EDITOR, The Tribune.
The upcoming referendum has it merits, its positives and negatives, but the statelessness of thousands of people born in The Bahamas and cannot be identified with The Bahamas or any other country is sickening.
I have been burdened with this for too long. We have family and friends who are mixed in this boiling pot. This most degrading and humiliating experience for too many, must be addressed and addressed forthwith.
Too many would look the other way, turn a blind eye or cover their ears because they don’t want to hear it, but this larger than life elephant in the room is getting bigger.
Today, more of us are either descended from or associated with Haiti. It is no secret that Members of Parliament are Haitians or with heavy connections. Every profession is loaded with Haitians. The Police Force, Immigration, Customs and the Prison are soaked with people from Haiti.
So to think that this does not affect the very fibre of The Bahamas would be asinine.
Successive governments, intentionally would not addressed this because they want to continue to exploit the people. Immigration officers want to continue their shakedown on unsuspecting Haitians, pretending to detain them at the Detention Centre to collect money, some Police offices shake down to get “lunch money”.
It is not right, that law-abiding Bahamians are sitting idly by and saying nothing. We know that the stateless people are angry and getting angrier. I would be angry too, had I been in the same predicament.
The present government would do this country a favour, by appealing to their humane side and fix this vexing problem. Clean up the situation and maybe, just maybe some of the crime and unrest that is being visited upon our country will subside.
Let us stop saying that this country is a Christian nation and prove it by our actions
IVOINE W. INGRAHAM, JP
Nassau,
May 21, 2016.
Comments
Economist 7 years, 11 months ago
Good letter. So many Bahamians are 1st generation Bahamians from Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica, to mention a few. They all got their citizenship before independence.
Sir Lyndon was only just a Bahamian by the skin of is teeth.
sheeprunner12 7 years, 11 months ago
I agree with the writer in principle .......... but this is a political conundrum ....... if the Government invokes Article 13 and regulates ALL persons born in The Bahamas to two non-Bahamian parents, or to single non-Bahamian women after 1973 ......... then we will see a flood of people demanding citizenship (maybe 50,000) that will horrify the majority of Bahamians ........... can politicians take that risk???????......... BTW: the children born in The Bahamas to non-Bahamians are not stateless by our law or their parents' laws ..... they are Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, etc ............ they just PREFER to seek Bahamian citizenship
sheeprunner12 7 years, 11 months ago
Further ........ it is an economic/human resource problem .......... we are losing on average about 10 to 15% of our brightest students/skilled persons each year (the rich, smart kids/professionals who go off to college/work and never come back home) ......... who is replacing this brain drain????? ....... generally poor, illiterate, unskilled migrants looking for a better life from Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, DR, China, Philippines etc .......... we get little monetary reward from the Bahamians who leave and in return we have to provide financial support (police/educate/health/welfare/jobs etc) for the migrants who come here (mostly illegally) ......... then it is no wonder why ordinary Bahamians are pissed off with the political and social elite in this country who have benefited on both sides of this brain drain ......... and in return the ordinary Bahamians are faced with a deteriorating dangerous society, higher taxes, fewer jobs and more public debt ................... IT IS NOT FAIR TO THE AVERAGE BAHAMIAN
DEDDIE 7 years, 11 months ago
A referendum on the issue most likely will result in the status quo. What the government can do is upon them turning eighteen, these individual could go through a one day swearing in ceremony and apply for a passport right away. The three to ten year wait is whats fueling their discontentment.
sheeprunner12 7 years, 11 months ago
You think so????????? ................... BOL ......... you mean to get their non-Bahamian passport, hey?????
Economist 7 years, 11 months ago
We need to fix this. We have a situation were a Bahamian woman has a child with her foreign husband in Nassau.......child automatically a Bahamian Citizen.
They go to college in another country and have another child.......no Bahamian Citizenship for child.
Family return to Bahamas 2 years later with their Bahamian child and foreign child. How can your full sibling, of the same married mother and father, be a foreigner, just because they were born outside The Bahamas? It is ridiculous. Children are both schooled and raised in The Bahamas. But we continue to treat one as foreign.
Sickened 7 years, 10 months ago
This is a VERY complex issue which this referendum touches upon. This referendum may be about equality but it is also about immigration. These issues need to be dealt with holistically if the government wants any part of this to succeed.
Well_mudda_take_sic 7 years, 10 months ago
The first 3 bills are fatally flawed and wide open to abuse......the door will be opened to many foreigners obtaining Bahamian citizenship in exchange for agreeing to vote PLP down the road. Our country will be flooded with cheap foreign labour at a time when Bahamian families are having great difficulty feeding, clothing, educating and buying medicine for their children. The PLP can't provide us with decent paying jobs yet they want to let thousands of foreigners into our country so that they get more votes to stay in power. Go figure! As for the fourth bill, it's all about breaking down the institution of marriage to satisfy the divide and conquer policies of the political elite and their favored cronies. Wake up Bahamians.....it's important for all of us voters to get to the polls on June 7th and vote a resounding "No" to all 4 of these bills. These bills and the referendum are not about gender-equality; don't let the corrupt Christie-led PLP government pull the wool over your eyes! Vote "No" to avoid Haitians and Chinese becoming the majority, leaving poor Bahamians as a minority group within their own country. Generations of Bahamians have fought too hard for majority rule and now our corrupt Christie-led PLP government seeks to have that taken away from us. We must all vote "No" to all four of the bills to preserve our Bahamian cultural and ethnic identity, and to avoid foreign males marry Bahamian men to acquire Bahamian citizenship and foreign woman marrying Bahamian women to get Bahamian citizenship.
Economist 7 years, 10 months ago
Bill 1 deals with the children of a married Bahamian woman. How is that cheap foreign labour?
sheeprunner12 7 years, 10 months ago
As for me and my house ........ we are voting NO,NO,NO and NO .......... there is no issue of statelessness here when it comes to non-Bahamians being born here ....... it is an issue of where they prefer to live as adults and what the politicians are using as carrots at election time ........ issuing passports for votes (that is criminal)
Emac 7 years, 10 months ago
Sorry Mr. Ingraham, but there are no stateless Haitians in the Bahamas, at least not according to Haiti's constitution. So please stop the bullshit. And yes both political parties are guilty of political pandering regarding the many Haitian descendants born here. But if any Haitian child born of a Haitian parent want a passport, he or she can go to the Haitian Embassy to apply and get a passport without any hassle at all. So please stop using the word stateless. Now you're gonna have the apologetic people commenting here who will insist that these people were born here, that they know no other culture. Yet as soon as they are old enough to know right from wrong they exalt the Haitian flag above the Bahamian flag and look at Bahamians as the enemy. No....They should really be angry at their own parents who snuck into this country, and instead of their parents ceasing the opportunity to upgrade their living conditions from that of Haiti, they decided instead to have a dozen children and live in a small gad dam shack on somebody's land. Then they cry out saying how they are out casts of society. Sorry, no sympathy here... Get that BS outta here! It will be NO NO NO NO for me also!
sheeprunner12 7 years, 10 months ago
For the record ..........Is this a Vote YES argument ??????? ........ then it speaks to the underlying motive/agenda of the PLP government's support for this Hologram Referendum
Economist 7 years, 10 months ago
All I see are large number of scared Bahamian men. The people they are worried about getting citizenship are already here and they will not be going anywhere whether you vote yes or no.
If you vote yes many more will pay taxes. If you vote "no" YOU will pay extra to keep them, your choice.
Vote 'No" and you pay to keep them.
Vote "yes" and they will pay for themselves.
Vote "no" won't send them out of The Bahamas.
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