IMMIGRATION TOWN MEETING

April 1999 Table of Contents - Current Issue of The Abaco Journal - Abaco Bahamas' Home Page

IMMIGRATION TOWN MEETING

As part of the 'Exceeding Expectations' National Immigration Month, a town meeting was held on 22nd February at St John the Baptist Parish Hall, Marsh Harbour. On the platform were Director of Immigration Melvin Seymour, Assistant Deputy Director Lambert Campbell, Chief Immigration Officer for Abaco Roosevelt Newbold, MP Robert Sweeting, Island Administrator Everette Hart, Chief Councillor for Central Abaco Mike Malone, local activist Patrick J Bethel and Master of Ceremonies Bernis Pinder.

The meeting was led off by Mr Bethel, who pointed out that The Bahamas was a small country with a fragile economy which should be guarded closely. He was concerned by the large number of immigrants on the island. He felt that the answer to the problem was greater integration into the community but also felt that government officials looked upon the situation as a hot potato and were burying their heads in the sand. To illustrate how dependent Abaco had become on Haitian labour, Mr Bethel said he had conducted an informal survey that very day. 225 construction labourers had returned to the mainland from the cays and some 40-50% of them were of Haitian descent or nationality.

Mr Bethel's remarks led into questions from the floor fielded by Director Seymour. The plight of Haitian residents - who made up most of the audience - was referred to by several of the questioners. A notable local hospitality industry hostess said quite bluntly that the Haitians were here because Bahamians just did not want to work. They are their own worst enemies and, once they achieve a position of any responsibility, they keep their own people down.

Integration? another queried. Go to Hialeah. Haitians do not want to be integrated, they want to be with their own people in their own communities. Many more of them were illegal than most people allowed for and were making good wages on the island.

Bahamian children have to travel from Hope Town to the mainland for their education, another speaker said, because Hope Town School was filled with Haitians.

"The problem is caused by the white people," was the claim of one member of the public. "They employ the Haitians as cheap labour and do not care about the consequences." The same speaker said his many communications to Department of Immigration went unheeded.

Several businessmen queried the procedures for the granting of work permits that appeared to be tailored to favour a pre-selected candidate. Others complained that people - mostly Americans - were granted a work permit in one area and then worked in another more lucrative field.

Director Seymour is a public servant, not a politician, and was unable to venture very far down the paths which certain questioners from the floor tried to lead him. This caused some of the questioners to become somewhat testy, feeling that Mr Seymour was being evasive and offhand in his answers. On several occasions Director Seymour pointed out that the Department of Immigration was a far more humane and tolerant arm of government than it was once perceived to be. It appeared, however, that some members of the audience wanted to return to the days of impromptu investigations, hassling of winter residents and long term visitors, and police raids on suspected illegal immigrants. That, Mr Seymour made clear, was not the regular policy of today's kinder and gentler Immigration Department.

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