Immigration policy taking place
Wednesday February 23 2011 | 05:29 AM

Barbados' final immigration policy will take centre stage in the coming weeks.

Indication of this came yesterday from Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who said Parliament would soon have a "full" debate on the new White Paper on Immigration now being finished.

He was speaking in the House of Assembly as members of the Lower House passed Immigration (Validation of Functions) Act 2011 to validate the responsibility for immigration functions performed by Parliamentary Secretary Harry Husbands and Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Senator Darcy Boyce.

Stuart said "at some time in the foreseeable future Parliament will have a chance to have a full debate on immigration".

"It is generally known that this Government since coming to office has circulated a Green Paper on Immigration, which ... of course has been discussed in the public domain at a series of town hall meetings," he noted.

"It was also made available online and the finishing touches are now being put on a white paper, which would be reflective of Government's policy on immigration, and that White Paper will be brought to Parliament so that Parliament will have a chance to debate fully matters relating to immigration in Barbados."

The St. Michael South MP said Government's policy on immigration "has to take account of the fact that we have obligations under the revised Treaty of Chagauramas".

"And particularly we have obligations under the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, and therefore any policies to which we give expression in relation to immigration have to take account of those realities, but the time is coming, not too long from now, when Parliament will have a chance to discuss all those issues," he said.

During the brief debate, Opposition member for St. George North, Gline Clarke said while the Barbados Labour Party was prepared to wait for the full debate, Government needed to show it was clear about what it intended to do with immigration policy.

"It is very important that the Government, however, sets out a clear path. We believe that since 2008 they have been three or four ministers of Immigration and I wonder if the policy of the Government is being pursued as they first saw it in 2008 when there was an election," he said.

"The time will come when we will have to discuss the full Immigration Bill, we will have to discuss the White Paper when it comes here. 

Being watchful

"I notice that over the last couple of months there have been a number of changes, but we ... are very watchful of what is happening around us and we would not want at this stage to pre-empt the discussion on the Immigration White Paper when it comes, but we just want to tell Government that [it] must be certain."

In response, the Prime Minister said his administration "is very clear on the way forward for immigration as of course the White Paper will demonstrate" and that there was nothing strange about the substantive minister of immigration delegating aspects of that portfolio to others.

"As far as I am aware, since January 2008 there were only two substantive ministers of immigration in Barbados; that's the late ... member for St. John and now myself," he noted.

"It is true that ministers in the Prime Minister's Office or parliamentary secretaries in the Prime Minister's Office have had Immigration responsibilities delegated to them under the Immigration Act, and the substantive minister, the Prime Minister, could assign responsibilities for immigration to a minister in his office, but the substantive minister remained the Prime Minister."

"For the purposes of this sitting and for the purposes of the pieces of legislation before Parliament all we are trying to do today is to have the acts performed by the two persons named, given the circumstances in which they performed those acts, to have those acts validated," Stuart stated.