Geisha Kow­lessar

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day knocked his col­league, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, for mak­ing promis­es on trav­el be­tween T&T and Ja­maica with that coun­try's for­eign min­is­ter, AJ Nichol­son, with­out first con­sult­ing him.

In fact, even as Dook­er­an made a pledge with Nichol­son to free up trav­el to this coun­try for Ja­maicans, Grif­fith main­tained he was not back­ing down on his de­ci­sion to boot "un­de­sir­ables" from oth­er Caribbean coun­tries out of T&T, in­sist­ing that peo­ple who en­ter this coun­try un­der the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) pro­gramme con­tin­ued to be a bur­den on the State and could fur­ther es­ca­late the crime sit­u­a­tion."T&T is not a mall, where any­one will be al­lowed en­try," Grif­fith said.

His state­ment came in the wake of a com­mit­ment by Dook­er­an to his Ja­maican coun­ter­part on Tues­day to open up trade and trav­el be­tween the two coun­tries and across the re­gion.Dook­er­an of­fered the com­mit­ment af­ter Nichol­son in­vit­ed him to Kingston for talks, fol­low­ing the de­por­ta­tion of 13 Ja­maicans from Pi­ar­co Air­port on No­vem­ber 19.

At a press con­fer­ence at the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Dook­er­an said dur­ing the two-day talks, Ja­maica and T&T had agreed that changes were re­quired in the way im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties in T&T and else­where in the Caribbean treat­ed Caribbean vis­i­tors.

He said it was agreed an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer had a right to ex­er­cise his au­thor­i­ty, but un­der the new re­quire­ments of Cari­com law this must be done with dis­cre­tion. He said it was agreed the new process­es must be put in­to a le­gal frame­work.

Grif­fith: Not ne­go­tiable

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Grif­fith main­tained that since the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment fell un­der his purview, any changes deal­ing with such is­sues, in­clud­ing di­rec­tives to be giv­en to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, could on­ly be done by ei­ther him or the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil."I want to re­mind every­one that the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion falls un­der the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry...That has not changed," Grif­fith said.

"All im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers have been ad­vised to ad­here to reg­u­la­tions of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act Chap­ter 18:01 and there would be no change to that un­less through the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil."Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers will con­tin­ue to per­form their du­ty by thor­ough­ly ver­i­fy­ing all per­sons to en­sure they meet the full re­quire­ments, and if they do not meet those re­quire­ments, they would not be al­lowed en­try in­to T&T. It's as sim­ple as that."

He re­it­er­at­ed that there were some 30,000 il­le­gal im­mi­grants in T&T, in­clud­ing Ja­maicans, St Lu­cians, Grena­di­ans, those from oth­er Caribbean is­lands and from South Africa, who had abused the "CSME's good faith," and they would all be im­me­di­ate­ly shipped back once lo­cat­ed.

"These peo­ple have not on­ly put a strain on the pub­lic's purse but al­so on the coun­try's health and hous­ing sec­tors. They have no BIR num­ber, there­fore they are not pay­ing any tax­es. Some even turn to a life of crime and this ac­tion can­not be con­doned," Grif­fith said."I have a job to do and that is to en­sure the sov­er­eign­ty of this coun­try and the se­cu­ri­ty of its cit­i­zens. There would be no el­e­ments of flex­i­bil­i­ty. This is not ne­go­tiable. The buck stops with me."

$2.3m spent on de­por­ta­tions

Say­ing T&T would ad­here to the rul­ing of the CSME and would wel­come all vis­i­tors, Grif­fith said, nev­er­the­less, those who de­sire to work in this coun­try must prove they have all rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and could sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments up­on land­ing at Pi­ar­co Air­port.He said the prob­lem of il­le­gal im­mi­grants had been a prob­lem to this coun­try for "far too long" and had reached the point where it could af­fect the coun­try's cred­i­bil­i­ty and al­so put T&T un­der the scruti­ny of its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

"The ports of le­gal en­try have been the biggest prob­lem for far too long and that is why we are in the sit­u­a­tion that we are now in," Grif­fith said.An­oth­er di­men­sion to the prob­lem of il­le­gal im­mi­grants was the heavy fi­nan­cial cost as­so­ci­at­ed with de­por­ta­tion, he said. He said for the last year, the Gov­ern­ment had spent some $2.3 mil­lion on de­port­ing il­le­gal im­mi­grants."Not on­ly do we have to buy their tick­et, but we al­so have to send an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer and a po­lice of­fi­cer to ac­com­pa­ny these peo­ple," he said.

Asked why he had not ac­com­pa­nied Dook­er­an on the trip to Ja­maica, Grif­fith said he was not in­vit­ed, but in­sist­ed it was a mat­ter in­volv­ing im­mi­gra­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty."The in­vi­ta­tion was sent on­ly for the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, not me, al­though the is­sue of im­mi­gra­tion was at the fore­front of dis­cus­sions. I did, how­ev­er, send my chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer to ac­com­pa­ny Mr Dook­er­an," he said.