Politicole: Illegal Immigrant Sympathisers Who Attack Bahamas Immigration Law
By NICOLE BURROWS:
Nassau, The Bahamas:
IT comes as no surprise that the people with the loudest voices, with the most brazen of accusations about The Bahamas’ approach to the management of illegal immigrants and our level of “inhumanity” and “unChristianness” in the country are, in fact, not Bahamian, and/or are not living/have not lived in or near to the end results of illegal immigration in a small country of islands like ours.
Rarely
are these big-mouthed voices the voices of Bahamians, particularly the
kind of Bahamians who are still struggling in The Bahamas to make decent
lives for themselves, so that they don’t also feel the need to
illegally inundate someone else’s country.
Illegal
immigration sympathisers hit below the belt with insults about our lack
of compassion, or lack of Christianity, and it is bewildering.
What
is “unChristian” about enforcing our laws – finally? Christians
shouldn’t obey laws or follow regulations? What kind of Christianity is
that? Even Christianity has its own laws and I don’t think they condone
the besieging of a country whose people have welcomed you or at least
been tolerant of your needs since you first sought refuge inside its
borders.
What
is Christian about Haitians threatening Bahamians (on any level),
illegally populating their country in droves, and then telling them it’s
not enough? How can it be that anyone could expect this to be done to
Bahamians and they not feel some type of way about it?
Moreover,
how is the welfare of illegal immigrants and their offspring a more
humanitarian cause than the welfare of legal citizens of a country and
their offspring? Shouldn’t a country get to decide priority for itself?
Who is protecting the interest of the legal Bahamian living legally in
the Bahamas?
Are
we as a country, as a world, so accustomed to being slack and passive
that to do what is obedient, to follow the laws of a land actually seems
unfair? When did right become wrong?
What
if me and 49,999 of my fellow Bahamians, natural-born or naturalised,
rolled up into any country in the world, undocumented, and said “let us
in”, demanded a right to stay, and to receive medical care, food,
education, jobs, economic opportunity, immunity from deportation, all
because, you know, immigration is normal and that country should just
accept it?
Should we not expect the people born of or patriotic to that country we just illegally bombarded to retaliate?
When
you threaten someone’s livelihood and existence, when they’ve fought
and worked so hard for the little they have, and easy access is given to
others who come through the back door, you should expect to meet the
greatest amount of resistance. I know I would expect it; but, then
again, I am law-abiding.
And
maybe that’s the missing link in the sympathisers’ argument – respect
for the rule of law. After all, if you sympathise with what is illegal,
it does beg the question of what else you might condone or be involved
in that is illegal.
The
challenge the Bahamas faces now with illegal immigration is the same
one America is facing. I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but it’s
hard to miss that members of the GOP, in the persons of Mitch McConnell
and John Boehner, are vehemently opposed to Barack Obama’s soft stance
on illegal immigrants, as many Bahamians have been for a long time with
respect to their own leaders.
All
over the internet, in online news and their respective message boards,
are countless comments of the American public expressing the same
sentiments that a majority of Bahamians do about illegal immigration to
our country. “Why do we (America) have to have our borders spreadeagle
for all to enter?” “Why is our leader not paying attention to the will
of the people?”
If
the will of the people is to be ignored, why even have borders and
border enforcement? Why have laws? Why have government? Why have
national sovereignty, if people from other countries should just flow
freely in and out as they like, for whatever reason they feel is
important?
What
if every country opened its borders to citizens from every other
country? You could choose wherever in the world you wanted to live at
any given time, for any length of time, never need a passport, and just -
bam - go there.
What a world that would be. I wonder if the sympathisers would like that.
And
once there, the incoming immigrants could just set up house on any
tract of land, including land already owned by others ... maybe even
land owned by the sympathisers. Then what?
And
what if the immigrants refused to speak to you in your language and
used any means necessary to gain ownership of what you’ve worked for?
Then what?
Is
that what we’re aiming for? If so, what are we waiting on? Just open
all borders now, one time, everywhere, and let us have a free-for-all.
No? Because it might be too disorderly?
Well maybe now you’re starting to get the point.
The
difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration is that
the former is done in an orderly fashion to prevent the chaos that
occurs if done in the disorderly, illegal way.
When will the sympathisers get that?
No
one is saying there should be no immigration; any person with half a
brain can examine the foundations of the developed world and see how the
work done by immigrants has helped to create world powers. Everyone has
a skill that is useful somewhere, and a purpose to match it.
