On The Map: Ministry moves to stem illegal migration

March 10, 2010

Ministry moves to stem illegal migration

Miranda La Rose

Wednesday, March 10th 2010

The Ministry of National Security does not view the ’growing trend’ in the number of illegal immigrants detained in the country over the past five years ’as an uncontrollable influx,’ Minister of National Security said.

Of 2,992 illegal immigrants detained 2,742 were deported as of December 31, 2009.

In response to a question Senator Mark Wade asked in the Senate yesterday, Minister of National Security Martin Joseph said that the ministry noted the trend recorded by the Immigration Department and has implemented a number of initiatives to stem illegal migration. These include the restructuring and strengthening of the Immigration Department’s investigation unit, enhanced training programmes, and strengthening the country’s border management systems.

The investigations unit, he said, has nine officers-three immigration officers and six police officers from the Criminal Investigations Department. There is no investigations unit in Tobago. The immigration officer in charge of passports spearheads all investigations relating to illegal immigrants there.

Joseph said it is proposed that the Immigration Department investigative arm be substantially increased to include an investigation unit of 47 officers, enforcement unit, intelligence unit, documents lab, and the recently established detention centre at Aripo, Arima.

It is also proposed that the Tobago Immigration Department be given a dedicated investigations unit. Implementation of the proposals being pursued, he said, are dependent on available human resource.

Training of immigration officers has been strengthened to better equip them to deal with illegal immigrants.

The Ministry of National Security is also moving to strengthen its border management by strengthening the maritime fleet of the Coast Guard, which recently acquired six fast patrol craft. It is also due to acquire the first of three offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) by the end of July. In the interim, two vessels were acquired by the Coast Guard to bolster its fleet while the OPVs are under construction.

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Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007
St. George, Barbados

(complete text)

I am the complex Creole
My context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreed
Of carnival, class and comess
Cognizant of Columbus
And the Commonwealth
That created these confused colonies
Correctly criticized for the callous treatment
Of the Amerindian
And the reconstitution
Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries later
My coronary artery crackles
When I think of the creatures
That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collide
There is more chaos than community
Some feel like foreigners
As though uncharacteristic
Of these now ex-colonies
Our natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wear
Like a crest on my chest
My credentials are that I am created equally
Credible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor country
I sing the canticles
And practice a yoga
I chant
I breathe
I made my jappa and wrote a creed
I owned a crucifix
And acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion of
Cinnamon, coffee and cumin
Cocoa, cotton and cane
It is with composure and compassion that
I conceive my compatriots as compatible
Whether Cuban or Guyanese,
Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatory
That is a consanguineous conscious community
Confidently confirming a conglomerate
Who speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex Creole
Confronting this crossroads of centuries
I cannot condone the corruption
Nor those who configure the conflict –
I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way
And commemorate the cobweb we have become
I come to you
Not as a comedian
Nor as a clown
I come to you as a coalition
Of combustible matter
A civilized collective
Sometimes caustic, but never counterfeit
I am a cordless creator of culture
Conveying my codes
To a community that isn’t convinced
Of the credit of cultural producers

And now I wear coronet
A continuous circular

In my cipher
I chuckle
I weep

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole chant

March 10, 2010

Ministry moves to stem illegal migration

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Statement

Creole Chant

(complete text)

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