Richard Ra­moutar

The ter­ror­ist events of 9/11 which shocked the en­tire world caused a flur­ry of glob­al and na­tion­al leg­is­la­tions deal­ing with the link­ages be­tween se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns-in par­tic­u­lar, ter­ror­ism, asy­lum and mi­gra­tion. Fol­low­ing the 9/11 at­tacks on New York, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia, the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil passed Res­o­lu­tion 1373 which im­posed on States a num­ber of oblig­a­tions of a gen­er­al char­ac­ter.

It most­ly con­cerned the pre­ven­tion and pun­ish­ment of the fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties and oth­er le­gal oblig­a­tions aimed at the re­pres­sion and pre­ven­tion of ter­ror­ist acts. One of the oth­er oblig­a­tions was aimed at pre­vent­ing the move­ment of ter­ror­ists or ter­ror­ist groups by ef­fec­tive bor­der con­trols on is­suance of iden­ti­ty pa­pers and trav­el doc­u­ments.

Re­cent­ly, the US De­part­ment's Bu­reau of Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty in ref­er­ence to T&T not­ed that "giv­en the crime rate and some weak as­pects of bor­der con­trol, there re­mains a con­tin­ued con­cern that Trinidad and To­ba­go could be utilised as a tran­sit point for po­ten­tial ter­ror­ists and ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions."

The dis­man­tling of the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion would have been a ma­jor thrust in that di­rec­tion. While as a na­tion we need to be ex­treme­ly se­cu­ri­ty con­scious (re­view 1970 and 1990), we may have be­come tardy and sus­cep­ti­ble to the virus of cor­ro­sive and hy­brid ac­tiv­i­ties of transna­tion­al crimes that en­dan­gers our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The fol­low­ing are three ar­eas of grow­ing na­tion­al con­cern:

Iden­ti­ty cri­sis reach­es the courts

A cur­rent mat­ter en­gag­ing the courts, po­lice and im­mi­gra­tion con­cerns the iden­ti­ty of "a for­eign na­tion­al who has three chil­dren born here and is al­so mar­ried to a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In­car­cer­at­ed for al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal of­fences and ap­par­ent­ly un­able to se­cure bail, this in­di­vid­ual is hop­ing for some re­lief to be with her chil­dren, all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go (rang­ing from six months to nine years).

Al­most nine months have elapsed and the in­abil­i­ty of the com­bined au­thor­i­ties to con­firm the in­di­vid­ual's iden­ti­ty con­tin­ues to mys­ti­fy the courts. At the same time, the best in­ter­ests of these chil­dren and hus­band con­tin­ue to suf­fer emo­tion­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly.

That is not to say that this in­di­vid­ual should not ap­pear be­fore the courts on al­le­ga­tions of these se­ri­ous of­fences. The in­abil­i­ty to se­cure bail may raise the fol­low­ing ques­tions: is the per­son a flight risk or a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty? Could the au­thor­i­ties con­sid­er re­leas­ing her on con­di­tion to re­port on the al­leged pos­ses­sion of a Trinidad and To­ba­go birth cer­tifi­cate, Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, dri­ver's li­cence and pass­port? What kind of se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems do we have?

Em­ploy­ment over­time fraud

An­oth­er se­ri­ous mat­ter that se­nior im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials are now ex­am­in­ing is the al­le­ga­tion of du­bi­ous over­time claims. One would think that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would min­imise the risks of any al­le­ga­tions of claims of fraud and pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion.

Or is it fast be­com­ing a min­istry of na­tion­al in­se­cu­ri­ty? It ap­pears that some Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers are there not be­cause they en­joy the job and un­der­stand the fun­da­men­tal tenets of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and our in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions, but seem to adopt a sim­i­lar pos­ture of some politi­cians, "What's in it for me dol­lar wise?"

Can one imag­ine that some of­fi­cers are send­ing over­time claims for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $70,000 a month? What sort of ac­count­ing, au­dit­ing, de­tec­tion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion mea­sures have been in­sti­tut­ed by of­fi­cials lead­ing this de­part­ment?

Re-in­sti­tu­tion of Ex­it Im­mi­gra­tion Con­trols

Fi­nal­ly, ap­par­ent con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to the re-in­tro­duc­tion of ex­it mi­gra­tion con­trols at the de­par­ture lev­els. Pri­or to the late nineties, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty op­er­at­ed on an en­try-ex­it con­trol mech­a­nism. As a re­sult of glob­al­i­sa­tion, lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the glob­al econ­o­my, mi­gra­tion and mo­bil­i­ty, en­hanced re­la­tions with al­lies, these con­trol mea­sures were elim­i­nat­ed to fa­cil­i­tate eas­i­er mo­bil­i­ty.

One of the ap­par­ent­ly de­sired ob­jec­tives of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ap­pears to be pro­mot­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as an at­trac­tive and strate­gic lo­ca­tion for en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness ini­tia­tives to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of a strong and ro­bust econ­o­my. What is the un­der­ly­ing ob­jec­tive be­hind such a move?

How­ev­er, if the PP Gov­ern­ment re-in­tro­duces these con­trols, it risks alien­at­ing its part­ners, stake­hold­ers, air­lines, its glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and will be re­buffed by the pub­lic. Large de­vel­oped coun­tries like the UK, USA and Cana­da do not have ex­it con­trols in a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven world.

Who­ev­er is ad­vis­ing the Min­ster of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Im­mi­gra­tion should think a hun­dred times be­fore en­ter­tain­ing such an idea. The point is air­lines (Car­ri­ers Oblig­a­tions), air­line li­ai­son of­fi­cers and Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty (cu­mu­la­tive­ly four times-at en­trance and at fi­nal de­par­ture) al­ready as­sumes is­sues of iden­ti­ty con­trol and trav­el.

To im­pose im­mi­gra­tion ex­it con­trols is go­ing to de­lib­er­ate­ly frus­trate the trav­el­ling pub­lic and put a dent in tourism and in­dus­try. If there is a need to mon­i­tor cer­tain trav­ellers for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es, that can be done through a dif­fer­ent sys­tem. Why not use e-ad­vanced scan­ners to read pass­ports, linked with im­mi­gra­tion and po­lice to iden­ti­fy peo­ple as se­cu­ri­ty risks or car­ry­ing forged doc­u­ments?

Maybe the PP Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er giv­ing diplo­mat­ic treat­ment to all our el­der­ly cit­i­zens who have con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and na­tion build­ing at both Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms and be an ex­am­ple to the rest of the world.