Comparing US & Bahamian Immigration Policies

by Larry Smith

The most recent image of American immigration policy is hundreds of miles of fencing along the Mexican border guarded by thousands of troops. And our most recent image is of police officers dragging immigrant families from their beds in night-time raids.

But look behind the images, and the realities are quite different.

Although the Bush Administration can be blamed for many things, the immigration plan it rolled out two and a half years ago was a far-reaching reform that should become a model for our own efforts to deal with illegal Haitian immigration.

Arguments over this issue in both countries are startlingly alike. They run something like this: We must secure our porous borders to hold back the flood of impoverished migrants who drag down wages and exploit social services. The fact that illegals can easily find jobs, with little risk of prosecution by those who hire them, makes a mockery of the law. And it is not racist to resist being swamped by an alien culture.

Immigrants (mostly Mexicans and other hispanics) constitute about 12 per cent of the 300 million people living in the United States, and about half (or 15 million) are undocumented. In the Bahamas, illegal Haitian immigrants make up perhaps 20 per cent of the total population of some 320,000. And (according to the Haitian ambassador) there are 25,000 documented Haitians living here as well.

Large sections of American and Bahamian society are deeply worried about these statistics. According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, a non-partisan research group, a growing number of Americans “believe immigrants are a burden to the country, taking jobs and housing and creating strains on the healthcare system. Many people also worry about the cultural impact of the expanding number of newcomers in the US."

And an equally growing number of Bahamians are upset about what they consider the “creolisation” of the country. That term is a catch-all for a variety of impacts – from unregulated squatter settlements, to creole classes in public schools, rising crime rates, the prospect of infectious diseases and cultural disintegration.

“Bahamians are having their own country stolen from them and ruined in the process," one commentator said a few years ago, claiming the existence of an organised Haitian crime network here. "We have stateless people giving birth to more stateless people. If we don't do something about it we are finished. It is a crisis situation."

And President Bush has offered similar cautions: “There are fears that illegal immigration creates “an underclass of workers who are vulnerable to exploitation and consigned to live in the shadows....The American people expect us to meet our responsibility and deliver immigration reform that fixes the problems in the current system.”

So in January, 2004 Bush proposed a programme to match “willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs....This new system should be clear and efficient, so employers are able to find workers quickly and simply.”

Registered migrants would get a three-year renewable permit that will allow them to travel to and from their home country without fear of being denied re-entry into the United States.

But popular opinion is divided. Last December, conservatives in the House of Representatives approved a tough measure to build vast border fences, force employers to verify the legality of their workers, make illegal immigration a felony and tighten frontier security generally. This law ignored the president’s guest worker proposal.

According to an article in the Washington Post, “Supporters -- including the House Republican leadership -- are convinced their measure has the ardent support of constituents fed up with illegal aliens flooding through the border.”

But in the Senate, there was bipartisan support for legislation co-authored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Edward Kennedy that would combine border enforcement measures with more liberal guest worker and status regularisation programmes.

The bill that passed in the Senate last month improves frontier security, establishes a guest worker programme and gives an eventual shot at permanent residency and citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants. Those illegally resident for over five years would be able to stay if they settled back taxes, paid a fine and learned to speak English.

A new electronic identity card for employees would hold bosses accountable for hiring decisions. Employers would face fines of $20,000 for each illegal worker and possible jail time for repeat offenders. Amazingly, the Senate bill would allow an estimated 103 million people to legally immigrate to the US over the next 20 years—fully one-third of the current population.

House and Senate leaders must now negotiate a compromise bill that could be enacted this year. It will be the first major immigration legislation since 1986 when a reform bill offered a widespread amnesty for illegal immigrants, as well as tougher border controls and measures aimed at eliminating the hiring of unauthorized workers. That law gave green cards to almost three million illegal immigrants.

Critics of tougher enforcement measures say that in the 20 years since the last major immigration reform, US spending on border control increased by more than 500 per cent. But the number of illegal migrants rose from less than four million to over 12 million in the same period.

According to Bloomberg Newswire, “The congressional debate on immigration has sparked demonstrations across the nation by people demanding immigrant rights, while creating an election-year breach between Republicans who want to focus on border control and those who back new immigration programmes.”

Former Senator Alan Simpson – who drafted the 1986 US law - said the current debate was all about "emotion, fear, guilt and racism." And his comment could just as well be applied to the Bahamas, especially now that the electoral ‘stupid is as stupid does’ season is upon us.

Other than commissioning the International Organisation for Migration to conduct an immigrant survey, the government has said and done little about the Haitian issue over the past four years. And the IOM report itself remains a closely held Cabinet secret, while ordinary Bahamians get more and more exercised over the situation.

This is despite the fact that in a speech last year, former Immigration Minister Vincent Peet called for a “greater national discourse with all stakeholders of the community on the legal Haitian situation and the illegal immigration problem."

The reality is that our policymakers have done absolutely nothing about the Haitian question since the previous government negotiated an agreement with Aristide in the mid-1990s. In fact, there was precious little debate until recently, when the government began rounding up Haitian families to make itself look more muscular on immigration enforcement.

As we said: “stupid is as stupid does”. On the one hand you have ministers like Dr Marcus Bethel cautioning us not to inflame sensitivities, while on the other you have Shane Gibson employing “gestapo-like” tactics against Haitians, many of whom are legal, law-abiding and hardworking residents.

Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said these arrests were “calculated attempts to fan the flames of fear and bigotry”. And he rightly urged legal residents to sue the government for wrongful arrest. Human rights activists joined in condemning the government’s bully boy tactics.

The people who should be dragged from their beds are the unscrupulous employers who hire Haitians at slave wages and fail to provide for their needs, the criminals who smuggle Haitians into the country, and the cronies who allegedly sell visas and permits...not to mention the politicos who consistently fail to address the real issues while whining all the way to self-destruction.

Stupid is as stupid does. Maybe someone could use that as an electoral slogan.

Comments

[if only we listened to Roker]

I emailed the IOM rep in Nassau and he has yet to report to me his findings, now I "get it" Shouldn't this report be public information by now, what is so scary about the report that the government choose to keep it a secret? Any word on what MOFA stipulates in the revisited Haitian accord says?How do you feel about giving the stateless people Bahamian citizenship?

[larry smith]

Of course it should be public. How else are we to understand what is going on in our own country? Why not keep the census secret too?

They just don't want to deal with the hard issues - so they will become harder down the road.

We have to deal with realities.

[Rick Lowe]

Very good as usual Larry.
I don't think building a wall or other 'dramatic' responses will solve the issue the American's or The Bahamas face with illegal immigration.
On a recent trip to the US I had a discussion with a Mexican lady who had been in the US for 35 years and had legal documentation. She indicated she had experienced racism for the very first time in recent months.
Last night while at the instant teller three very young Bahamian kids were verbally abusing an older man walking on the other side of the street because he appeared to be a Haitian.
There has to be a more rational approach from politicians to the immigration issue rather than creating monsters to raise fears which causes citizens to react in the ways described above.

[bahamianworldcitizen]

Comment concerning IOM. This organisation, although it has helped with repatriation efforts and funding for workshops, has a serious credibility problem. I think migration management issues should be handled by a Bahamian consultant.

Bahamian politicans should be ashamed of themselves for using the Haitian issues to gain political favour. If you ask me why the IOM report is not public yet, I would say that anything at 'Cabinet' level is perpetually stalled because of competing political agendas. What ever happened to the Haitian migration meetings between Directors and Permanent Secretaries?

Comment on immigration reform.
A so-called 'rational' approach to migration and guest workers has been taken by many Gulf countries since the 1970s. Ask any 3rd generation Kashmiri, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Indian or Pakistani how he/she feels having to walk around with an identity card and having no right to vote, own property, own a business, secondary education, religious worship, etc., etc.

The US model is suited for a country that has over 10 million illegal immigrants. The Bahamas needs to grant amnesty, increase border patrols, hire a new set of immigration officials, weed out the corrupt ones and actively engage with the Haitian Government on economic, social and cultural issues. Forget the politics already! There is one idea from the US that I like. The 'tax id' card. How about a NI id card for illegal migrants so they pay for services?

[bahamianworldcitizen]

Thank you for your email. Please find my responses below:

1. (What is the credibility problem with IOM?)
Regarding IOM concerns, excerpt from a study by Human Rights Watch 2003:
"IOM has no formal mandate to monitor human rights abuses or to protect the rights of migrants and other persons, even though literally millions of people worldwide participate in IOM-sponsored programs and projects. Human Rights Watch began to monitor and document IOM operations in the field in the early 1990s. In 1993, we documented IOM's role in the asylum determination system imposed on Haitian asylum seekers by the United States and concluded that the determination procedure violated the right to seek asylum.5 Ten years later, we continue to find IOM complicit in situations that threaten people’s human rights in many countries ..."
IOM receives much of its funding from the United States. It is a political organisation, despite it's use of seemingly 'rights-based' discourse. Many of the persons employed by IOM are former US State Department officials that retain strong ties to the US Government, including the present expert stationed in the Bahamas. IOM does a lot of good in migration management, but it does not have the sort of accountability that a UN organisation like UN High Commissioner for Refugees has.

2. New migrants v regularisation of current illegal migrants. This is a cyclical issue. In order to solve one issue, you must address the other. Failure to address one issues will eventually affect the other issue and leave the system open to exploitation.

3. I was really only joking about illegal migrants paying NI, however your article raised the issue of illegals draining social services. The only way to get illegals out of the healthcare and education system is to have them forcibly removed or regularise them, collect NI and find a way to pay for services. 5 hours in the public maternity ward at PMH can demonstrate the need for reform of our social services.

Payment of NIB happens with a contribution from the employer and from the employee. In many cases, persons employed in service industry jobs making less than 15,000 BSD per year choose to not make contributions to NIB. In the family islands many employers encourage this by explaining that the employee will loose money to the government, etc. There are currently several family island development projects who have taken this approach with their day labourers. Many wealthy Bahamians also find ways of avoiding paying NI contributions as well as customs duties and various stamp taxes(until we have a proper taxation system, these are our only ways of creating revenue for social services).

4. (As for secrecy, I would say that this government is conditioned to withhold information from the public as a matter of course.)
Bahamas Government + secrecy = lack of democracy and accountability. I still feel that stalled agendas and incompetence are major factors in the reason why the Bahamas has no clear migration policy.

[bahamasinmyheart]

Excellent and well said.

[krysten parsons]

i think that the bahamain and the alegal imagrints thats in the U.S
are pretty much the same. but what about if the bahamain imagration peoples have family in the bahamas [that is aloud to be there] there trieng to see them and live with them and spend every minute with them before they die. so im aganst the imagration thing. because i mean police officers pulling citizens out of their beds just because their not aloud in the U.S or the bahamas . i mean come on its a free country and we should be able to do whatever we want . if were not able to do anything we want to do then whats the point of having our troops go over to iraq risking their lives for nothing??? did u ever think about that ?