Citizenship for Bahamian-born Haitians

One of the biggest challenges facing the Bahamian-born children of Haitian immigrants is that they are not automatically granted citizenship on the basis of the fact that they were born in the Bahamas. Instead, they are only eligible to apply for Bahamian citizenship between their eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays and, if they miss this narrow window of opportunity, they are no longer eligible for citizenship on the basis of their birth in the Bahamas.


This policy has been problematic for a number of reasons:

First, many Haitian-Bahamians miss the deadline because they are not aware of their legal rights or they simply do not know how to go about filing the necessary paperwork properly. Since their parents often have minimal education and, sometimes, little communication ability in English, they do not receive much help from home when the time arrives to begin the application process.

Second, even when Haitian-Bahamian young people submit the properly completed paperwork at the correct time, there is no guarantee that their application will be processed in a timely fashion, that it if processed it will be approved, or that it will even be processed at all.

Third, inability to obtain Bahamian citizenship makes it difficult, if not impossible, for promising Haitian-Bahamian young people to pursue a college education. Without citizenship, they are charged foreign tuition rates instead of resident tuition rates at the College of the Bahamas and they are unable to obtain a passport to pursue scholarship opportunities overseas.

Finally, the current citizenship laws--in effect since the time of Bahamian independence in 1973--are a radical departure from those that were in effect under British colonial rule or are presently in effect in neighboring countries (e.g., the Dominican Republic and the United States) that must deal with large numbers of children born to Haitian immigrants.

With these things in mind, I am pleased to read in the Nassau Guardian that a commission appointed by the Bahamian parliament has recommended changes in the Bahamian constitution that will insure that Bahamian-born children of immigrant parents (of any nationality) will automatically be granted Bahamian citizenship if they apply at the age of eighteen and meet a ten-year residency requirement. While I would prefer to see that children of immigrants be awarded citizenship automatically on the basis of their birth in the Bahamas (especially if their parents are legally residing in the Bahamas at the time), these changes--if implemented--will be an important step in the right direction towards making children of immigrants first-class citizens of the Bahamas with all of the legal rights and privileges that such citizenship entails.