COAST GUARD STOPS HAITIAN MIGRANT SURGE, BUT LONG

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 NASSAU 000160 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PHUM SMIG HA BF SUBJECT: COAST GUARD STOPS HAITIAN MIGRANT SURGE, BUT LONG TERM IMMIGRATION CHALLENGES REMAIN REF: 07 NASSAU 1244 -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (U) SUMMARY: A U.S. Coast Guard cutter overtook a sailboat packed with 73 Haitian migrants on February 7, in the latest of four significant interdictions in the Windward Passage over a span of three weeks. The recent surge in migrants saw 447 Haitians rescued at sea by the USCG cutter, with Bahamian "ship riders" on board, reflecting the effectiveness of U.S.-Bahamian cooperation in the fight against human smuggling at sea. A further 128 migrants were intercepted by the Bahamian Defense Force. Recent USG interdiction and repatriation efforts have spared the Bahamian government nearly $100,000 in repatriation expenses -- welcome relief for a government that repatriated nearly 7,000 mostly Haitian migrants in 2007 at a cost of over a million dollars. The current Bahamian government has continued its vigorous immigration enforcement, even as it has eliminated its predecessor's sharp anti-immigration rhetoric and controversial raids. The country remains seriously conflicted about the calculation of economic benefit versus social costs of immigration, and illegal immigration remains one of the central long-term social challenges facing The Bahamas. END SUMMARY. -------------- CUTTER INTERCEPTS FOUR SLOOPS IN THREE WEEKS -------------- ¶2. (U) The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Valiant overtook a 30-foot, wooden-hulled Haitian sloop packed with 73 migrants on February 7, 25 nautical miles southeast of Acklins Island in the southern Bahamas. The cutter steamed northeastward from Guantanamo Bay to make the interception after a Coast Guard aircraft spotted the single-masted vessel, with some 15 migrants apparently on deck, in the late afternoon February ¶6. All migrants were safely transferred to the cutter for repatriation to Haiti within the next few days. This operation was the cutter's fourth significant interdiction of human smuggling attempts in the Windward Passage in the last three weeks, with Bahamian "ship riders" on board in each case. The recent surge totals 447 Haitian migrants rescued at sea by Coast Guard ships, reflecting the outstanding operational cooperation between our governments in the joint struggle against human smuggling and illegal immigration on the high seas. The Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) apprehended a further 128 Haitian migrants at sea south of New Providence January 24 in the first such interdiction this year; the RBDF intercepted some 1,300 migrants at sea in 2007. -------------- -------------- U.S. EFFORTS SAVE BAHAMAS 100K AND MANY HEADACHES -------------- -------------- ¶4. (U) The recent Coast Guard interdictions and USG repatriation efforts spare the Bahamian government direct costs totaling nearly $100,000, according to Bahamian government cost estimates. This is a significant sum, and a welcome relief for a government which repatriated nearly 7,000 illegal migrants at a cost of over a million dollars in ¶2007. Nearly 90 percent of repatriated migrants were Haitians, with Jamaicans, Dominicans, and Cubans constituting the next largest groups. Other well-represented nationalities on the rolls of the Immigration Detention Center in Nassau, where immigration violators are held, included Brazilians, Peruvians, a smattering of other South and North Americans, Europeans (West and East),Chinese, Africans, and even a couple of Turks. While most Cubans and other migrants from the region are headed to Florida, many Haitians either choose Bahamian destinations or end up landing, and eventually settling, on various islands for any number of traditional or prosaic reasons. ¶5. (U) Immigration officials do not hide their gratitude and appreciation of Coast Guard efforts which assist the government in its highly scrutinized efforts to combat illegal immigration at home. Intercepting migrants before they hit the beaches of New Providence or other islands, to become the targets of law enforcement and repatriation efforts, and attendant publicity, reduces and simplifies the government's work in many respects. Furthermore, wooden-hulled Haitian sloops are a high-priority target of joint U.S. and Bahamian law enforcement efforts, and are the focus of a U.S.-initiated Bahamian legislative reform effort in the context of OPBAT (see reftel). The variety of illicit cargoes -- drugs and arms in addition to people -- does nothing to ameliorate rising crime in the streets of Nassau. For now, the quaint sailboats remain a common sight in Nassau harbor, with derelicts littering public beaches in the south of New Providence where immigration officers periodically beat the bushes to apprehend illegally-landed Haitians. -------------- -------------- ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS CONTINUE UNABATED -------------- -------------- ¶6. (U) While continuing vigorous enforcement efforts at sea and on land, the Free National Movement (FNM) government has toned down the anti-immigration rhetoric and controversial raids of its predecessor, which drew criticism on human and civil rights grounds, at home and internationally. Immigration, legal and illegal, remains one of the biggest long-term challenges facing The Bahamas. Labor migration from poorer and more unstable parts of the Caribbean, Haiti in the first place, has already changed the linguistic and ethnic map of the islands. This leads to significant social tensions not only in the capital, but in smaller, outlying island communities proportionally more affected by Creole-speaking new arrivals. Shanty towns populated by often illegal, sometimes stateless Haitians, have spread in Nassau and multiplied throughout the smallest islands where manual labor is needed, contributing in turn to continuing ethnic tensions. Immigration, legal and otherwise, is unlikely to decline given the demand for cheap, unskilled labor in The Bahamas, especially as planned, large-scale hotel projects come on-stream. While big investments keep the economy afloat, the jobs and prosperity they bring act, in turn, as a magnet for the labor migration at all skill levels which Bahamian society has struggled for decades to integrate. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶7. (U) The Bahamian public remains seriously conflicted about the calculation of the macro-economic benefits, even necessity, of labor immigration, which may be difficult for the ordinary person to appreciate, compared to the very visible social and cultural costs. Hard-working Haitian laborers and gardeners are ubiquitous throughout Nassau but, fairly or unfairly, Haitian immigrants are also partly blamed for the current rise in violent crime and associated with illegal drugs and ethnic gangs. All this makes immigration a tricky but unavoidable political challenge, as government officials realize. The GCOB must chart a course for 21st century economic development for a small, tourism-based, archipelagic nation with no small sense of national pride, but not enough people to fill the jobs a growing economy provides. SIEGEL