By Angelique V. Nixon & Alissa Trotz
Angelique V. Nixon is a writer, artist, teacher, scholar, activist, and poet – born and raised in Nassau, The Bahamas. She is a Fulbright Scholar with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Alissa Trotz is Editor of the In the Diaspora Column.
A longer version of this column appeared in Groundation Grenada and can be found at: http://groundationgrenada.com/2015/06/12/where-is-the-outrage/
It seems we are at a breaking point with state treatment of Haitian migrants and persons of Haitian descent, particularly in the Dominican Republic and The Bahamas. Beyond the issue of people being rendered stateless, there are disturbing reports about abusive treatment and human rights violations in The Bahamas’ detention center, mass deportations from the Dominican Republic, and the separation of families in both places. Haitian migrants and their children remain some of the most vulnerable people, and this continues to be more evident in the recent changes to immigration enforcement policies in The Bahamas and Dominican Republic.
Reports from The Bahamas have raised serious concerns about the treatment of Haitian migrants and issues of citizenship. Specifically, these include: the rounding up of Haitian or Haitian descended children and persons (those undocumented as well as those seeking citizenship); the poor and inhumane conditions of the detention facility; reports of abuse by immigration officers; the content of the policy and reforms to immigration law; the deadly slow pace of resolving citizenship for persons who apply at age 18; and the targeting of Haitians in the enforcement of changes in immigration policy.
The enforcement of the new immigration policy has been the source of recent concerns. In November 2014, the Ministry of Immigration in The Bahamas announced its new policy that calls for all non-citizens in the country to carry their passports and proof of residency, while children born to non-citizen parents must have a school permit. Since the enforcement of this policy, there have been reports of mass raids in known Haitian communities, and hundreds of people have been held in an overcrowded detention facility and then deported. This new policy has raised urgent questions about whether it will violate the rights of children – who technically by law are entitled to attend school (every child living in The Bahamas has a right to an education, and the country is also party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child). Children born to non-nationals are not automatically citizens but rather have to apply at 18 for status. While The Bahamas government has insisted that they won’t be “infringing on children’s rights,” official statements have emphasized that The Bahamas will be acting in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that children will also be educated pending decisions on whether they are ‘repatriated’ (this is the terminology used by Bahamian state officials) or allowed to remain on the island. But it’s unclear how the policy will be enforced and particularly what will happen to children unable to produce a student permit come September.
Bahamian lawyers and human rights groups have responded to this policy change and immigration enforcement in several ways. Fred Smith, President of the Grand Bahamas Human Rights Association (GBHRA), has led a campaign against the government and called on international human rights agencies to respond.
Rather than address immigration issues on a case-by-case basis, since November, migrants in The Bahamas have faced nighttime raids, separation of families, and overcrowding in the detention centre. There are widespread reports of abusive treatment of migrants (of women migrants in particular) inside the detention centre and during the process of “apprehension” and “deportation.”
On 13th February 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted a submission for precautionary measures filed by the Caribbean Institute for Human Rights (ICADH), the International Human Rights Clinic of the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, School of Law, and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights on behalf of over 200 detainees being held at the Carmichael Road Detention Center in Nassau, The Bahamas. The Commission’s analysis concluded that the situation was serious and urgent and that measures were indeed necessary to protect persons from irreparable harm (Resolution 4/2015).
On 20th March 2015, representatives from The Bahamas government were asked directly about these issues during the IACHR hearing on the human rights situation of migrants in The Bahamas. The petitioners (including Grand Bahamas Human Rights Association and the Caribbean Institute for Human Rights) presented their findings, which included reports of discrimination and ill treatment of persons being held in the detention center and rounded up in mass raids. They discussed developments since enforcement of the new immigration policy, and how the government’s push to make amendments to immigration law after the implementation of new policy can be deemed unconstitutional. In their submission, petitioners also raised the issue of intimidation and threats to human rights defenders.
