15-year delay in proclaiming adoption law

Susan Ruth Jackson and her son Jordan Matthew Leiba had their TT passports revoked by the TT Consulate in Toronto, Canada, on September 2010 and won their judicial review claim in 2011, when a High Court judge found that the decision of the Chief Immigration Officer to seize their passports and not restore them was illegal.

The judge had found that Susan and Jordan were citizens of TT by virtue of Susan’s lawful adoption by Trevor Anthony Jackson and Jean Umilta Jackson, both TT nationals, who were domiciled in Jamaica for 36 years.

Susan was adopted by the Jacksons in May 1983.

Jordan was born in Jamaica in 2004.

At the heart of the appeal, heard by Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Justices of Appeal Peter Jamadar and Nolan Bereaux, who apologised for the delay in giving their decision, was whether Susan could claim citizenship by virtue of her adoption.

According to the judges’ ruling, which was delivered by Bereaux, the Adoption of Children Act of 1946 did not recognise foreign adoption orders and did not have extra territorial effect.

However, he pointed out that although the 1946 Act was repealed in 2000, which expressly provided for the recognition of adoption orders validly effected overseas, the 2000 Act was not proclaimed until May 18, 2015, long after Susan and Jordan filed their judicial review claim and the judge’s decision.

“It is lamentable that its (the Act) proclamation took so long,” Bereaux said.

He held accordingly Susan was not at the time of the grant of her passport a citizen by descent and was not entitled to any TT passport until the proclamation of the 2000 Act.

Jordan also could not then claim citizenship through his mother.

In his reasons, Bereaux noted that the Chief Immigration Officer would ordinarily have won his appeal but for the proclamation of the 2000 Act as the initial decision to seize the passports and to refuse to restore them was justified as the repealed act was not yet in force.

“However the effect of the 2000 Act is that the declarations (granted by the High Court judge) must be upheld,” he ruled and directed that the old passports be attached to the new passports which are to be reissued to them.

In his ruling, Bereaux emphasised that the Chief Immigration Officer was not acting unlawfully when the passports were seized as the law in existence at the time justified the TT Consulate’s actions.