Lacy WrightDEPORTATION IS back in the news here as word seeps out that the US Immigration Service (INS), will soon start apprehending, interrogating and in some cases bringing criminal charges against foreigners who have ignored orders to leave the country.
There are an estimated 314,000 such 'absconders' in the United States of all nationalities. About 6,000 are reportedly from countries identified as al Qaida strongholds, and something less than 1,000 of these are convicted felons from the Middle East and Pakistan. In this post-September 11 period, they will get INS' priority attention.
The immediate implications for Jamaicans living here illegally are probably not great. If the INS proceeds in the expected fashion, it should go after a number of other groups before targeting out-of-status or even criminal Jamaicans, who are not considered to be involved in international terrorism.
If, however, the INS does eventually set its sights on West Indians and others from this hemisphere, a number of illegally-resident Jamaicans who have heretofore not been sought out could find themselves in trouble. Thousands, for example, are said to be here on legitimately-procured but expired visas. Others, though their visas have not expired, have exhausted their six-month stay. And still others have committed some kind of crime, from entering on forged documents to serious felonies, and could be apprehended and prosecuted.
Over the last several years, US deportations to Jamaica have been subject to some conflicting trends. On the one hand, the number of INS-held Jamaicans who have been released from jail early so they can be deported, is dwindling, having gone from about 700 to about 400 in the last three years. As that 'backlog' evaporates, annual deportations ease.
The second mitigating trend concerns the 1996 immigration law which expanded the INS' powers to deport and produced a 'bulge' in the statistics, with US deportations to Jamaica having gone from 1,193 in 1996 to a high of 1,533 in 1999. If one speculates that the overall number of potential Jamaican deportees was being depleted at an accelerated rate during this period, this too should contribute to a decrease now in the annual numbers.
In fact, the numbers have gone down since 1999, to 1,251 in 2000. Although they rose to 1,410 in 2001, that was still less than the 1999 peak. Those numbers could continue to rise again, however, if the new effort to catch and expel visa overstayers eventually focuses on Jamaicans and others in the Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, Jamaica and other countries are left with a long-familiar problem: how to reintegrate deportees back into their societies, especially those with a criminal past.
Two years ago I called attention in this column to a year-old 'reception centre' in El Salvador for meeting deportees and helping them get resettled.
El Salvador gets far more deportees from the US than does Jamaica: 8,000 in 2001, of whom some 2,500 have committed crimes, often as gang members in Los Angeles or other big cities. Now three years old, the El Salvador centre has so far been supported through funding by the US government through the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration, which in turn contracts with Catholic Relief Services to run the centre.
Returning deportees are met at the airport, handed a small amount of money (if needed), and given some basic information on where to go and what to do, including leads on how to find a job. The results are considered successful; in fact, a similar programme was started in Honduras in 2000.
You can read a short description of the two programmes on the Internet at usinfo.state.gov/regional/ar/reception.htm.
I have long hoped that such an effort could be mounted in Jamaica. The US government is an obvious potential contributor. This would not be a silver bullet, and the goals would necessarily be modest. But the programme has already shown that it can make a difference in a tough environment. It seems to be worth trying.
Lacy Wright was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kingston and acted as Ambassador in 1993-1994. He can be reached at Wright.international.inc@erols.com
