Open letter to the US Ambassador

THE EDITOR: This is an open letter to the US Ambassador, Mr Roy Austin. Dear Sir, I cannot but conclude that you have a healthy disrespect for some of our country’s senior representatives, judging from the disrespect you have shown to the elected representative of Diego Martin Central on the matter of deportees.

No doubt this disrespect extends to the whole of this “backward” country with its 1.2M specks of dust, for you to be throwing that two percent statistic in our faces. You are educated enough, I am sure to have heard it said that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Tell me Mr Ambassador, in the world and in any country, what is the percentage of the criminal element — is it not always a small minority with the large majority of law-abiding citizens? And even in that small percentage of criminal element is it not true that the really violent are themselves a small percentage of the small percentage of the criminal element? So what exactly is your point? Way back in the 70s, I think it was a Trinidad citizen, a fugitive from justice, returned home. He wasn’t deported, he was a fugitive who ran from England because he was facing some serious charges. He went by the adopted name of Abdul Malik.

Some time after his return, we began to experience a series of bank and gas station hold-ups. It was the first time we had seen such a thing! Eventually, he was brought back to this country from Guyana where he had fled to face charges of murdering an English woman, Gali Ann Benson and a local named Skerrit. He was only one man but he was 100 percent criminal. So to put it in perspective, what does your statistic of two percent matter? It is what that two percent does that is important. If they are involved in murder, kidnapping, drugs, Mr Ambassador, that is what matters and not that they represent but a small percentage of the total deportees. But your emphasis on the two percent does raise other questions. I am aware that your Congress has passed legislation to effect such deportation but the question arises, if these people are not so bad after all, and as one person said for the most part were guilty of documentary fraud, why did your country deport the really non-criminal 98 percent? So you want only perfect immigrants, only angels, and you are prepared to exercise absolutely no tolerance whatsoever?

So you send back to Trinidad,  a person who, for some small offence, perhaps traffic or a small fraud, or a violent reaction in a small personal dispute, must now be ripped away from his family in the US and sent here where he has absolutely no one, no contacts, nothing. Now is that fair, Mr Ambassador, to the people and to our country?

DESMOND ROXBOROUGH
D’Abadie