GEORGETOWN, Guyana

The Guyanese Foreign Minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, said based on figures at her office 32 Guyanese who have not qualified for the Barbados amnesty have returned home and are reintegrating well, with the foreign affairs ministry here assisting them under the local re-emigrant scheme.

Rodrigues-Birkett on Monday highlighted that most of these persons returned in the latter part of last year.

In June of last year, the Barbadian government announced a massive amnesty for undocumented Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nationals living there for five years or more to regularise their status. Those who had not reached that period of time in the country were required to leave by December 31.

Guyanese in Barbados were not spared this new policy and many of them were forced to return to Guyana and reintegrate into society. Rodrigues-Birkett said, while the returning numbers were not very high, those who came back are doing well.

“I don’t have any evidence that the number of persons returning (from Barbados) is really high, because they would come as regular passengers and, unless they were deported, we would not have those figures, but I would imagine that we would have had people returning on their own free will,” the minister said.

Rodrigues-Birkett said based on the number of Guyanese that were said to be on the island illegally earlier in the year, it seem as though many of them have straightened out their documents.

“Prime Minister (David) Thompson did indicate, while he was in Guyana, that he had no reason to believe the majority of applications for work permits would not be approved, so I would imagine that a lot of those have been approved,” Rodrigues-Birkett noted.

She is of the opinion the figures reported are true based on Guyanese authorities’ early move to denounce what they felt were inhumane treatment to nationals living in Barbados.

“I think in a large way what we did and also what other Guyanese did, including the media, contributed to what I would see as a little bit of relaxing on that kind of ill-treatment that some of our citizens had to face,” she explained.

The Barbadian immigration amnesty ended on December 31 and Guyana’s honourary consul in Barbados, Norman Faria, said on Monday that the number of persons seeking assistance there to either return home or regularise is very low.

He noted that most undocumented Guyanese on the island seem to have either straightened out their documents or left the country.

Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Leave a Reply