*First published in the T&T Guardian on March 19, 2025
By the time this is published, the country
would have already entered a fresh and irresistible phase of intrigue,
confusion, and general bacchanal as the natural outcome of another election
season.
All of this is being packaged against the
backdrop of current concerns about immigration practice and malpractice on the
part of others. There has been no shortage of weeping, wailing and gnashing of
teeth. Cheering and jeering in some cases.
I have however noted repeatedly that on
this issue we, as a nation of migrants, can be described as both subjects and
objects – victims and perpetrators.
The awkward management of Venezuelan and
other migrant challenges, the general lack of public and even official
awareness of the language of orderly migration, and the pervasive presence of
xenophobic sentiment, even as political ammunition - “close de borders, close
de borders” - all point to an unsatisfactory state of affairs at several
domestic levels.
This inconveniently points to matters
transcendental of occupation of political office. The three cases I reference
today actually span political administrations. Electoral preference appears
irrelevant. It has not mattered much who has been prime minister or line
minister.
Indeed, the most significant areas of
dysfunction and failure have defied the complexion of political office. Such
issues earn only passing mention in election manifestoes and even more
superficial reference on the hustings.
What, for instance, are the feelings of
politicians about the fact that immigration practice appears to routinely defy
the spirit of international conventions, domestic legislation, and basic
principles of humane state conduct?
It’s discomfiting when you think about it.
Our official posture on immigration, as expressed in administrative practice,
is in fact not vastly different from what obtains in some other parts of the
world where visas and other entry and resident rights are being deployed as
tools of reward and punishment.
Here now are three examples of our own
problematic approaches. The first is young creative, Omar Jarra, 26, who came
to this country as a child with his father, Gambian medical consultant, Dr
Ebrima Jarra. Omar was himself born in The Gambia.
Since the death of his father in 2013, he
has been the victim of a bureaucratic maze that has left him, in the words of
an online petition on his case, “without legal recognition” in the country.
I have met him several times and admire his
outstanding work in drama and song but only Saturday came across the petition
in support of his appeal to escape “statelessness.”
The fine details of his plight will require
more space, but you can view the entire story in the Change.org campaign
bearing the banner ‘Justice for Omar Jarra: End Statelessness &
Bureaucratic Negligence.’
There are, of course, technical details to
traverse – but certainly not more than a decade’s worth of paper pushing! What
about the “processing” of his case should take this long?
Even so, this is less time than my second
example which concerns a Guyana-born widow – her husband was a Trinidadian -
who has been resident in this country for over 40 years and is yet to acquire
full citizenship despite her best efforts.
Her adult children were all born here, she
owns property, pays taxes, votes, and considers T&T her home. What takes
decades to provide a proper response to such an application? How many pages
constitute such an exercise? What is the size of her file?
Finally, and painfully, I have been
withholding public exposure of the travails of highly decorated Guyana-born
Caribbean journalist and professional mentor Rickey Singh.
The full story of his journey to eventual,
shameful rejection by this country in the late stages of his life will someday
be fully disclosed.
Not by him, because the once prolific
writer/editor/press freedom advocate has been silenced by illness for some time
now. But he spent the pandemic period languishing at the hands of
administrative indifference in T&T and is now in Barbados in poor health.
Now, there are few other public figures in
our region who have promoted the idea of a single Caribbean space as Rickey has
over decades. In the end, the conditions to accommodate him here simply did not
exist. We failed him and what he stands for.
In Omar’s “Innocence Proclamation” – penned
as an addendum to his online petition - he speaks of an “end to bureaucratic
negligence and statelessness.”
This, he contends, “is about the systemic
oppression of the stateless, the displaced, and the wrongfully accused. It is
about reclaiming human dignity and ensuring that no one is left without a name,
a home, or a future.”
Are we prepared to leave it at that?
