Caribbean leaders used the opportunity during Mr. Gates’ weekend visit to Barbados, to again raise the vexatious deportation issue with a senior Obama cabinet official, just as they did with President Obama when he came to Trinidad a year ago last week.
Host Prime Minister David Thompson and Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt, the CARICOM chairman, sat at a press conference with Gates and discussed the major Caribbean-US isssues, among others.
Gates, the Republican holdover from the George Bush era cabinet, did what every visiting high-level American official has done in meetings with the region.Heassured governments that “Americas Third Border” is not forgotten or neglected, and will receive renewed attention from Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
Department of Homeland Security statistics show that 50,600 Caribbean-born nationals have been sent back in the last decade, most without their personal assets a significant amount sent back home with little prior notification from U.S. officials, a point Skerrit made to Gates.
Regional officials have anecdotally blamed them for an increase in gun and other violent crimes, for forming dangerous gangs and setting up smuggling rings to help some reenter U.S. cities.
“This is a various serious matter,” Skerrit said, sitting alongside Gates and Thompson at the rebuilt Barbados Hilton Hotel near Bridgetown, the capital.
The region, in 2008, absorbed 4,340, deportees -- two dozen more than the previous year; but early studies show that levels are up for last year, especially in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana which are normally the biggest recipients for green-card holders and illegal overstays who ran afoul of the law.
In the last year, leaders have met key U.S. officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, when he visited Barbados last year to -- among other things, see where his ancestors lived, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Obama himself.
As an indication of how frustrated authorities are with the issue, CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington said as the region was meeting with Obama in Port of Spain that, “we may never know how many found their way here illegally to further contribute to the crime problem,” repeating calls for an “enhancing of the terms and conditions [pertaining to] the information for the return of the deportees”.
Some CARICOM member states like Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica and the Bahamas have started U.S.-funded pilot programs in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration to help retrain and resettle deportees in the last three years.
If the program is successful, it could spread to other countries U.S. officials say.
