Corking the Islands’ Immigration Loopholes

Buying wives, renting husbands, selling passports and citizenship…

By Earl Bousquet

Just before Christmas, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines said he would be taking strong measures this year to cork some long-standing loopholes in his country’s immigration laws. He promises to do away with the practice of “wife buying” and “passport “selling” that have also been used to circumvent the state’s citizenship laws.

Under the system Dr. Gonsalves promises to fight, non-nationals would pay a native woman, a national or citizen of the state to marry him or her, thus receiving in the process a change of status that would make the non-national an equal citizen.

But don’t think for one minute that he’s the only Prime Minister getting headaches about creative devices and vices used by non-nationals to circumvent his country’s immigration laws.

Marriages of Convenience have existed for quite some time in the United States, for example, where illegal immigrants often fix arranged marriages to enable them to remain legally in the USA after the time initially granted by INS has expired.

Dr. Gonsalves says this practice has become too common in St. Vincent one of the measures he would introduce would be the necessity for him to see a police report on each non-national seeking to get married. He said his government would not permit the marriage to take place if he was satisfied that it was a marriage of convenience.

Dr. Gonsalves’ colleague Prime Ministers in Grenada and Dominica have also had to review their country’s position on the granting of what is called “economic citizenship”.

Under this scheme, non-nationals with enough money to prove they could invest in the country were able to purchase a passport for as little as EC$50,000.

Upon purchasing the passport, the purchaser automatically became a citizen of the country and had all the rights of a citizen as if he or she was born in the country.

The three Prime concerned have of late had to take stock and take strong steps because, in each case, the practices of “buying a wife” or buying “an economic citizen’s passport” has been landing their respective countries in lots of trouble with the international community.

In the case of Dominica, the Canadian government took drastic steps last year to bar holders of economic citizenship passports, because the system was being abused by nationals of third countries involved or suspected of being involved in activities incompatible with the law.

In some cases, such passports were sold to persons suspected of engaging in illegal or illicit activities. In other cases, they may have previously been denied entry visas to Canada, the USA or the UK from their countries of origin.

In all three cases, the past year has seen the governments of those neighbouring states come under serious scrutiny and pressure from the international community, especially from such scrutinizing bodies as the Financial Action Task Force of the OECD countries and the FBI of the USA.

Following a recent sting operation by the FBI (critics say it was “entrapment”) Dominica’s Finance Minister was forced to vacate his ministerial seat after a close friend was arrested in the USA, on a charge of allegedly being prepared to assist in money laundering.

In Grenada and St. Vincent, offshore banks that found themselves in trouble with international investigators were either closed down or had their licenses withdrawn; and those of their principals who held Caribbean economic citizenship passports had to either flee or their passports were withdrawn.

Fortunately, St. Lucia has not been cited for being an uncooperative jurisdiction in the world of international financial services. Due diligence, compliance with established monitoring and regulatory mechanisms and doing everything above board has saved this country such embarrassment.

Prime Minister Anthony has always made it quite clear that St. Lucia is “not at all interested selling passports to non-nationals because sovereignty is sacred and citizenship of St. Lucia is not for sale.”

But this is not to say that St. Lucia is out of the loop where buying wives or renting husbands is concerned.

Marriages of convenience are not unknown here.

Similarly, stories abound about the practice of certain Caribbean non-nationals who take advantage of the country’s lax laws to “invent parents and grand parents.”

This is done by securing birth certificates from the Registry (using the names of dead persons taken from tombstones at cemeteries around the island) which are later used to process applications for naturalization or citizenship.

These and other related topics will certainly occupy people’s minds here and in the OECS in the days and weeks ahead, now that the talk of regional integration and freedom of movement is again on the front burner.

These are emotional issues for St. Lucians, but observers encourage level of level-headedness in discussing them. “Only through rational discussion of these issues – whether it’s wife-buying, husband-renting, selling of passports, freedom of movement or doing away with the need for work permits – can we come up with workable solutions to these problems,” said one observer interested in promoting a discussion on the issue.

A caller to Monday night’s IPI programme on RSL also called on the proponents of the debate to “start the ball rolling” by having public debates on how these issues apply to St. Lucia.

Most are especially interested in the discussion on how the concept of freedom of movement of skilled labour will be put into practice in the Windward Islands, the OECS and CARICOM, within the framework of regional unity and integration.

January 8, 2002

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