Dear Editor,
According to The Free Dictionary, "The rule of law requires the government to exercise its power in accordance with well-established and clearly-written rules, regulations and legal principles". Said another way, the government has the responsibility to enforce the laws of the country. If laws are not enforced, this is the blueprint for anarchy. Sophocles said, "There is no greater evil than anarchy".
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration Fred Mitchell announced weeks ago that the government was going to aggressively enforce the country's immigration laws. This announcement was not taken seriously by the illegal immigrants in the country and for good reason. For decades, they have known that our immigration laws were lax and, for the most part, went unchecked, save for a couple of futile raids that made the news headlines several times per year.
On Saturday past, there was an exercise by the immigration department that signaled the commencement of the renewed exercise to ensure that our immigration laws are followed. Initial reports suggest that quite a few lawbreakers have already been captured and are set to return to their native homeland.
The Bahamas government has many mandates and none is more important than to enforce the laws of the country. We are viewed as being a lawless society, and sadly this is entrenched in the minds of illegal immigrants and legal residents alike. This phenomenon is also spreading internationally.
I must commend Mitchell and the government for finally starting the process of dealing with this long-standing issue that successive governments have deliberately failed to address. I think a lot of people are sitting at home today and are feeling a renewed sense of national pride.
The minister said that all illegal immigrants are being targeted, and I believe this is the right way and the only way that this should be done. Whether you are Chinese, Jamaican, American, Haitian, Philippine or African, it does not matter because if you are in contravention of the laws of The Bahamas, then you must be subjected to the penalties therein.
In addition to the government taking a renewed approach to enforce its immigration laws, I also ask it to take a holistic approach when dealing with this matter. There are companies that break the law and hire illegal immigrants knowing full well that they don't qualify to work in The Bahamas. Moreover, there are land-owners who aided in the building of shantytowns and profited handsomely from the collection of rent knowing full well that they too were in contravention of the law.
There have also been government agencies complicit with providing resources to these areas where no lawful permit existed. These infractions need to be investigated and the law allowed to take its course.
Furthermore, I am hopeful that this gallant move by Mitchell will not lose steam, but will gain momentum and be ongoing for years to come and would be adopted by all other government agencies that are miserably lacking in their pursuit to maintain the rule of law.
I don't consider this exercise a mean-spirited one as some in the media are suggesting, but I side with the minister when he said that this exercise is geared towards strengthening the national security of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. We need to know who is in our country, as this enables us to better fight crime, better plan health care, better plan for educational spending and a whole list of other critical national programs germane to our country's success.
Dealing with this issue will not be an easy task, and there will be irrational cries from persons who will try to create the perception that The Bahamas is a barbaric and uncompassionate society. Nothing can be further from the truth. But the time has come for the country to act and act formidably. We must operate within the confinements of the law until it changes, and we must also be humane.
Again, I applaud Mitchell and the government for their action because they have taken a step in the right direction. They are receiving flak from the illegal immigrant community and they must also be very unpopular among some of society's elite, whom Mitchell said in an earlier interview were the landowners of the shantytowns, a seemingly profitable business. But most Bahamians are just hopeful that this new course of action by the immigration department will summon the conscience of other agencies that need to follow suit and maintain the rule of law.
- Dehavilland Moss

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