It did not take long for new immigration minister Shane Gibson to flex his biceps as "the man to take care of the Haitian problem."
Bearing a remarkable resemblance to the former world middleweight champion, Marvellous Marvin Hagler, the shaven-headed Mr Gibson came out bobbing and weaving, hooking and swinging.
His department's swoop on North Eleuthera, and the arbitrary round-up of scores of Haitians, many of them legal immigrants who had been in the Bahamas for many years, had his supporters hooting and hollering their approval.
It was reminiscent of the early 1970s when Loftus Roker was purging immigrants to a chorus of approbation from the gleeful hordes. At that time, the PLP promised "Bahamianization" of the economy and workforce was underway with a vengeance – and hardly a single party supporter baulked at the process. Thirty-odd years ago, the public's reaction was more understandable. After all, many of the old UBP had undoubtedly favoured foreigners over Bahamians in the workplace. Blacks, in particular, were often left feeling marginalised in their own land. It was time to straighten things out.
The mass ejection of expatriates, though stoutly criticised at the time, was seen as a necessary part of the PLP's nation-building exercise. Prime Minister Lynden Pindling and his ministers needed to know for sure just how dependent the Bahamas was on outside help.
Well, now we know. The Bahamas, with its buoyant and expanding economy, is enormously dependent on foreigners in almost every area of national life.
The country depends on foreigners for investment. It depends on foreigners for the success of its tourist industry because every tourist is a foreigner. It depends on foreigners for several areas of expertise in trade, commerce and the professions. And – as with the Haitians – it depends on foreigners to polish the car and clean the yard.
In fact, it's true to say that, without foreigners, the Bahamas would implode in short order, leaving the native population to catch conch and collect coconuts.
Contrary to what some Bahamians think, there is nothing shameful in this. As recent events have proved, the greatest economy in the world, the USA, needs Mexicans and other foreigners – even an estimated 11 million illegals – to function properly. In confronting its worrying illegal immigration problem, the last thing the US can contemplate is to send them all back home because most are in jobs and important to whatever businesses they are involved in.
A land like Britain, with 60 million soccer-crazy people, needs to employ a Swede to manage its England football team. An Australian is editor of The Times of London. Germans run Rolls-Royce, the most prestigious name in British motoring.
A country like China, with 1.3 billion people of its own, has floated its phenomenal economic success on foreign money. Its main daily newspaper employs foreign editors to provide expertise in the English language, which the Chinese see as a necessary tool in conquering the world of commerce.
As part of the so-called Global Village, the world's burgeoning economies are acknowledging the reality of interdependence. They would be barmy to do otherwise, for the Internet has now made the entire world into everyone's marketplace. Those who think only "inside the box" will be left high and dry by the flowing tide of new technology.
Even so, inward-looking elements of the PLP are intent on pursuing a rather coarse form of xenophobia which has traditionally appealed to the rougher edges of the party's support system. It's hopelessly discredited. and as out-of-date as a steam-driven flywheel, but the party dinosaurs would be lost without it.
At last year's PLP convention, the theme was relentlessly anti-white, and by implication anti-foreign, with politicians trying to sell the illusion that this country's economy can be totally Bahamianised if only outsiders would get out of the way.
Once at the podium, politicians get the hordes "cussin' and carryin' on" is to roll out the same old rhetoric the Pindlings and Rokers of the past relied on.
Haitian immigrants, followed closely by Jamaicans and other West Indians, are the prime targets of this anti-foreign feeling. This is not surprising, given that up to one-fifth of the Bahamas' population is now reckoned to have originated from the chaotic land of voodoo to the south.
That illegal Haitian immigration is one of the great social issues facing this country is beyond doubt. The outspoken views of people like Jeffery Cooper, the Abaco anti-Haitian campaigner, cannot be discounted because they are fundamentally true. Left unaddressed; the Haitian problem could change the character and complexion of this society within 50 years – and not for the better.
Rounding
However, rounding up "legals" as well as "illegals" in the kind of crude operation experienced in Eleuthera recently is not the way forward. It was reminiscent of the bush-beating clearances Mr Roker favoured in the past. A Haitian countenance and matching Creole accent are no longer enough, in themselves, to justify official harassment. People working here with the right documentation, whatever their origins, are as entitled to due process, and official respect, as anyone else. Mr Gibson needs to ensure this kind of monumental gaffe never occurs again.
Without such caution, the Bahamas will suffer further from the reputation it has already earned for itself internationally through the shortcomings of the Carmichael Road Detention Centre.
In this "hell hole" – a term applied repeatedly over several years by the international media – ļ¾ Cubans, Haitians and other foreign refugees are routinely abused, presumably because its guards have been exposed to crude anti-foreign attitudes throughout their lives.
These attitudes are felt more subtly in other areas of society, where foreign professionals are now obliged to wait many months for their work permits to be processed, suffering untold inconvenience in the process.
Permit
One American permit-holder told INSIGHT: "I have now been waiting seven months for my permit. This means I can't get Central Bank permission to transfer money, I can't get in and out of the country without considerable difficulty and I can't renew my car licence. In practically every official sense, my life is on hold while the immigration department processes a document.
"The over-riding assumption seems to be that I need them more than they need me, but the truth is that I am here because there is no Bahamian to do my job. My employer needs me to be here, otherwise he wouldn't go to the expense of paying big bucks for a permit.
"The government's approach is one of complete contempt simply because I am a foreigner. Yet this is a country which is far more dependent on foreigners than most. It has no resources of its own and an educational system that is practically defunct. How do they seriously expect to function without outsiders?"