No
one is saying a human being has no right to want to try for a better
life in a place where they weren’t born. But there is usually an
existing process to accomplish this. And it must be respected. Illegally
entering a country, knowing you’re illegal, is blatant disrespect to
that country, and it earns no compassion amongst that country’s
law-abiding when illegality is your chosen route.
If
my Bahamian mother entered and lived illegally in the United States,
gave birth to me there, miraculously under the radar, even though I
would have been a citizen at birth according to US law (as is not the
law of the Bahamas), my mother would not have got a free pass; she
wouldn’t have inherited the right to stay in America because I was born a
US citizen.
She
would have still been illegal, could have still been deported, and, as
my primary caretaker, I would have had to go with her until I was old
enough to survive on my own in the place where I had citizenship, a
choice I would most likely make by the time I was ready for college, at
or near the age of 18.
In
contrast, with respect to the laws of the Bahamas and its illegal
Haitian immigrants, Bahamian citizenship at birth is not an option. And
Haitian citizenship/nationality at birth is not elective for Haitian
children illegal in the Bahamas ... they’re Haitian children. They take
their parents’ nationality. And they should take it with pride. They
have a motherland. Why is this confusing?
Why
are others – sympathisers and abusers of our Bahamian law – trying to
superimpose a law on us that does not exist? Because it suits their own
needs/benefits.
If
you are illegal in the Bahamas, and you give birth to one child or 14
children in the Bahamas, you and your children are still illegal in the
Bahamas. If you find yourself in a quandary at any point in time because
of this fact, it’s because of your own choice to drop your babies on
Bahamian soil.
You
created this problem for yourself, because we have a law which has
always been clear: you only have a right to apply for Bahamian
citizenship (whether you reside legally or illegally) if you are born in
the Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents, and only at the age of 18. That
does not mean you stay here until you are 18. And the life you live if
you choose to remain is a result of your own doing. You should apply
for your children’s passports from your birth country, from the time
they are born.
For
that matter, there is no one born in the Bahamas without the right to
claim any citizenship status at all, ie rendering them “stateless”; they
have other citizenship status whether they want it or not. They always
have, and they always will, until such time that they renounce it and,
legally, take another.
In
the latest (November 1) enforcement of new Bahamian immigration law,
Haitians especially (some Bahamians and others, additionally) claim the
required time frame is too short notice for those illegally in the
Bahamas to get the documents required of them to lawfully remain in the
Bahamas.
But
how can any illegal immigrant fix their mouth to say the new law
doesn’t provide enough time for them to get legal citizenship documents?
They’ve had 40 years to do it!
And
each time they pushed out another baby, they should have gone to their
country’s embassy to apply for a passport for the child – that is, of
course, if they intended for that child to be a citizen of their own
birth country, which is most often not the case.
Regarding
Bahamian citizenship rights, the law has always been (since 1973) what
it is today and if you did anything counter to it, and still do, you’ve
always been illegal. Either you chose not to concern yourself with the
law and what it might have required of you, or you knew the law and
deliberately chose to go against it. And ignorance nor belligerence are
excuses for breaking the law.
With
specific regard to illegal Haitian immigration to the Bahamas, and
where we find ourselves today, there is much blame to throw around: from
the Bahamian government’s historic timidity towards immigration law
enforcement/creation, to the Bahamian employers and boat captains who
open the gateway for illegal immigrants, to the Haitian government that
doesn’t direct the Haitian people to stay at home and build up their
country.
But,
beyond this blame-throwing, there is one inescapable fact that anyone
pleading on behalf of illegal Haitian immigrants cannot deny: there is
one place where the problem can be entirely resolved.
If
Haiti cared about the problem the Bahamas has endured for decades with
nonstop illegal Haitian immigrants, Haiti would have stemmed the problem
from within its own borders before it ever became a problem for the
Bahamas. Haiti has enough manpower to do that. And if they did this at
the root of the illegal immigrants’ departure from Haiti, the Bahamas
wouldn’t have the enormous problem with illegal Haitian immigration that
it does today.
Considering
this reality, that the Haitian government is well-positioned to prevent
its own people’s illegal migration to the Bahamas, is it any wonder,
then, why Bahamians take issue with their Haitian sisters and brothers
who flock here by the hundreds? It’s an awful abuse of a friendly
relationship.
In
the Bahamas, we have a couple of sayings which describe when a person
takes advantage of another, or a situation: “You get too use”, or “you
too familiar”, or “you wear out your welcome”.
In the end, no one likes a user or an abuser – especially the abused – even if they do still love them.
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November 11, 2014
