Guyana government supports Haitian migrants
nation, Guyana, this year are merely
transiting the country to other destinations
including French Guiana and
Brazil rather than settling in the country.
In doing so, they both arrive legally,
are allowed as CARICOM nations to stay
up to six months without any special
immigration documents and are free to
leave the country within that time.
He said there were no proven cases
of organized human trafficking or plans
to pad the voters list as the PPP alleges,
noting that most leave for French
Guyana, Brazil and other destinations,
abandoning the return portion of the
tickets in the process.
But the real center of issue has
to do with race. The Indo-supported
PPP fears that the Afro-led governing
coalition is deliberately bringing large
numbers of Black Haitians to rebalance
the population even though it is
widely known that most do not remain
in the country. Indians are about 36
percent of the population, while Blacks
are listed at about 33. Mixed raced
Guyanese comprising of mixes mostly
with Blacks, account for another 20
plus percent so numbers are important
in local electoral politics where people
vote mostly along racial lines.
Felix and other coalition officials
say it is ironical that no one, the PPP
in particular, is complaining about
the fact that more than 40,000 mostly
suitcase-trading, light-skinned Cubans
have come to Guyana so far this year.
The same is true for the 41,000 Americans
as well as for the nearly 12,000
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Trinidadians of all races who come
to Guyana. They only have a problem
with the Haitians. He said the reaction
to them was xenophobic.
“They are just passing through and
yet they are attracting all the negative
thoughts and actions of people who
are seeking power. Everyone is making
noise about the Haitians who simply
use Guyana as a point of transit to get
to their diaspora in Columbia, Cayenne
or Panama. This position resembles
xenophobia and is even practiced
by certain people seeking power,” he
said.
For its part, Opposition Leader and
former president Bharrat Jagdeo said
his party “is primarily worried that
these foreign nationals are being issued
with Guyanese documents, which
would allow them to be registered as
eligible Guyanese voters in the ongoing
registration. The plan afoot seems
to be one that envisages the padding of
the voters’ list with fictitious persons,”
said this week.
Since Felix spoke to state media at
the start of the week, some of the very
vicious attacks against the Haitians
have died down. Many Guyanese say
they are yet to encounter Haitians on
the streets as they do of Cubans, Venezuelans
and Brazilians for example,
all coming in increasing numbers in
recent years.
Guyana is set to become an oil producer
before the end of the year and
foreign nationals are lining up to cash
in on this new sector that is expected
to make the country one of the richest
in the hemisphere.
Continued from Page 1
David Arthur Granger, president of Guyana, speaks during the United Nations
General Assembly at U.N. headquarters. Associated Press / Seth Wenig, File
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