Statelessness in the Caribbean. Kristy A. Belton
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The Political Context
In “Client-Ship and Citizenship in Latin America,” Lucy Taylor explains how clientelistic practices and charismatic leaders have shaped Latin American politics. Clientelism, she explains, “is not about equality but inequality … it is not about rights but about favours … it is not about democracy but about negotiated authoritarianism … [and] Finally, it is not about formal relationships but personal ties” (2004, 214). Her comments are applicable to the broader region, including the Caribbean. While The Bahamas is far from being an authoritarian state—as I explain in Chapter 1, it is considered a democracy—favoritism and the use of personal ties (cronyism) to achieve a particular good or political gain has plagued much of its post-Independence history, infiltrating the realm of citizenship determination.
Sir Lynden O. Pindling, the individual who led the country to Independence and who became the country’s first prime minister, is heralded as the “Black Moses” among many Bahamians. “I just remember people worshiping him.… He was always this grand myth to me,” says Travolta Cooper, the writer and director of the “Black Moses” documentary on Sir Pindling (Nicolls 2013). Sir Pindling’s PLP government, which lasted twenty-five years (1967–1992) was accused of corruption and cronyism from many sectors of society, both Bahamian and abroad (Dahlburg 1982; Freedland 1992). As Frederick Donathan explains, “The government’s tentacles spread very far.… You got accustomed to thinking, ‘I better vote for the old regime, in case they get in again’” (qtd. in Freedland 1992). When Hubert A. Ingraham, the then leader of the opposition FNM became the second prime minister of The Bahamas in 1992 he vowed to create a “government in the sunshine” where transparency and fairness would reign (Freedland 1992; see also I. Smith 2012).
A “government in the sunshine” never transpired, however, and accusations of corruption and cronyism continue to the present day. The PLP is once again in power and former prime minister Ingraham recently lambasted the party for “victimising” civil servants and removing them from their jobs because they are not PLP supporters (Evans 2012). Current FNM leader, Dr. Hubert Minnis recently published a statement on the PLP government’s “Unadulterated tribalism, cronyism and out-and-out nepotism!” (Bahamas Weekly 2012 n. pag.). The PLP has also issued its fair share of corruption and cronyism accusations against FNM administrations as well (S. Brown 2013).
Just as Taylor finds that a “goods-for-power” deal operates in many Latin American countries, wherein “People support a certain patron because they gamble that to do so will improve their own or their family’s prospects” (2004, 215), Bahamian politics seems to be infused with such a mentality. When it comes to Haitian migrants and their descendants, the “good” is citizenship and no matter the party in power (PLP or FNM) this good suddenly becomes more readily available prior to a general election.
Study participants, Haitian and non-Haitian alike, remark that the number of citizenships awarded to foreigners escalates around election time. As one anonymous interviewee laments, “There’s the issue of the politics of citizenship in terms of who gets it. How is it awarded? It’s a cabinet decision—there is just so much room for abuse, with so much room for timing it to coincide with elections. It’s a seriously flawed approach.”11 Gwendolyn Brice-Adderley, a lawyer for the Nationality Support Unit12 in Nassau, adds that “I know around election time some of those applications are fast forward.”13 While Harry Dolce, a Bahamian-born police officer of Haitian descent who went through the citizenship registration process, explains how “you’ll have certain times during the election period” where “they’ll hold your citizenship—no matter if you’ve applied three years ago, two years ago. But when it comes time to election, [they say], ‘Okay, we’re gonna give you your citizenship. Okay, you’re a Bahamian.’”14 George Charité, a medical doctor of Haitian descent on the island of Abaco, similarly affirms that “It could take elections” for individuals’ citizenship applications to be considered. “They normally get up around election time,” he says, “they make them citizens. So pray to God and thank God for elections. Election coming up.… Most likely you’ll get [citizenship].”15 Such allegations are not limited to study participants either. The Bahama Journal (2013) cites Lovy Jean, a Bahamian-born student of Haitian descent who spoke before the Bahamas Constitutional Commission,16 stating that difficulties exist in getting Bahamian citizenship unless “you’re lucky during a general election [and] you’d get it right away.”
Newspaper articles and letters to the editor also report on the regularization of “hundreds” of Haitian nationals as Bahamian citizens prior to elections as a means for the ruling party to increase its vote share.17 The Nassau Guardian, for example, states that “a monthly average of 31” citizenship applications were approved “between May 2, 2007 and June 30, 2010” for a total of “1,144 citizenship applications” (McCartney 2011). This number more than doubled to “a monthly average of about 75” applications “between November 18, 2011 and January 13, 2012”—less than four months prior to the 2012 general election (2011). According to then deputy prime minister Brent Symonette of the FNM party, the increased number of citizenship approvals was due to “improved efficiencies” regarding “applications that had been languishing for many years” within the Department of Immigration (DoI) (2011)18 and not because of politically motivated reasons.
Archival data I obtained from the Haitian Embassy in Nassau point to an increased number of Haitian nationality renunciations in the years prior to the 2007 and 2012 general elections (see Table 1). This is of note because, as part of the Bahamian citizenship application process, a person must renounce his or her current nationality in order to be eligible to be sworn in as a Bahamian citizen. Table 1 demonstrates that 359 Haitian nationals renounced their nationality in 2006, or an average of 29 individuals per month. This number increases to an average of 41 renunciations per month in the period of January through April, 2007, just prior to the May 2 general election. In relation to the aforementioned statistic provided in the Nassau Guardian article—1,144 Bahamian citizenship conferrals in the period May 2007 through June 2010—the data in Table 1 illustrates that 543 persons renounced their Haitian nationality during this period.
Without data from the Department of Immigration listing the number of former Haitian nationals who obtained Bahamian citizenship during this time, there is no way to know whether these 543 individuals (47 percent of the 1,144 persons) obtained Bahamian citizenship or what the nationality was of the other 53 percent of Bahamian citizenship recipients.19 In email correspondence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MFA notes that the Department of Immigration “does not have statistics on the number of applications for citizenship each year. However we do have statistics on those persons who are sworn in as citizens. On average, between 265 and 400 such persons are sworn in each year since 2007.” If we assume that these 543 persons in Table 1 obtained Bahamian citizenship, it appears that Haitian nationals make up a large proportion of naturalized Bahamians during this three-year period. This is not surprising, however, given the aforementioned statistic that Haitians make up 11 percent of the Bahamian population, which is the largest foreign presence in the country.
Table 1: Haitian Nationality Renunciations by Year, 2003–2011
Source: Original printout provided to the author by Ambassador Rodrigue, Haitian Embassy, Nassau, Bahamas, October 31, 2012. Total of 2,229 renunciations.
Whether former Haitian nationals are the recipients of the majority of these grants of Bahamian citizenship, it appears—in the words of Haitian ambassador Antonio Rodrigue—that “The question of citizenship is very political here [in The Bahamas].”20 As Ambassador Rodrigue observes, pointing to the data