Glenroy Sinclair, Staff Reporter
Linton Dennis displays his birth certificate, national voter identification card and Tax Registration Number. - WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
HE INSISTS he was born in Oxford district in St. Mary 43 years ago and has never travelled outside of Jamaica. But to the Passport and Immigration Department, he may not be Jamaican.
Linton Dennis, carpenter and plumber, told The Gleaner that last Friday he went to the passport office in Kingston to have his travel document renewed.
However, officials there turned him down because they claim he is not Jamaican.
"They said I speak with an accent and I was not born here," Mr. Dennis, who has a good command of the English language, told The Gleaner yesterday.
He said that last Friday, a clerk at the Constant Spring Road office referred him to the customer service area where he was questioned by a female. Mr. Dennis said he was later escorted upstairs to a room where a team of one woman and three men began interrogating him.
"They asked me questions like which year I came to Jamaica. The way they treated me at one stage I became emotional. Their response was that they were not afraid of tears," said Mr. Dennis.
The St. Mary resident showed The Gleaner a copy of his birth certificate, his national voter identification card and Tax Registration Number (TRN).
Although they suspected that he was an illegal alien, the authorities at the Passport Office did not attempt to have Dennis arrested, instead he was allowed to return home.
RETURN WITH PROOF
However, they requested that he return to the customer service area with his daughter's birth certificate and a woman whom he married seven years ago.
"They are claiming that I married this woman because I wanted to stay in Jamaica," Dennis told The Gleaner.
He disclosed that in 1998 he got married to Patricia Sewell in Mandeville, Manchester, but they have since separated. Ms. Sewell is now living somewhere in St. Elizabeth, while he is living in Kingston.
When contacted yesterday, Lincoln Downer, the customer service manager at the Passport Office, confirmed that Mr. Dennis' accent had triggered off an investigation to determine whether he was really a Jamaican.
