The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Your editorial  (May 28), castigating Brent Symonette and Immigration, could have had some balance if it were recognised that Immigration has been, (second only perhaps next to Fox Hill Prison in terms of dysfunctional Government Agencies), a disastrous department over the last 50 years.

Not long after 1968, a very close family friend of mine, who had come here at the age of three, with a Bahamian mother of long Bahamian ancestry, and was working for IBM, realised that he did not have Bahamian Citizenship, and therefore began the process of applying. He had recently married, bought a house, and had two children in Nassau. Several years went by and IBM was under pressure I suppose to regularise his status, but probably because he was white, and born in the UK, nothing happened. Eventually, IBM offered him a job in Canada, so he sold his house and moved his family lock stock and barrel to Canada, at great personal cost. A couple of years later, a letter arrived saying that his Citizenship had been approved! Say no more.

There were thousands of these cases back then, particularly when The Bahamas was being Rokerised, and one case that seemed quite funny at the time, was of a lady client of one of my uncles, who had applied for Citizenship, and waited the rest of her life for it to be granted. One day my uncle got a letter from Immigration saying that so and so’s Citizenship had been approved. He had to write back thanking them, but advising that the poor soul had died a year or two before.

So, Brent is indeed at the tail end of a Ministry that, to use a popular term now, SUCCESSIVE Bahamas governments, have frequently weaponised for political advantage or punishment. In many ways the Bahamian people should have to bear the cost of this political war because for the most part of this time, they have allowed tyrant governments to wreak havoc on the people.

BRUCE G RAINE

Nassau

May 28, 2019