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| Caribbean Deportees Top 3,000 Mark For 2008 (Photo: CaribWorldNews) | |
WASHINGTON DC, United States, July 21, 2008 - More than 3,000 Caribbean nationals have been sent back home from the United States in the past nine months, official statistics have revealed.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures, obtained by CaribWorldNews, show that some 3,292 CARICOM nationals were deported from the US between last October and July 14, 2008, among the total 243,574 migrants deported globally by ICE.
Haiti received the highest number of deportees - 1,185 - while 1,157 deportees were sent to Jamaica during that period. Of those sent back to Kingston, a whopping 967 were considered "criminal aliens", meaning they had committed a crime and served time, while only 190 were deemed "non-criminal", a category often used to describe overstays and those caught sneaking into the US illegally.
This contrasted with the Haitian deportee count of 842 non-criminals and 343 criminal aliens.
The oil-rich nation of Trinidad and Tobago received the third highest number of deportees for any Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nation, with ICE figures putting the total at 311. However, of that number, 228 were considered criminal deportees compared to 83 who were dubbed as non-criminal.
Guyana took the fourth spot, with its government forced to take back 209 deportees, 140 of whom were considered criminal aliens compared to 69 who were tagged non-criminal. Belize was the only other CARICOM nation to receive triple digit deportees. ICE records show the nation received 129 deportees in recent months, 65 of whom were non-criminal and 64 criminal.
The Bahamas and other CARICOM nations` deportee total ranked in the double and single digits for this period. The tourist dependent islands of the Bahamas, which has seen a spike in crime like many other CARICOM nations, received 91 deportees in recent months, but 74 were criminal compared to only 17 who were non-criminal.
Other nations received far less. Dominica and Barbados received 34 and 33, respectively while Antigua and Barbuda saw 28. Twenty-seven were returned to St. Lucia and 22 to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Grenada received 15 deportees, while St. Kitts received 10. Nine nationals were sent back to Suriname while the British Virgin Islands got eight. The Turks and Caicos and Bermuda saw seven each while five were sent back to the Cayman Islands. Of that number, the majority were criminal deportees.
Montserrat received three, all criminal deportees, while Anguilla received the lowest number at two.
Deportation has become a key issue for countries in the Caribbean since the 1996 immigration laws changed and made green card holders who commit crimes, even petty ones, deportable.
At the 2007 conference on the Caribbean held in Washington, leaders of the CARICOM countries raised the topic of deportation in their meetings with both President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. One of their consistent concerns was the need to receive more information on deportees, including more detailed criminal records.
In response, the ICE offered to provide to CARICOM members the computer hardware and software of the Electronic Travel Document (eTD) system.
CARICOM also has requested the assistance from the US with resettlement and reintegration. The United Nations Development Programme currently funds a US$1 million International Organisation for Migration project in Haiti to provide deportee reintegration services, including counseling, vocational training, skills development, and micro-credit lending.
The US State Department says it hopes to use this programme as a model for reintegration programmes in other CARICOM countries in the future. (CaribWorldNews).
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