EDITOR, The Tribune
The singular obligation that the government and People of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas owe to illegal immigrants is to treat them humanely.
Illegal immigrants who fragrantly break the laws of The Bahamas, particularly those who do so with impunity, are an affront to the sovereignty of The Bahamas. We must deal with this perennial issue directly and forcefully, but humanely.
Perhaps I run the risk of seeming insensitive, but we as a country have been wrestling with this serious problem of illegal immigrants for far too long.
Both major political parties have toyed with the issue of addressing illegal immigration head on. Certain Bahamian businesses have benefited from illegal immigration. Regular Bahamians have simply turned a blind eye. It is claimed that persons in the Ministry of Immigration have allegedly sold the sovereignty of The Bahamas for personal gain.
These and other muddying issues have caused the problem to mushroom and unfortunately, draconian measures must now be deployed to correct the proliferation of this vexing social dilemma.
Charity must begin at home. Any help that the government of The Bahamas offers to illegal immigrants must not exceed or detract from the primary responsibility to secure the welfare of Bahamians. Lawyers, special interest groups and international watchdogs who call on The Bahamas to throw open its gates and allow illegal immigrants into the country indiscriminately might wish to focus their attention on the atrocities committed to persons illegally entering Asian, Arab and African countries, and even the great United States of America.
Even though this is a frustrating issue for us, The Bahamas, as a whole, certainly treats illegal immigrants better than these countries do.
The national interest and sovereignty of our Bahamas must prevail.
BISHOP SIMEON B HALL
Nassau
May 21, 2019
Comments
moncurcool 4 years, 11 months ago
COULDN'T AGREE MORE.
Well_mudda_take_sic 4 years, 11 months ago
Couldn't disagree more. It's the fact that we treat them too well that has even more of them coming to our shores illegally. These illegal aliens are treated better then Bahamians who end up serving time for non-violent crimes behind bars in Her Majesty's Hell Hole. We need much tougher new or changed laws that do not give these illegal aliens access to our our financial system and public education system.
We now have many Bahamians who are being treated inhumanely by their own government as a result of the toll taken by the Haitian invasion on our country's limited financial resources, especially in the areas of public education and healthcare.
We need to break off all diplomatic ties with the government of Haiti because it now views these illegal aliens as an important source of hard currency for Haiti and therefore has a policy of encouraging rather than stopping Haitians who choose to come to the Bahamas illegally. From a policy perspective, It makes more economic's cheaper for us to build new detention centres and get the word out that illegal Haitians will no longer be able to live and freely roam among Bahamian taxpayers who can no longer afford to make ends meet themselves as a result of the Haitian invasion. The Bahamian people have done enough and its high time the human rights groups take Haiti to task for not looking after the interests of the Bahamian people. Our government should be billing the government of Haiti for all costs Bahamian taxpayers incur in building and operating the new detention centres. Enough is enough!
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