Richard Ra­moutar

Con­tin­ued from last week

A very con­struc­tive and crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of the cur­rent Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment's modus operan­di will re­veal that this de­part­ment may per­haps be fac­ing a lead­er­ship man­age­ment cri­sis. There is need for a sound, pro-ac­tive vi­sion to pos­i­tive­ly di­rect the de­part­ment's eco­nom­ic, fa­mil­ial, hu­man rights, na­tion­al, in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice poli­cies in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

As it is al­so glob­al­ly recog­nised, the mi­gra­tion phe­nom­e­non is close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with is­sues of se­cu­ri­ty and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crimes. Thus, with our porous bor­ders, cul­tur­al and pub­lic ser­vice mind­set, the lethar­gic state of im­mi­gra­tion af­fairs man­dates need­ful in­cre­men­tal changes or it will suf­fer from man­age­ment de­fects.

This poor lead­er­ship ap­pears to ca­ress and fos­ter "a dis­turb­ing, dis­en­chant­ed, low morale, dispir­it­ed and de­mean­ing ap­proach to im­mi­gra­tion op­er­a­tions," ac­cord­ing to very se­nior im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials. Is it that this man­age­ment was en­trust­ed with re­spon­si­bil­i­ties which tran­scend­ed both their in­tel­lec­tu­al and man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ties?

Neb­u­lous clouds are hov­er­ing over in­con­sis­ten­cy of stan­dards, op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures and very se­ri­ous and un­at­tend­ed mat­ters of al­leged and per­va­sive cor­rup­tion. The il­le­gal prac­tice of "cook­ing and padding the books" with re­spect to over­time em­ploy­ment fraud, the en­dan­ger­ing of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and in­tel­li­gence due to the abuse of gov­ern­men­tal doc­u­ments, al­le­ga­tions of a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry na­ture with re­spect to bi­as­ness in the se­lec­tion for cer­tain posts, and favouritism in pro­mo­tions.

As a mat­ter of fact, one of­fi­cer was al­ready se­lect­ed for a post­ing abroad with­out an in­ter­view or pan­el ex­am­i­na­tion on diplo­ma­cy and for­eign af­fairs, the Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion on Con­sular Re­la­tions, knowl­edge of that coun­try's im­mi­gra­tion leg­is­la­tions and oth­er cur­rent is­sues. How did this oc­cur if there was trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty at the high­est lev­el?

Fur­ther­more, if se­ri­ous dis­ci­pli­nary and dis­missal ac­tions do not oc­cur, along with seizure of as­sets, then I am afraid that we do not un­der­stand and val­ue the req­ui­sites of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Many are the rea­sons why the op­er­a­tions of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment are still not ful­ly com­put­erised.

Giv­en the im­per­a­tives of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, there is no rea­son why re­cruit­ment prac­tices, thor­ough screen­ing, strin­gent back­ground sound checks, com­pul­so­ry vet­ting and poly­graph ex­am­i­na­tion should not oc­cur for each em­ploy­ee and of­fi­cer.

Ques­tions in the pub­lic's in­ter­est

There­fore, ques­tions must be asked in the pub­lic's in­ter­est. Why is the sit­u­a­tion al­leged­ly be­ing al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate? And what has man­age­ment done to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion? Now, if the cur­rent man­age­ment struc­ture ap­pears un­able and un­will­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age and make de­ci­sive ac­tion, should there then be a du­ly con­sti­tut­ed board to su­per­in­tend the over­all poli­cies and op­er­a­tions of the de­part­ment? W

ould this be nec­es­sary to en­sure and safe­guard Im­mi­gra­tion's re­la­tion­ship to mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty?

One of the many chal­lenges fac­ing the im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment has been the rapid loss of over 1,000 years of im­mi­gra­tion ex­pe­ri­ence, lead­er­ship and diplo­mat­ic skills over the past five years. This un­for­tu­nate predica­ment would see the ac­cel­er­at­ed as­cen­sion and pro­mo­tion (not based on writ­ten ex­ams, or in­ter­views, but staff re­port, se­nior­i­ty and oth­er high­ly ques­tion­able fac­tors) of ju­nior of­fi­cers, with lit­tle or no sub­stan­tive all round im­mi­gra­tion work ex­pe­ri­ence.

When this fac­tor is com­bined with a cu­mu­la­tive ab­sence of a sound, pro­fes­sion­al and on­go­ing im­mi­gra­tion course, en­com­pass­ing the req­ui­sites of im­mi­gra­tion law and pol­i­cy, cit­i­zen­ship law, hu­man rights law, ad­min­is­tra­tive and de­ten­tion law, diplo­mat­ic im­mu­ni­ties and con­sular prac­tices, in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions and treaties, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, lin­guis­tic needs, in­ter­view­ing tech­niques, the na­tion is poised to en­counter some very se­ri­ous chal­lenges in im­mi­gra­tion lo­cal­ly and abroad.

De­spite these se­ri­ous chal­lenges, it would be both pru­dent and time­ly to re­fer to the valu­able con­tri­bu­tion of im­mi­gra­tion stal­warts in the realms of lead­er­ship, man­age­ment, diplo­ma­cy and or­gan­i­sa­tion. Such fa­cil­i­ta­tive pub­lic ser­vants in­clude Meg­gie Smith, Joseph Bod­kyn, Ku­mar Sir­jus­ingh, Lack­raj Bis­son­dath, Her­man Browne, Nir­mal Bhag­gan, Matthew Tou­s­saint and Lennox De Leon.

Of the cur­rent crop of se­nior of­fi­cers, the pub­lic re­la­tions ex­em­plars of Jagdish Seemu­rath, head of the pass­port sec­tion and Di­ane John­son needs par­tic­u­lar men­tion. Equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant has been the role of The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) as­sist­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment with strength­en­ing our ca­pac­i­ty, train­ing, and de­vel­op­ment of man­ag­ing mi­gra­tion.

Need for leg­isla­tive changes

The sig­na­to­ries and rat­i­fi­ca­tions by Trinidad and To­ba­go of in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ments such as the UN Con­ven­tion on Refugees, UN Con­ven­tion on Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime and the Paler­mo Traf­fick­ing and Smug­gling Pro­to­cols, An­ti Ter­ror­ism Leg­is­la­tion, and Counter-Traf­fick­ing Bill and Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child need to be housed with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Act. Fur­ther­more, there ex­ists a wor­ri­some gap be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al law and state prac­tice, which makes the knowl­edge of in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions of states of vi­tal im­por­tance.

How­ev­er, these sig­na­to­ries does sug­gest that such rep­re­sent a fur­ther in­di­ca­tion of this coun­try's in­ter­est and val­ues in in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law. There are al­so many ir­rel­e­vant pieces un­der Sec­tion 8 of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act that needs to be elim­i­nat­ed. The act al­so needs to en­shrine its poli­cies, ob­jec­tives and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Good gov­er­nance as far as mi­gra­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and op­er­a­tional ob­jec­tives are con­cerned re­quires ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion.