The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I recently noted a post by an opinionated Senator which I have up to this point tried to ignore... However, I feel the need to address matters when they emanate from persons seated in the Upper House of our Legislature due to what appears to be an inadvertent reliance on assumptions which are not grounded in reality nor placed in their proper historical context.

First and foremost, for a Senator to suggest that every adult aged Haitian national in the shelter given temporary status and a general work permit for a year whether they entered illegally and/or had a job offer or not is utter nonsense. Can you imagine the consequences of such a policy? Numbers in shelters would swell to 10,000 overnight. And what of all the people who have paid $2000 for legal workers who entered the country via legitimate means? What type of precedent is a seated senator suggesting here?

He goes on to state that if it were up to him – and thank God it isn’t – if they prove they got a job and were paying rent they can stay in our Bahamas and if not I guess his bright plan is that we should have to go and start from scratch and find them in the shanty towns they will have built if they couldn’t find a job and a place to live after we allowed them to be here illegally for a year on some ill conceived temp status with no job yet having a work permit...what exactly is this Senator proposing? And who is he proposing it for? Which people is he the voice for?

Right now we have shelters that are 90 percent full of undocumented illegal immigrants. We offer an incentive for information on how they got here now, temp status and possible asylum for any who speak up and testify against smugglers. And truth is we know what docks and beaches they leave from in Haiti and we know where their historical landing points are. By now we could have sent Bahamian-Haitian police to infiltrate smuggling networks and to have made the ride themselves.

We need to stop all this talk. And get serious:

1. Blockade the southern passage. We all know this can be done using existing equipment. Boats leave from the north shore of Haiti. From our big boats stationed on the maritime boarder we would know when they push off and observe them patiently with drones sending go fast boats to intercept and turn them back or tell them they have to sail north via the eastern seaboard in the Atlantic Ocean - their choice but no passage through our waters. If the DR navy so anxious to help and can send two boats and soldiers to Abaco, they can help by patrolling their northern waters aggressively too and stop their poachers from crossing the border under threat of being treated as a hostile force by our RBDF; and in fact participate in joint pursuit, arresting poachers who flee back into their waters as being under hot pursuit by our forces. Any who enter our waters can be detained and processed at base in Inagua in tent cities and sent home.

2. Aggressive prosecution of captains and financiers under human trafficking laws with maximum 25 year sentences. Offers of plea bargains for captains who give information on the trafficking networks.

3. Prosecute those found employing illegals and hit them with heavy punitive fines.

4. Seize shanty town properties using any one of various legal orders available starting with health and safety orders and issue mandatory eviction notices. Legals and illegals out. Displaced legals persons can apply to social services for housing assistance and if they are unable to afford housing under the terms of their legal employment which by law can’t be under minimum wage then they need to go home as they can’t be allowed to live as squatters.

5. Clearing of those properties and simultaneously acquiring them via compulsory acquisition orders compensation being given to any persons presenting valid legal standing and valid legal title.

6. Government has already given a cut off point for applications. A deadline which has passed for all those who would have turned 18. There were tens of thousands who applied not sure how many were approved. But that said, we have a cut off point.

7. People presently in shelters need to be processed and those not in good standing need to be detained and sent back to Haiti en masse.

8. A system of seasonal and/or temporary work permits needs to be established for seasonal workers with a maximum of three to five years renewals also needs to be implemented.

There is no easy painless overnight one step fix to this issue. Anyone who thinks so is a fool who fails to understand the depth of the problem. Human trafficking is an industry wherein the poorest people in the world are exploited by the darkest hearts in the world.

Beyond that, the history goes deep: the displaced Haitian aristocracy that led their famed revolution and then fed on the poor people as did the French (until they were disposed by a Bahamian born dictator) fled to The Bahamas and became parts of its ruling black land owning elite. The Goodmans, Dillets, and many others with names that were switched to their Anglo equivalents... and behind them they opened the doors for others. We are still finding persons connected to Papa Doc’s tonton macoute who also fled this direction on his downfall...and now deported serious gangsters from the US.

The truth is to a great and undeniable extent from the pre-Columbus era the peoples of Haiti and The Bahamas have been intermixed and as such intertwined on multiple cultural, social and economic levels. That said, there is a border. There are laws. And this is our Bahamas. All of which need to be fully and completely respected.

DR set the precedent. We can legitimately and justifiably expel whoever is found to be undocumented especially after the amnesty period.

Trump and Australia have set the precedent re border policing and detention facilities – we can justifiably turn them around and or detain and process them in tent cities on the base in Inagua.

Finally this notion of being Haitian Bahamian is in itself divisive. As is the concept of white Bahamian, Chinese Bahamian... we are all Bahamians, period. Those of Haitian descent left Haiti for very strong and compelling reasons to have risked their lives to do so. They should be on the very front line of protecting the culture that dwells within these borders. A culture that was welcoming when all of their neighbours in the Greater Antilles, Dominican Republic that they share a border with, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba all have extreme closed door immigration policies.

While the revolution was the greatest act of defiance and liberation from colonial oppression in the black world to date; I am a Bahamian and my cry is for those of us Born Free Bahamians to own full freedoms and to have full rights to opportunities and ownership in our Bahamas - well ahead of the rights of those who choose to Immigrate illegally to our country and have become a non tax paying burden to every system in our society as their illegal status breeds a black market system of illegality around their entire existence feeding and festering among the epidemic corruption which is deeply embedded within our society... typical for a Senator to throw a five cent ill-conceived comment directed at appeasement of a certain demographic that is highly represented in a certain area of New Providence that he is praying ill on the present representative in hopes of getting the red head nod for the seat as the solution to a $100m problem that has been brewing for and has had its roots sunk for the better part of 100+ years.

JOHN BOSTWICK

Nassau,

September 30, 2019.