The Bahamas government was represented by the Minister of State in the Attorney General’s Ministry, who strongly refuted the petitioners’ report, defended Bahamas’ history of respect for human rights, insisted that the state has not violated human rights of migrant persons, and claimed that the detention facilities are in good order with provisions in place to charge officers who violated the rights of detainees. They also informed the Commission that the policy will now include the implementation of a “belonger’s permit” which would allow persons born in The Bahamas without status to stay in the country (i.e. children born in The Bahamas to non-nationals have the right to apply for citizenship at 18). They contested the notion that these children have a “right” to citizenship (since the Bahamas has Jus Sanguinis rules: citizenship is determined by having one or both parents who are citizens and not on birthplace), and they insist that such children were not being denied the right to attend school; hence the new policy would not be violating any rights. The state also offered an invitation to the Commission for a country visit.
Not surprisingly, these two reports offered strikingly different understandings of what is happening on the ground to migrant persons and to people of Haitian descent in particular. Further, they disclose very different views on “rights” to citizenship, how this actually works in The Bahamas and who is targeted by these new policies and possible changes to immigration law. What is clear, regardless of the position of the Government of the Bahamas, is that migrant persons of Haitian descent are the most vulnerable and there are serious and urgent concerns about the detention centre and how the policy is being enforced.
In her concluding remarks, IACHR President Rose-Marie Antoine reprised the Commission’s concerns regarding the criminalizing of persons through this new immigration policy and the targeting of persons suspected of being non-nationals. She asked about the use of enforcement and detention for persons who do not have passports on them. The gender dimension of citizenship was also explicitly identified as bearing specifically on ways in which this new immigration policy/law would render persons “stateless” (a child born in The Bahamas with a Bahamian father is automatically granted citizenship, whereas if a Bahamian woman is married to a non-national, their child is not granted citizenship but rather has to “apply” at 18). The state was asked to respond to these issues and allegations in writing and in due course.
Meanwhile, following the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal Ruling 168-13 and change of citizenship policy in September 2013, in May 2014, the DR passed Law 169-14 that established “A special set of rules for persons born in the national territory who are irregularly registered in the Dominican Civil Registry, and rules about naturalization.” The regularization plan, originally giving people just 18 months to request Dominican citizenship for children born to undocumented migrants, came to an end in February and was extended for another 90 days (amidst opposition from the right) to Monday 15th June 2015. The government has announced that no more extensions will be granted. That final deadline, which is today, means that overnight thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent have been rendered without status or the right to stay in the country of their birth. And with this policy change, the DR will be able to legally deport Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry – which they have already been doing for years – even as they depend on their labour and exploit their limbo/stateless status. The Dominican government has claimed that there would be no mass deportations and the approach will be on a case by case basis; in late May it was reported that the foreign affairs minister of Haiti met his counterpart from the Dominican Republic to finalise a “Protocol for deportations.”
And in The Nation last Friday, historian Greg Grandin noted that he had heard from an aid worker that “on June 9, local Dominican television media reported that the government solicited transportation companies for up to three dozen large passenger buses to be available on a rotating basis, with an implicit understanding that these would be used for pending deportation trips.”
What is striking is the similarity not only in the rhetoric between the Bahamian and Dominican governments but also in the solutions being proposed.
And the June 15 deadline is now here in the DR, with barely any notice across the region and internationally. Certainly, human rights violations around immigration and detention centres are far from new news. But there are several troubling questions that should prompt our concern, outrage and commitment to change. It is clear that people of Haitian descent continue to be targeted unjustly and overtly in new immigration policies as they are scapegoated as “the problem” underlying social ills in various contexts (as migrant communities so often are). It is also clear that women migrants in detention need serious and dire attention, as more reports of violations at the detention centre in the Bahamas have surfaced in the past few months.
With recovery efforts still underway in post-earthquake Haiti, this assault on migrants and persons of Haitian ancestry urgently underscores just how much work there is left to do across our Caribbean. It is time to call out anti-Haitian sentiments and xenophobia that underpin much of the migration and citizenship issues in the region. It is time to find better ways of dealing with migration, citizenship, regional movement, and labour. And it is time to develop stronger and intersectional approaches to these issues that take into account class, gender and other differences and inequality. We must keep visioning a just future – one with dignity and freedom for Haiti and Haitians all over the world, for all migrants who have similar experiences, for the Caribbean and all Caribbean people – in which we come together across our differences to create and build regional solidarity.
