Improving Media Coverage of Immigration Issues

Report of Caribbean Working Group on Coverage of Immigration Issues
Austin Forum – September 8-10, 2011


The Caribbean Group comprised: Wesley Gibbings, Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers Trinidad and Tobago (Moderator); Colette Les Pinasse, journalist, Haiti; Gotson Pierre, Alterpresse, Haiti, Maude Malengrez, FOKAL/OSF Haiti and Maria Soldevilla, Listin Diario, Republica Dominicana.


The subject of improving media coverage of immigration issues in the Caribbean was addressed by (i) identifying issues that required further journalistic investigation and (ii) proposing mechanisms to more efficiently achieve improved coverage.


Areas for Further Journalistic Investigation

1. The incidence of re-migration;
2. The processing, re-integration and treatment of criminal deportees;
3. The role of the Caribbean Diaspora in influencing politics and economic life;
4. Evolving means of moving money between borders in the form of financial remittances;
5. Closer examination of the incidence of intra-regional migration;
6. Work on assessing the impact of recent trends involving new groups of immigrants such as Asians and Africans into the Caribbean;
7. The integrity of institutional support for immigrants including the provision of vital services;
8. More diligent monitoring of immigration laws and their impact on emerging humanitarian concerns;
9. Examination of the impact of outward migration on children;
10. Avoidance of the use of stereotyping in the treatment of immigrants;
11. Attention should be paid to the “feminisation” of the immigration phenomenon;
12. The need to verify official immigration statistics;
13. Recognition of the multi-dimensional nature of immigrant engagement in the life of host countries;
14. The use of new technologies as immigrant communities communicate with their home countries and as their families and friends communicate with them;
15. The incidence of transient groups that move continually from one country to the next;
16. Language and cultural shifts as a consequence of immigration;
17. The incidence of “paperless” immigrants;
18. The economic impact of the splintering of families in the face of outward migrations;
19. Coverage of new money flows as a result of immigration

Mechanisms for Improved Coverage

1. Development of online platforms for the sharing of official immigration data within the region;
2. Establishment of a multi-media/multi-lingual repository for news stories and information on regional immigration;
3. The greater use of social networks that aid in the networking of Caribbean journalists for information sharing;
4. A mechanism to facilitate greater cross-border collaboration on media productions;
5. The use of journalistic exchanges among countries across the language groups in the Caribbean;
6. Greater collaboration among NGOs/academia/community media and mainstream media in the coverage of immigration issues;
7. Mechanisms for advocates to more efficiently influence media managers;
8. Development of more comprehensive databases for accessing sources of opinion and information on immigration;
9. Introduction of an annual Caribbean Forum to explore immigration and other relevant media issues;
10. Mechanisms to promote journalistic training.

Jamaican Babies in Cayman

I have decided to stray a bit from the issue of press freedom in the Caribbean to draw attention to a tiny British colony in the Caribbean – the Cayman Islands.

I have been following developments in the territory more closely since the advent of Cayman NetNews and its attempt to function as an independent media enterprise in the midst of what appears to be an environment not conducive to such freedoms.

On October 2, 2007, a Jamaican woman called Shellesha Woodstock gave birth to a baby girl on board Cayman Airways Flight #600 en route to Jamaica as Caymanian authorities hustled, frantically, to ensure that the child was not born on Cayman soil.

Details of the attempt to get the woman out of Grand Cayman ought to have alerted human rights advocates to gross violations of the rights of the woman and her unborn child. But there have been few lines in the Jamaican press highlighting the issue and even fewer in the Caymanian media asking serious questions about the circumstances leading to what amounts to the ‘expulsion’ of Ms Woodstock in an advanced state of pregnancy.

Now comes news that yet another Jamaican woman, unidentified by officials, gave birth in the midst of desperate attempts to ensure that her twins were not born on Caymanian soil.

Caymanian health official, Lizzette Yearwood, is quoted in Cayman NetNews as saying the measure was necessary because “the level of expertise needed for the babies’ care is not locally available.”

One would therefore assume there has been a constant flow of Caymanian women to Jamaica seeking such care for their newborn. I would like to see the statistics. Surely, the same level of care sought for the Jamaican woman and her twins should be extended to Caymanian women.

Is it just me? Or is something very, very wrong with this picture?

How far can small-island parochialism go? How uncaring? How deadly can it become?

Those with a little knowledge of the Cayman Islands would know that it is Jamaicans who have helped, more than any other group including indigenous Caymanians, to develop the tiny British colony through their work in a wide range of fields – not the least being those jobs native Caymanians resisted doing in the early years.

Today, Jamaicans need a visa to enter Caymanian territory. In an inspired move, the former P.J. Patterson administration imposed Jamaica’s own visa regime on Caymanians wishing to visit the island.

It was unfortunate that the situation had to come to the stage of tit-for-tat diplomacy, but perfectly understandable that discrimination was met with firm action.

The same has not been true in the case of discriminatory immigration policies in Turks and Caicos, British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, where Jamaicans and Guyanese are not welcome.

How these countries remain evenly remotely associated with CARICOM is beyond me. Discriminatory immigration policies targeting Jamaicans and Guyanese deserve expulsion from the CARICOM circle.

To be fair to the Cayman Islands, they aren’t interested anyway, though they became an Associated CARICOM state in 1991. But what the hell are they all doing as part of the CARICOM process?

In any event, the Cayman Islands are one of the few countries in the world in which place of birth does not automatically signify citizenship or nationality.

The actions of the Caymanian authorities ought to be highlighted at the next CARICOM Inter-Sessional meeting of Heads with a view to securing the abolition of the current visa regime against Jamaicans. Same story for Turks and Caicos, BVI and Anguilla.

While I am on this subject I also want to ask the question: Why do Haitians still require visas to enter most CARICOM countries?

If we did not want Haitians among us, why were they invited to join CARICOM in the first place?

It is high time we get these anomalies out of the way. We are already seeing, courtesy the Cayman Islands, how callous and potentially deadly regional fiddling with an important issue can become.