By LETRE SWEETING

Tribune Staff Reporter

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

IMMIGRATION Minister Keith Bell said about 1500 applications for Bahamian citizenship at the Department of Immigration would be affected by last week’s landmark Privy Council ruling.

Officials have struggled to determine how many people now expect to be recognized as citizens because their unwed father is a Bahamian and their mother is a foreigner. Mr Bell’s comments are the first indication of how many people who have started the citizenship application process are immediately affected by the ruling.

He spoke about the matter at an event hosted by the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) on Thursday.

“Approximately 1500 applications have been made in the system that will be impacted in some way or the other,” he said. “I think Bahamians are warming to what the impact of the citizenship ruling is, and so let me just indicate what it is: this is something for all of us to get involved in and collaborate and make your recommendations to us.”

 “The impact of the Privy Council decision is there is no need to apply to Immigration anymore. They can go straight to the Passport Office and get their documentation and so forth and etc.”

 While the courts have affirmed that children are Bahamians at birth if their father is Bahamian, regardless of their mother’s nationality, how to determine paternity in such cases is unsettled.

 “You will find that generally, a person born in the Bahamas at Princess Margaret Hospital, the birth will be recorded, you will have a birth certificate,” Mr Bell said.

 “But you do have many cases of persons who are born and the birth certificates, the birth is not registered, and so at some point you have to get a birth certificate.

 “What is significant as Bahamians though — the judgement is important, it is online and I invite you to read it –– Chief Justice Ian Winder, when he determined that case, the case really was about three individuals who had applied for citizenship and these persons applied by way of affidavit evidence.”

 “Over the years I used to work in the Commercial Crime Unit at CID. We had substantial fraudulent affidavits and in one case one of the affidavits was not made up until three years after the person was born and it is not recorded until ten years later. In that particular case, the father is nowhere in the picture at all.

“So the honourable Chief Justice did not make a ruling in respect to the cases. He made a ruling in respect to the constitutional point as to whether or not a child born to a Bahamian man is entitled to citizenship as a right. That’s what he made a decision on, not the specific cases.

 “So as Bahamians then, we have to ask ourselves and you have to advise your government as to whether or not in such instances whether we require further evidence in the absence of birth certificates and whether or not we ought to ensure that there is proof of paternity.

 “Should there be DNA evidence to ensure that we minimize fraud? Those are the matters we have to determine as a society with respect to that. It definitely impacts the labour force and it definitely impacts immigration.”