard for them. So for a shop owner to afford that high priced service, he or she may be forced to raise the prices of their items. For the consumer to afford to shop at that store, they may ask their boss at the restaurant for a pay rise. For the boss to be able to offer that pay rise, he may have to increase the price of the sandwich. This chain reaction will continue everywhere.
With virtually no means left for people to regularise the status in the country, the only option left for prospective legal immigrants will be to enter marriages of convenience. Then what does that do to our social and moral fabric?
Sentimentally, this idea to unjustly strip legal residents of their status may appease the minds and emotions of some Bahamians. But sooner than later the average Bahamian will see the negative effect of this ill-conceived and reprehensible action.
The Almighty God in his infinite wisdom chose to keep the answer to most of our human problems in a jigsaw puzzle. He then distributed pieces to different races, ethnic groupings and nations. God expects mankind through harmonious co-existence to bring together each piece of this puzzle thereby finding solutions to our problems through development. This is why any nation that has accepted immigrants has advanced and prospered through the knowledge brought by the immigrants to enrich the life of the natives. However, nations that have shunned immigrants or failed to integrate them have always remained stagnant.
The Conscience is an opened wound and only the truth can heal it.
By: KATHERINE SANDS, Nassau, Bahamas
