The amnesty was announced by Prime Minister David Thompson as a ministerial
statement in parliament today

Illegal immigrants from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will have six months to regularize their status in Barbados, or face deportation.

This was announced in parliament today by Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, the Hon. David Thompson.

The move follows a series of recommendations from a cabinet subcommittee on immigration, which met in June 2008 and concluded that the current number of immigrants is unacceptably high, difficult to control and poses a significant challenge to socioeconomic development in Barbados.

Naturally, the amnesty comes with caveats.

The amnesty, first and foremost, applies only to illegal CARICOM immigrants who arrived in Barbados and remained undocumented for at least eight years prior to December 2005. All applications will be reviewed on their own merit, but there are certain conditionalities which every  applicant must meet, to wit:

▪ The applicant must substantiate his or her claim that he or she has been resident in Barbados before January 1, 1998
▪ The applicant must be employed, and must provide evidence of employment status and,
▪ The applicant must pass a thorough security and background check

Additionally,there is an ambiguous caution that applicants with three or more dependents will not automatically qualify for status, as well as a warning that any illegal immigrants who remain after December 1, 2009 will be deported.

Prima facie, while this amnesty says much, it means little – leaving one to wonder how effective it will be.

The flaw of focusing on ‘veteran’ illegal aliens

By focusing on immigrants who arrived before 1998, there is no incentive for more-recent illegal aliens to make themselves known to authorities, and no opportunity for them to regularize their status, which – to my mind – will only result in them staying put and making a more concerted effort to remain under the radar of immigration enforcement. Naturally, authorities can only track the illegal aliens they know about.

What then will government do about the substantial illegal immigrant population that arrived after 1998? Aren’t they also part of the problem – perhaps even more so than the so-called ‘veterans’?

Proving employment – albeit illegal employment

What repercussions, if any, will businesses who have employed illegal aliens face? If one assumes that the boom in illegal immigration is being spurred by demand for cheap labour, will these businesses be made to feel the full weight of the law?

A clear statement on this needs to be made by the government, since one must assume that some businesses may not wish to verify applicants’ claims of employment if they believe that they will be penalized by authorities.

On the other hand it is prudent that government takes note of employers who are in the habit of employing illegal aliens and investigate those businesses more closely, which makes this an extremely tricky Catch-22 situation.

Back-taxes, where does the amnesty stand on this issue?

Will undocumented illegal aliens be required to pay taxes on the earnings they made since arriving in Barbados, and will their employers be required to retroactively pay their national insurance contributions as well? Or, will this in effect be a tax amnesty as well?

The issue of Barbadian children of illegal aliens

The specific warning that applicants with three or more dependents will not automatically qualify for status leads one to wonder what will occur if one or both parents of Barbados-born children are deported. Naturally, a Barbadian cannot be ‘deported’ from Barbados, so what does the government anticipate will happen to children who find themselves in this predicament? Will they be required to accompany their parent(s) to states where they may have never lived? Or will the children become wards of Barbados if their parents cannot accommodate them in their home territory?

The dreaded ‘what if’…

How will this amnesty’s success be measured?

Assuming this amnesty doesn’t see a mass of illegal aliens coming forward to regularize their status, what then?

Barbados would be no better off than it was before the amnesty was announced, and the onus to solve the issue of illegal aliens falls on the same agency that is has always fallen on – the Immigration Department. If this department existed all the while when Barbados’ immigration problem grew to the current crisis level, what will change after December 1, 2009 to stem the tide of illegal immigration into Barbados?

If nothing is done to improve the institutional capacity of the Immigration Department, expand its intelligence gathering capability and weed out the corruption that helps feed the illegal immigration problem, this amnesty may well be much ado about nothing.

Antillean · Bridgetown, Barbados

The Antillean is a pan-Caribbean nonprofit media outlet, covering news, features and opinions on social issues in the Caribbean region and the wider Americas. Our mission is to encourage conversation on, and enhance the visibility of, social currencies within the hemisphere – issues which are often underreported in the mainstream media.

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