Nevertheless. After you live in a place it becomes your home and you love it. You take care of it and put your all into it. Then to have to be constantly reminded that you is a foreigner vell vait…

“I need to write a play about the displacement of legal immigrants”.
I feel homeless and voiceless…

Marriage to citizens of The Bahamas.

Provided that the right to be registered as a citizen of The Bahamas under this Article shall be subject to such exceptions or qualifications as may be prescribed in the interests of national security of public policy.

http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bahamas/bah73.html

I agree with you about contribution to the country, by the way. I think that we should all have to qualify in some way for our document of nationality. And I agree that many many non-Bahamians who live here do far more to build Bahamian society than so-called Bahamians.

Let me stop.

You do not and I repeat do not automatically receive Bahamian citizenship if you marry a Bahamian man. You still have to live in the country on a spouse permit for at least 4 years before you get a permanent resident application form. Then if you are Jamaican/haitian you have to wait a thousand years-like I did – before they find your application stuffed away on a dusty shelf -like mine was- [found this out long after]. Plus put up with agressive rude immigration officers [if you are Jamaican/Haitian].

My thing is not the obvious bias in the country against foreigners [especially the black ones] my concern is people are so concerned with who you are and where you come from that they fail to see the many contributions some of us are making to the country. If contributions in terms of health, the arts, education, finance could be a criteria for citezenship them many of us foreigners would qualify whereas many so called Bahamians would fail miserably. I saw the whole referendum fiasco as people’s rejection of “foreigners” yet again. They thought this was some sneaky way of getting foreigners to be legitimate… I was very disappointed especially in the women. Here it is that Bahamians have children off to school in every major country in the world for years at a time. If they think about it rationally…these are the same kids who are gonna come back with foreign wives and husbands and with children who cannot be fully Bahamians because of the constitution. ladies you might lose your daughters over this…the hassel could send them off to foreign climes where the constitution is not so stupid.

the ironic thing is that the country was founded by a foreigner Lynden Pindling’s daddy was Jamaican. Now talk dat! Maybe we should blame him for the constitution’s assinine qualities afterall aren’t foreigner’s blamed for everything that ails the country? And for all intents and purposes he was.

sheldon,

thanks