Dominica confirms accepting Colombians under migration programme with United States

The Do­mini­ca gov­ern­ment con­firmed on Wednes­day that five Colom­bian na­tion­als de­port­ed by the Unit­ed States un­der the third coun­try na­tion­als pro­gramme have since re­turned to their coun­try.

Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit told a news con­fer­ence that Roseau had con­clud­ed all arrange­ments with Wash­ing­ton re­gard­ing the pro­gramme and that “the Unit­ed States sent us a first list of peo­ple, and we did not ac­cept those names, and they sub­se­quent­ly sent us a sec­ond list of peo­ple to choose from.

“Nor­mal­ly they give you a list to choose from and we se­lect­ed five peo­ple. They’re all five Colom­bians and they came in­to Do­mini­ca, and they’ve all left and re­turned to Colom­bia. So, there were five Colom­bians who came in and in a quick time they left Do­mini­ca and they went to Colom­bia. It was very fast,” Sker­rit told re­porters.

He said cur­rent­ly, Do­mini­ca has no third coun­try na­tion­als un­der the pro­gramme and that Roseau has en­gaged the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) to man­age the be­half on be­half of Do­mini­ca.

“The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment gave a sum of funds to pro­vide for those in­di­vid­u­als. They were placed at a ho­tel, and they were fed and they were tak­en care of. They went shop­ping at the shops in Do­mini­ca.

“They went to the bar­ber shop and got hair­cuts and so on and they all de­cid­ed to go to re­turn to the home coun­try of Colom­bia. Once they ar­rived, we made that of­fer to them of whether they in­tend to go back to their coun­try and they all in­di­cat­ed that they were will­ing to go back to their coun­try.”

Sker­rit said that un­der the mi­gra­tion agree­ment, “the Unit­ed States has been prag­mat­ic on this.

“They sent us the first list and we felt that one, there are some peo­ple we would not ac­cept and sec­ond­ly, we want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on those per­sons. At the time they could not pro­vide to us ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion and they sent us a sec­ond list and all the oth­er lists with the in­for­ma­tion that we need­ed, and they all went away.

“None of the five peo­ple though, I be­lieve there was one mi­nor, but none of the five peo­ple had any crim­i­nal records. I guess we’re just peo­ple try­ing to make a bet­ter liv­ing in the Unit­ed States and they found them­selves in dif­fi­cul­ties and had to be sent out”.

But Sker­rit in­sist­ed that none of the mi­grants “had any crim­i­nal records or some­thing. They nev­er gave any is­sues.”

Sker­rit said that he be­lieves Do­mini­ca has a “du­ty to hu­man­i­ty and there are so many Do­mini­cans who live in peo­ple’s coun­tries, so we see it be­yond just a food coun­try na­tion­al is­sue and a bi­lat­er­al arrange­ment be­tween our­selves and the Unit­ed States.

“We have a high­er philo­soph­i­cal view on hu­man­i­ty and the right for every­body to sur­vive and to be re­gard­ed.” Sker­rit said, adding that un­der the agree­ment with the Unit­ed States “we have agreed every quar­ter to ac­cept five or sev­en, be­tween five and sev­en, ei­ther five or sev­en, but not more than that, every quar­ter.

“So we re­ceive the first five, and I’m sure that if the need aris­es from the Unit­ed States stand­point, they will make an­oth­er re­quest to us, and we will ex­am­ine that re­quest based on the agree­ment that we have with the Unit­ed States, and the con­di­tions un­der which those per­sons will be ac­cept­ed in­to Do­mini­ca, and both sides have been re­spect­ful to each oth­er on that, I must say, I’m go­ing to make that point pub­licly,” Sker­rit added. —ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca (CMC)