St. Anne's MP Hubert Chipman yesterday voiced his support for the new immigration policy, which mandates that all non-Bahamian students must have a student permit to attend schools in The Bahamas. However, Chipman, who is the shadow minister for immigration, said the government is putting the cart before the horse.
"I think they should have brought the matter to Parliament and we should have debated it," Chipman said "That way you have teeth in law and you give the Department of Immigration lead time to deal with this thing." Chipman added that various embassies, but most especially the Haitian embassy, would need time to process passport applications.
"I firmly believe, and I don't have a problem with registration of children, but you can't just implement them willy nilly as you go along and say that is the policy," he said. "That's the cart before the horse. The cart is dragging the horse."
Despite his concerns, Chipman said it is important for there to be a mechanism to track the number of migrants in the school system. As a part to the new immigration policy, all non-Bahamian students will be required to possess a student permit or a passport with a residency stamp when schools open in the fall. The requirement also applies to children who are born in The Bahamas but have foreign parents.
Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald stressed on Thursday that the government is "resolute" in its determination to enforce the policy. However, Fitzgerald said education officials will be flexible based on the Department of Immigration's ability to process the applications in time.
"As the minister of education, I support Minister [Fred] Mitchell and the immigration department in their attempts to enforce the immigration laws of our country," Fitzgerald told The Nassau Guardian from Panama.
"At the end of the day, we have to ensure that when dealing with children we understand we have to have a balance in our approach, but we intend to enforce the immigration laws of the country and we expect not only for non-nationals to be registered. But for Bahamians to be registered because we have a challenge now where some Bahamian mothers are not registering their children at birth and getting birth certificates and this causes a problem at the end of the day when they go to get passports."
The rule is a part of the wider immigration policy that focuses on reducing the number of illegal immigrants living in The Bahamas. Fitzgerald urged parents of non-Bahamian children to apply for the student permits immediately. He said immigration officials have assured they will be able to process the permits by the fall. But Chipman, who said the Department of Immigration is in a "state of is disarray", expressed doubt that the department will be able to handle the applications for student permits in a timely fashion.
"We need to get our house in order before we start these things," he said referring o the backlog of applications in general. "People have been waiting five or ten years without getting responses to some applications. I have testimonies of this."
Chipman said the policy will also likely have a "negative flip side".
"You will always have illegal immigrants in this country," he said "So if the child can't go to school, what are you breeding? Illiterates."
However, he acknowledged that the government must "start somewhere". Former Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette weighed in on the policy on Wednesday.
Symonette predicted there would be a "big disruption" in September. He expressed concern about "bureaucracy and whether or not people can get their passports, their permits and everything" in time. He also encouraged the government to wait until fall 2016 before implementing its student permit policy. But Mitchell expressed confidence that the process will be fine.
Asked whether the government will consider delaying the policy, Mitchell said there is never a perfect time.
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