The Tribune

The immigration crisis in the USA involving the detention of children that has dominated the news agenda for days has attracted widespread criticism and condemnation. Audio recordings of young children in distress after being separated from their families attempting to enter the country from Mexico have inevitably provoked public outrage both in America and overseas. People have reacted with shock and horror to photographs of children held in cages and tents in so-called internment camps.

Clearly, this was precipitated by the Trump administration’s recent “zero tolerance” policy in dealing with those who cross the border illegally and then face arrest and prosecution. It has been claimed that recently some two thousand children have been detained while the asylum cases of their parents were being heard. The government maintained that this was being done in accordance with the demands of the law while critics of the practice say that it was a deliberate and premeditated policy designed to deter other potential migrants and that the White House was using it as a bargaining chip to persuade the Democrats to agree to fund a border wall.

By Wednesday this week, when the firestorm seemed to have reached a peak, President Trump signed an executive order to end the practice. This seems to have resolved the immediate issue, but there remain doubts about a backlog of earlier detainees and the reunification of children with their parents while some children may even be unaccounted for. It nonetheless showed that, in an extreme instance like this, public outrage and pressure can successfully bring about a dramatic change of a deeply flawed policy.

It beggars belief that the US authorities were unable to devise a means of speeding up the immigration process and, in the meantime, keeping families together – and the executive order may not have entirely fixed the problem. So the controversy may not be over and it remains to be seen what long-term damage will be done to the Trump presidency by a policy which has been variously described as unconscionable and an affront to America’s democratic principles and moral values.

Distinguishing between economic migrants wanting a better life and genuine asylum seekers escaping persecution in their own countries remains at the heart of the thorny issue of immigration. It has become almost a global problem. If the existing world order is to be preserved, the uncontrolled mass movement of people across international frontiers is unacceptable and unsustainable. There is a danger of major disruption in receiving countries that could even lead to the collapse of existing nation states. However, offering a safe haven to people in extreme distress or in fear of their lives is an accepted obligation of mature democracies in the name of humanity.

In recent years, migration has become a serious concern in Europe, mainly because of those fleeing from civil war in Syria as well as those crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa. The 1985 Schengen treaty ended visa and passport checks thus creating a borderless European Union as a step towards closer political union. Britain declined to join, with the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher stating that abolition of frontier controls would prevent a country from being able to protect its citizens from crime and to stop the movement of illegal immigrants.

But the Schengen arrangements meant, for example, that hundreds of thousands of migrants – especially asylum seekers from Syria - allowed into Germany under Chancellor Merkel’s open door policy in 2015 could also travel freely within the EU, as could those who had successfully landed in Italy or Greece. This forced other EU countries eventually to reinstate border controls and the bloc has now become deeply divided about the massive influx of migrants.

There are growing tensions not only in Italy with its new populist and anti-migrant government and Greece but also in countries like Austria as well as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic whose hard line policies have led to their refusal to take in refugees under the EU quota sharing system. It is also notable that opposition to free movement of people within the single market was a major factor in the United Kingdom’s referendum decision to leave the EU.

Meanwhile, it is worth repeating that here in The Bahamas we are faced with an influx of migrants from Haiti seeking a better life and, unless local conditions there improve for its ten million citizens, the flow of refugees and economic migrants will continue. But those who wish to live here must do so legally. So we believe that most Bahamians support the FNM Government’s robust line in enforcing the law. It is equally important that immigrants should be treated fairly and humanely in accordance with international standards and that the actions of immigration officials should be under constant scrutiny by the courts.

While realising that Ministers are preoccupied with the economy and the controversy about increased taxes, we hope that the promised amendments to the Immigration Act will emerge soon and that the Prime Minister’s instructions about establishing an Immigration Board will result in action before too long. This is important since it is inappropriate in a modern democracy for the Cabinet to make decisions about citizenship and residency. In our new transparent system of government such matters should be determined by an independent board against established criteria that have been made public.