The government and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) are currently in discussions on information-sharing about Guyanese deported from the US and the areas of intervention for their resettlement as part of a wider one-year US$2.8 million pilot programme.
The US$2.8 million resettlement programme, funded by the US government through the US State Department, will cover Guyana, Haiti and The Bahamas.
The IOM Regional Representative for North America and the Caribbean Richard Scott in a telephone interview from Washington DC on Friday told Stabroek News that the IOM had held initial discussions with the government last month and at present both parties were working to put together a programme which took into account the ideas and proposals put forward.
“At present questions and answers are going back and forth,” he said.
In March an IOM team led by Scott met with government officials including Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee and Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand.Stabroek News understands that the IOM is expected to conduct a follow-up mission to the March discussions in Guyana to finalise the parameters within which the resettlement programme would be executed. No date for this next meeting has been finalized.
However, it is expected that the IOM and United States Agency for International Development would work with the host governments and other local partners, including non-governmental organizations, in relation to the execution of the resettlement programmes.
Re-integration
The areas of intervention, Scott said, would include the reception of deportees back into the originating country, assistance in the re-integration process, including finding employment and training which would lead to employment, and the funding of micro-enterprises.
Asked how much financial aid Guyana is expected to get from the pilot programme, which, if it is successfully implemented, could be expanded to include Jamaica and others seeking similar assistance, he said that there was no figure at this time because of the fluidity of the planning process at this stage.
It would also depend, he said, on the projects to be executed in the two other countries involved. At present, the IOM is completing an initial phase of the pilot project in Haiti under separate funding by the US government. However the project in Haiti would be continued under the current one along with Guyana and The Bahamas. Once the projects get underway in Guyana and The Bahamas, Scott said that they would last for an initial period of twelve months. The programme in Haiti would be a continuation of the pilot.
In June 2007 Caricom Heads of Government raised the issue of deportees at the US-government sponsored Conference of the Caribbean held in Washington DC.
Following the conference a Caricom expert testified before the Sub-Committee on the Western Hemisphere in the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
At the hearing of the issue before the sub-committee in July, Chairman Eliot Engel had said that he expected a deportee reintegration programme to be an extension of the Haiti project which the US government hoped to set up “as a model to other Caricom nations.”
During the hearings it was noted that the United States currently has in detention some 31,000 illegal immigrants and 66,000 foreign criminals, more than half of which are in county jails awaiting deportation. Over a decade ago the US deported about 40,000 illegal immigrants annually and last year the number had risen to 200,000. Engel had also said that according to the World Bank and UN Report on Crime in the Caribbean, the average deportee from the Caribbean was not involved in criminal activities. He had said that the US had no obligation to provide residency for nationals who committed crimes, but the US nevertheless had taken steps in relation to the resettlement of deportees through the pilot programme in Haiti.
Since 1997, the US deported more than 670,000 illegal immigrants, a move the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch has claimed has separated 1.6 million families.
Engels had said that the issue of deportation had become a major issue for leaders in the hemisphere based on his meetings with those he had met since taking office.
He had noted that for 2005 almost 145,000 persons had been deported from the US to Mexico. At present the US government was working with the Mexican administration to have persons apprehended at the border trying to gain entry to the US to voluntarily return home, and in the case of the administrations in Guatemala and Honduras to implement electronic travel documents to cut down on illegal immigrants.
At the Conference of the Caribbean, Caricom leaders queried the US immigration policy on deportees, he said, noting too that on trips he had taken to the Dominican Republic and Haiti the issue of deportees had been foremost, with the major complaint being that deportees were a burden on their societies of origin, and many were aliens in the land to which they had been deported having left there at a very young age.
He said the US State Department was also working closely with a number of governments to facilitate further dialogue and assistance that would make the home country take decisions that would not make its citizens want to leave. This included taking economic, crime and other factors into consideration.
