For a long time deportee has been a bad word, not just in Guyana but in every country that has what the developed nations call “a migrant population.” In 1948, shortly after a plane carrying four Americans and 28 migrant farm workers who were being deported to Mexico crashed in Los Gatos Canyon in California, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem that was later set to music, which decried the fact that the people who died were referred to in media reports of the day as “just deportees.”
People who are deported are those who would have overstayed the time granted to them to remain in a country when they travelled overseas, or those who entered/sneaked into another country with the intention of remaining there permanently and without the required legal status, and were then caught and sent back home. Deportees are also those persons who would have committed criminal offences for which jail time was followed by a one-way ticket, usually back to the land of their birth. A significant number of deportees are felons – persons convicted of offences that involve narcotics, murder and the use of dangerous weapons, hence the stigma attached to being a deportee.
There have been cases where entire families migrated and then just one member is involuntarily repatriated after a number of years. That person would have no ties to the land of his/her birth. If that person was convicted on armed robbery, a narcotics-related offence or murder, and s/he has no prospects s/he might easily fall back into doing the activity that got him/her in trouble in the first place. This has actually happened in several instances, with the result being that in addition to being scorned, deportees became people to be feared.
It was this milieu that Ms Donna Snagg stepped into when she was involuntarily repatriated after spending 20 years in the United States of America, having ‘done time’ for a “narcotics violation.” By the time Ms Snagg was ready to head home penniless, word had already spread about how deportees were being treated here, so, as she said in an interview with this newspaper, which was published on Tuesday, she was expecting to face discrimination. In her case, however, there were so-called good friends and relatives here who refused to have anything to do with her adding hurt and rejection to the stigma she was already experiencing.
Homeless and hungry, with no clothes, no money, no job and no prospects, Ms Snagg could have let the weight of all that press her down into the dirt the way it seems to have depressed so many others. Instead she took the single outstretched hand offered by a brother-in-law; accepted his shelter and wore his clothes for a while. She also received some financial help through remittances sent from overseas and finally reunited with one long-lost friend who understood the true meaning of the word. What a sobering experience it must have been for someone who would have been used to giving from her largesse.
But she was also not prepared to accept handouts for the rest of her life, and despite what might have seemed to be towering obstacles, she pursued and completed a law degree as well as her new vision — helping others, who like her, might at some point find themselves back home penniless and alone after years of living overseas. This she has accomplished to some extent, having founded Juncata Juvant (things joined together are helpful) Friendly Society, which has been offering assistance to deportees for two years.
Ms Snagg’s story is far from being completely told. (She is still to attend law school and has plans to extend the services being offered by her organization to include a halfway house for deportees.) However, it is at a point where it can serve as an example to those who might have taken the wrong fork in the road at some point that it is not the end of the world and that with determination they can still make a meaningful contribution to society. But more than that, Ms Snagg’s inspiring story will also help to remove the stigma attached to deportees, who having served a prison sentence and being deported would have already paid their debt to society and need to be allowed to live without fingers being pointed at them.