The post St. Lucia to lobby for change to US deportation policy: PM appeared first on St. Lucia News Online.
The Caribbean has been battling with thousands of criminal and other deportees to the region since the United States (US) immigration reforms in 1996, and Saint Lucia has been one of the affected countries.
Prime Minister Allen Chastanet said however that his government plans to continue to lobby for an international treaty to deal with the situation, since the country was threatened on the issue of accepting deportees.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, Chastanet said Saint Lucia was told that if it did not accept the deportees, travel for locals would be pulled. He said this was a major concern, so Saint Lucian opted to adhere to the policy.
But Chastanet said he has made it known to the US that Saint Lucia is unhappy with the current system.
Many have blamed crime in the region on criminal deportees who spent time in US jails and were then repatriated to small countries unable to track them or police forces less savvy than the criminals.
The prime minister said he is particularity concerned that someone who spent most of their childhood and adulthood in the US are sent back to Saint Lucia and other Caribbean countries.
But Chastanet, a former tourism minister, was quick to point out that the flaw in that policy come from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) legislation governing air travel.
He explained that the US uses that legislation to send back people, because the agreement states that if someone leaves one state, and that person is detained or denied entry, the country of origin must accept that person back.
But Chastanet hinted that that agreement is being abused on the basis that someone spends most of his/her life in one country, but if they commit a serious crime they are repatriated.
“I think this is an issue that must be brought up at the United Nations (UN) level and I think that we should write a treaty that specifically deals with deportees and how we are going to handle it,” he stated.
US President Donald Trump has vowed to immediately deport at least 2 million undocumented immigrants.
It is estimated that there are more than 2 million convicted criminals who are not US citizens.
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