The troubling deportees issue:

Ever since the U.S in 1997 began repatriating deportees to Caribbean countries where they were born, our leaders and security officials have been putting a large measure of the blame on them for rising criminal activities.
Sometimes their remarks are made without evidence – and when data is collected on the impact of deportees on the local crime situation, I’ve heard officials still blaming deportees for the increase in the murder rates, drug trafficking and gun-running.               
Indeed, some deportees have been involved in criminal activities based on police reports from several Caribbean countries but certainly not the high levels that officials  have been talking about.
In fact, their statements are sometimes so sensational that we might believe that if our countries did not have to deal with deportees, we could start dismantling the steel grating barricading our homes against the criminal element.
The real threat, however, continues to come from criminals living right here in our countries, who perhaps have never put their feet on the U.S soil but were probably getting some of their criminal tips from hard-core action-packed movies and strategies to evade leaving evidence behind from popular crime shows such as CSI:Miami.
During a Congressional hearing several days ago in Washington D.C on deportees in Latin America and the Caribbean, Anne Marie Barnes, chief technical advisor at Jamaica’s National Security Ministry who led the Caribbean’s argument reported that  the mass deportation of criminal offenders to the Caribbean and Latin America constitutes one of the greatest threats to security in the region.
This contrasts sharply with a recent report by the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which stated that the average Caribbean deportee is not involved in criminal activity. It however said that a minority may be causing serious problems, both by direct involvement in crime and by providing a perverse role model for youth.
In a case study on Jamaica,  one of the Caribbean countries proportionately most affected by criminal deportations, the report said based on currently available data, it is possible to conclude that it is unlikely that the average deportee is committing crime on the island but that it was possible that a minority is involved in criminal activity.
Instead of belaboring the issue of deportees and their link to crime, particularly as crime stats from here to Jamaica are showing that their involvement is at a low level, I think the main challenge we should be dealing with, is how best to help integrate deportees into our society, by providing them with support including housing, employment and counselling.
Many of them have absolutely no support system here. They have been separated from their wives, husbands and children who are still living in the U.S; others who may have left our shores as babies and toddlers don’t know their extended families here and have problems finding employment because of their status as a “criminal deportee.”
Deportees are here to stay and many more thousands will be returned to our countries whether we like it or not and setting up programmes specifically to deal with their integration should be the way to go.
As Chairman of the Sub-committee on the Western Hemisphere, Elliot Engel,  a New York Democrat reminded us in his opening remarks to the Congressional hearing, ” just in case there is any doubt, the Administration supports and adheres firmly to U.S. law. Aliens who commit crimes or violate immigration law in the United States run the risk of being deported.”
So it was welcome news that the U.S plans to provide funding to our governments to help deportees re-integrate into our societies.
Washington and the Caribbean are also due to sign an agreement soon to share information on the deportees and set up social programmes based on a pilot programme in Haiti, the third largest recipient Caribbean nation of deportees from the U.S – behind the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Bernard Headley, professor of Criminology at the UWI, Mona reports that the Haitian pilot reintegration programme appeals to those “who may have emigrated in search of brighter opportunities and have now returned”. Haiti “welcomes you as ‘a child of this island’, regardless of your length of stay abroad and any misdemeanours you may have committed”, according to the programme’s brochure.
“If you are willing to forge a new beginning, the Haitian Government, with the support of the International Organisation for Migration, has formulated a programme and tools to help you regain your place in Haitian society.”
Included in an array of reintegrative services are counselling, HIV/AIDS testing, drug rehabilitation and employment link-ups. This past fiscal year saw 185 “criminal” deportees enrolled in the programme.
Thirty-seven of them completed training in micro-enterprise creation; and, either individually or in groups, they have developed 13 separate projects, from bakeries to cyber caf鳬 according to Professor Headley.
An information-sharing programme via an electronic travel document (eTD), already successfully set up in Central America will also to be implemented in some of our countries that receive the bulk of deportees.
The eTD system provides biometric and biographic information on persons being deported from the United States, making that information available to consuls in the U.S. who are responsible for issuing travel documents and also to law enforcement officials in the receiving countries.
Social groups in our countries are also making efforts in helping deportees.
In Jamaica, a church-based group known as the Land of My Birth Association has recently started to offer similar services to some deportees while Citizens for a Better Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) have been lending a helping hand to the newcomers.
St. Kitts and Nevis have also set up the Returning Nationals Secretariat which is charged with facilitating reintegration of deportees and which provides counseling and offers assistance in finding jobs, locating housing, and using social services.
Seven years ago, the CARICOM Regional Task Force on Crime and Security recommended that member countries establish Offices for the Resettlement of Deportees modeled after the St. Kitts and Nevis programme.
I’m not sure how many of our countries have put that recommendation into action to help re-absorb deportees.
Perhaps the latest decisions out of Washington will spur our countries to move pro-actively on the troubling issue of deportees.