The tourism banking accounting and financial services sectors all depend heavily on foreign help. So, to some extent, does the media.
The Nassau Guardian, which for many years implemented a rigidly anti-foreign employment policy, has now been obliged to hire two senior British journalists in an effort to revive its fortunes.
The reason for this was simple: the paper was being systematically obliterated by its daily rival, The Tribune, which hires senior British journalists alongside its talented Bahamian editorial staff.
The Guardian's bosses came to realise that, without foreign help, their business was in real danger of going into a tailspin from which it might not recover.
In Grand Bahama, the work permit crisis is now hitting businesses very hard. This is in an area fighting desperately to recover from three decades of economic torpor.
The island's already depressed economy is being further harmed by the immigration department's new approach to work permits, with some companies losing key employees.
Jetta J Baptiste-Polynice, president of the Haitian-Bahamian Society, cited a janitorial business which was no longer able to fulfil its contracts. "Why is the government constantly trying to destroy the few business establishments that are struggling to make it?" she asked.
It would be interesting and enlightening to get an answer to that question. But Mr Gibson isn't saying and leading immigration officials rarely return calls. All we know is that, under the new policy, permits are being subjected to much greater scrutiny, causing long delays. So foreign workers who are essential to the national economy are obliged to endure long periods of uncertainty while their permit applications lie on file.
The latest victims of apparent PLP anti-foreign bias are expatriates who want to buy homes here, according to some local realtors.
Although second homes are a vital component in some island economies – Abaco's success is based very largely on part-time residents – it is becoming increasingly difficult for buyers to negotiate their way through growing piles of red tape.
"For a country that needs these investors, the Bahamas shows remarkable reluctance to ease the buying process," said a realty source.
"What they are doing, in effect, is blocking a potentially rich source of revenue. Homeowners, unlike tourists, come for prolonged periods and buy all their everyday needs here. The local economy benefits enormously. Every business on an island like Abaco depends heavily on the foreign element."
The PLP's critics say, however, that anti-foreign bias has been a powerful electoral tool in the past and it's hard for some of its die-hards to shake off the habit. Whipping up anti-foreign fervour was a key role of the 1960s goon squads and became a recurrent characteristic of the Pindling era right into the 1990s.
However, this unscrupulous manipulation of grassroots emotions may no longer be the force it was.
Professionals
Young Bahamian professionals, in particular, are now far more exposed to outside influences than they were, a result of expanded higher education and sophisticated hi-tech communications.
College educated Bahamians are more savvy in the ways of the world than old-style party supporters used to be. It's not as easy for politicians with law degrees to lord it over simple island folk as they used to and walk away with the spoils of power.
A Bahamian professional in his twenties said: "Many Bahamians are now becoming immigrants themselves because they see their futures overseas. Many educated Bahamians are well-established in America, Canada and Europe. Their parents know and understand the benefits of immigration and are therefore more likely to understand how the process works and why foreigners are employed in our own economy.
"College graduates with professional qualifications often see the Bahamas as too limited for them and choose to live elsewhere. As a result, they see themselves as part of a much wider process and recognise that, in certain areas, the Bahamas might always need foreign expertise, just like most other countries in the world with successful economies."
The nation's dependency is exacerbated by the shocking state of its secondary education system, which in many instances is failing to produce literate and numerate students.
Whatever the noble aims of the PLP's Bahamianisation policies in the past, what it produced was a relatively small educated black elite and a massive block of nigh unemployable under-achievers, many of whom made a living through drug dealing and gun crime. This shocking situation continues today.
With no skills in the language or mathematics, no work ethic and no sense of responsibility; growing numbers of young Bahamians can expect no place in the employment market, meaning many more will turn to crime to make their way in the world.
One of the most disappointing facets of "the quiet revolution" of 1967 is that it achieved relatively little in the country's classrooms to reach the much vaunted goal of Bahamianisation. In fact, many very fine foreign teachers fell victim to the Roker purges all those years ago, helping to reverse the drive for better education begun by Cecil Wallace-Whitfield before disillusionment forced him out of the PLP. lt's painful to contemplate just how much Bahamian talent has been squandered since then by the inadequacies of the system.
However, all is not lost. The appointment of Canadian Janyne Hodder as president of the College of the Bahamas is a sign that, at last, a new age enlightenment could be at hand.
Academic
Ms Hodder will arrive in Nassau with an impressive academic pedigree, prolonged exposure to international standards, a first-hand knowledge of Bahamian life and culture, and a real desire to make a contribution to the country's, educational development.
College council chairman Franklyn Wilson has taken some flak over the past two years – notably in reference to the ill-fated appointment of Dr Rodney Smith – but his persistence in getting Ms Hodder into the president's chair might yet prove to be his salvation.
More significantly from the PLP's viewpoint is that Mr Wilson appears to represent a more expansive approach to such matters. Having been educated abroad himself, and enjoyed a successful business [sic] life, he is evidently not burdened by the insecurities which prompt some of his PLP colleagues to adopt absurd postures in taking key decisions of this kind.
Like all developing countries. the Bahamas needs foreign workers at all levels and will continue to do so far into the future. This is a fact of life all politicians need to embrace and acknowledge.
Expelling illegals is a necessary part of the immigration control process, but expatriates with status who are here to do a job should receive the same courtesy, consideration' and respect as everyone else.
In tackling what is undoubtedly a real and pressing immigration problem, Mr Gibson needs to ensure that key workers get fair treatment and be allowed to live secure and stable lives. It's what being a civilised country is all about.
What do you think? Fax 328-2398 or e-mail jmarquis@tribunemedia.net
Source: INSIGHT column from The Tribune newspaper
