The usual blame game

Now the ugliness is apparent in Trinidad and Tobago. Abruptly, the illegals are the number one cause of crime. Suddenly we have news reports of their detention and pending deportation.

“It is not coincidental that this problem (illegal immigration) started just around the same period of the escalation in gang activity, around 2004 or 2006, so it shows there is a relationship between illegal immigrants and serious crimes,” says National Security Minister Gary Griffith.

Where does Mr Griffith get the nerve? Where are the facts to support this “blame the illegal immigrant” hypothesis? Why does the Minister expect us to believe that the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena makes their relationship causal? Why is he encouraging xenophobia? Most of all, how can he be bold and brave enough to suggest that illegal immigration began in 2004? Where has Mr Griffith been?

And then it being the season of Christmas, the Minister opts for an offensive metaphor to describe his anti “undesirables” campaign, which contrarily, he insists is not a witch hunt.

“We will be like a parang side...we will be going from house to house and any person who is here illegally we will be sending them back to their country.”

Language not just boorish, but illogical. You cannot deny you are targeting all illegal immigrants for deportation and then in the same interview say you will be sending them all back home. It’s contradictory. It’s also ridiculous and unsavoury to say you are deploying the police to go from house to house. Is Mr Griffith proposing a pogrom?

Let’s consider the word “illegal”? In the case of immigrants, it’s a deliberately prejudicial adjective. “Illegal” takes us linguistically to “criminal” and there you have it. Yet migrants are not criminals for having been unable or unwilling to follow the red tape road, which is often corrupt and cruel, often tedious, and often impossible to navigate.

Whenever politicians speak of “immigration,” run for cover. That’s their device for turning the people’s anger away from politicians. As we speak, the British PM, threatened by the rise of a far right wing posse, has gone to Mrs Merkel to inform her that the UK must be exempted from the EU open borders policy. For Conservative and Labour politician alike, immigration is of sudden interest because an up and coming rival has declared non-citizens a burden on welfare and thus, persona non grata. For his part, Mr Griffith points out the injustice of illegal immigrants using our education and health systems. It’s as if there’s an established international immigrant-bashing script.

According to our erstwhile Minister, only the “legal” people have contributed to the country’s development and you can almost admire him for making preposterous, unsubstantiated pronouncements with a straight face. Daily, immigrants without papers perform the menial jobs at a considerable discount. They may not pay taxes, but since when is tax evasion an immigrant specific infraction? And really how much money do we think these people make? Were they to pay taxes, the revenue would be negligible. They may be using our schools, our health services, but they’re contributing more than they take.

Lord, the choices of Mrs Persad-Bissessar. Except for a talented few, the components of her Cabinet are largely square pegs in a round hole. That’s where Dr Rowley has the edge in this election race. We know that like the PM he’ll do the good and bad that politicians do and have to do upon arrival in office, but his appointees will be more sedate, more apropos. Dr Rowley will not necessarily have a bright Cabinet, but it will be one which operates within politic and acceptable political parameters.

The Gary Griffith selection is a mystery. At every turn, the Minister salutes discipline, vows he is a regimented, loyal man, in step with the ethos of the corps, but verbally he is strikingly foot loose and fancy free. Was his promotion another KPB mishap or was it deliberate policy? Did the PM appoint Gary Griffith to bazodee us away from the Government’s ultimate responsibility for the murders? Or did she run out of choices?

Questions to answer. Which will not be answered. The Minister will seek to clich? away reality every week, to distract us with a war on illegals, with promises of armoured vehicles and drones. He will profess his discipleship of the broken windows theory, then offer immigrants a window of opportunity. (What a fascination with windows!) The PM will be typically charmingly evasive.

This is a government generous to the people. It has expanded the infrastructure of TT in a more even-handed way, which can only be a plus for the economy, but it is also a government that left our borders defenceless, a government which has never quite found its way. Still enjoying popular support, many feel that perhaps we should give the PM a second chance, but for that shot, she will have to do a double take. Mrs Persad Bissessar must address her debilities. Her down to earth-ness, while a relief from the uppity that preceded her, cannot mask the ruin that comes of calamitous, ill-considered policy. And ole talk, gun talk, or bad talking “illegal” immigrants, is an ugly way to save face.

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