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Opening the deportee debate
Bookshelf
AW Sangster
Sunday, October 16, 2005



Title: Deported Volume 1
Author: Professor Bernard Headley
Publisher: Professor Bernard Headley
Reviewed by: A W Sangster



Jamaica's crime rate has reached staggering levels and there is a widespread community perception that much of that serious escalation in crime has been caused by deportees. Two recent news items attract attention to the problem.

In the House of Representatives, the minister of national security responding to questions raised by the Opposition spokesman on crime gave some statistics on the repatriation of Jamaicans from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. He also stated that his ministry would be collaborating with the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) in a study on the impact of deportees on crime in the country.

In another news item, it was reported that four Jamaicans jailed in New Orleans for looting after Hurricane Katrina were being sent home. The release did not say that the men - hotel workers - had been tried and found guilty. In fact, the details suggested that there might not be a charge against them.

However, the decision to send them home was being taken and was symptomatic of a general trend to send foreigners home when they have brushes with the law.

Professor Bernard Headley of the UWI in this the first volume of studies on deportees raises critical questions on how the process of deportation works from the US point of view.

The study, with extensive quantitative detail, is based on information provided by the United States Office of Public Affairs in Jamaica on deportees.



As Professor Headley says in the preface, this report:
"Attempts to put before a critical audience matters relating to the controversial Immigration Reform Law that forms the basis for present US deportation policy. The report also lays bare some of the essential facts about the population of deportees in Jamaica who were returned from the US over roughly a six-year period, from 1997 through early 2003."

Professor Headley hastens to say that the data supplied on the deportees, convicted or non-convicted, did not enable the authors to develop any conclusions on the impact of the deportees on the local crime situation.

That will be the subject of Volume II in the series.
This, of course, is the critical question also posed by the minister in his report to Parliament.

However, two related studies in Barbados and Trinidad both pointed to a low connection between deportees and escalating crime. Whether a similar generalised conclusion will come from a Jamaican study remains to be seen. However, the special and detailed case of Oliver "Bubba" Smith tells a different story.

This is the case of a deportee who, on his return, carved out an extraordinary criminal record in the Spanish Town area and was eventually killed by rival gunmen.

Some of the facts presented in the summary of the report are:
. Between 1997 and early 2003, the number of all persons sent back to Jamaica was 12,036.

. The most frequent point of entry into the United States was New York (40.5 per cent).
. Males constituted the overwhelming number of deportees (96.5 per cent)

. From a selected representative pool of 8,226 deportees, 5,174 or 63 per cent had been convicted in the United States of a felony under provisions of a controversial Illegal Immigration Reform Act.

. The crimes for which deportees were most frequently convicted - and most likely did time in US prisons - were drug related; sales and/or distribution of cocaine and marijuana alone accounted for more than half of all convictions, while homicides accounted for a negligible two per cent.

. Close to half (48.8 per cent) of criminal deportees were returned home after a single criminal conviction.
The deportee phenomenon is not restricted to Jamaica, for it is reported that the United States has, in the period between 1996 and 2003, deported more than 500,000 "criminal aliens".

Eighty per cent were sent to eight countries - Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Mexico, by far the largest of these countries, had absorbed 340,000 of these deportees.

Are the deportees responsible for the increased crime wave in the country? It might well be argued yes. For, the Associated Press report which lists the statistics above refers to the deportees as "an army of misfits, drug addicts, and drunken drivers and shoplifters, rapists and wife beaters, drug traffickers and gang members".

But on the other hand, among the deportees are also undocumented workers and visa "over-stayers", non-reporting green card holders, out-of-status students, apprehended stowaways, and rejected asylum seekers.

Certainly, the society holds the view that the deportees are a big part of the crime problem. The view is reflected, for example, in newspaper editorial comment and even the police commissioner has alluded to the role of the deportees in an escalating crime scene in the St Andrew South Division.

A critical thread running through the study by Professor Headley is a challenge to this view, since he argues that the evidence is lacking. In addition, he argues that there is serious injustice in the law that is used to justify the deportation action. He quotes, for example, a limited Government of Jamaica study that would support his contention as far as evidence is concerned.

"If past offences are any indication of future recidivism, the low percentage of deportees being convicted for murder, attempted murder and manslaughter indicates that this group may not be a major contributor to the disproportionately high homicide rate in Jamaica."

The Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 1996. This is the key umbrella legislation under which the deportation actions are administered. Professor Headley quotes a number of sources that refer to the idea of "moral panic" which led to the action to frame the law.

"Moral panic" is defined as: A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interest; its nature is presented in a stylised fashion by the mass media and politicians."

The legislation grew out of orchestrated fear (compounded even more in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001) in which the severest penalties were structured into the law to exclude mainly an underclass of immigrants.

It is interesting to note that many of these draconian laws were signed into law by Bill Clinton. Some of the legislations signed by President Clinton were: The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act, The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act; "producing the most restrictive immigration policies in more than 75 years".

Responsibility for enforcing the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform Act has now been assigned to the Department of Homeland Security, the huge federal multi-agency that the George W Bush administration established to police America's borders, following the horrific terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. This co-ordinating agency was in fact recommended by the bipartisan commission, which made recommendations under the title The 9-11 Report.

The book cites a number of unfortunate examples where the application of the full force of the law has led to a number of ill-fated decisions and tragic consequences. The stories are told in a series of inserts.

Insert No 1 is headed: "A Mother Deported, and a Child Left Behind."
Insert No 3 is headed: "Returned to a Land Barely Remembered."
Insert No 5 is headed: "One Jamaica Deportee's Story."
Professor Headley summarises the deportee problem in the following way.

"The danger, in the final analysis, is framing the deportee issue the wrong way. The sudden presence of vast numbers of uprooted adult men and women, who are indeed thrust upon a "poor and defenceless" country, is a problem of grave human proportions.

To argue without support that the presence of this group of people is the source of much of Jamaica's crime and violence problem is not only disingenuous; it also undermines the unique complexities associated with the deportee phenomenon."

The small book of just 80 pages is replete with graphs of various aspects of the deportee problem. Clearly it merely opens the debate with the pertinent facts about the deportees' experiences in their adopted country - in this case the United States of America.

The hard data of the connection or otherwise of the deportees with criminal activity remain to be established. A concluding nostalgic comment from a soon-to-be-deported individual raises the question as to which direction will the deportee turn on returning.

"While some deportees will choose the path of vice over hard yet honest work, it should be understood that they represent a minority of the larger group - most of whom want nothing more than a chance to redeem themselves in society."