[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 74 (Monday, June 12, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1116-E1117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE ISSUE OF CRIMINAL ALIENS, HOW THEIR DEPORTATION AFFECTS THEIR 
                                HOMELAND

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, June 12, 2006

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record an 
editorial from the New York CaribNews newspaper dated May 16, 2006 that 
draws attention to the ``longstanding and thorny problems'' associated 
with the deportation of criminal aliens and the resulting initiatives 
needed to re-integrate them into the society of their Caribbean 
homeland.
  The article addresses Caribbean born individuals who have broken the 
law in the United States and subsequently banished back to their 
homeland. There are varying opinions surrounding the re-integration of 
criminal aliens. Some feel that their return is creating serious 
problems while others blame the situation on the United States and 
other country that deport them.
  Mary Kramer, the U. S. Ambassador to several Caribbean nations 
believes that the deported criminal aliens are no real threat to the 
Caribbean states and are in fact productive law-abiding citizens. She 
also asserts that the criminal aliens are not playing a significant 
role in the upsurge in crime in the Caribbean. Grenada's Prime 
Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell shares his opinion that in the criminal 
enterprise Americans have imparted all of their bad ways on the aliens 
and then deport them back to their regions as hardened criminals. P.J. 
Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica cautions Ms. Kramer against 
relying on the U.S. statistics and conclusions reached by U.S. 
researchers. In this article he shares a concern about the relationship 
maintained by criminal aliens and gang members abroad.
  In the article, the editor offers several solutions to solve the 
problem of coping with deported criminal aliens. Similar pilot programs 
have been developed and implemented in other countries. Based on the 
statistics, there will continue to be an influx of criminal deportees 
to the Caribbean. If other well-to-do nations are truly interested in 
the economic and social development of the island-nations they should 
be prepared to assist financially in the re-integration process for 
Caribbean criminal aliens.
  Mr. Speaker: I submit this interesting and informative editorial from 
the CaribNews newspaper for submission to the Congressional Record.

              [From the New York CaribNews, May 16, 2006]

                     Criminal Aliens: An Editorial

       Just when everyone thought that the question of why 
     undocumented immigrants should stay in the United States was 
     the only item on the table for discussion, we have been 
     jolted back to reality to deal with a long-standing and 
     thorny problem: criminal aliens.
       From London, Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston and Bridgetown to 
     New York, Washington and other cities, we are being forced to 
     focus our attention once again on the deportation of persons 
     who have broken the law in the countries to which they have 
     emigrated from the Caribbean.
       The trouble is that in deporting immigrants who have 
     committed crimes in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, 
     are creating serious problems for their friends and allies in 
     the Caribbean.
       That issue is at the root of a dispute involving the U.S. 
     Ambassador to several nations in the region--Antigua, 
     Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia and 
     St. Vincent.
       It seems as if Mary Kramer, America's top diplomat to those 
     island-nations, has convinced herself that not only are the 
     criminal aliens no real threat to the Caribbean states but 
     they are productive law-abiding citizens in their homeland.
       Nothing can be further from the truth.
       Granted, some of them have become productive citizens. Also 
     true, the U.S. has a responsibility to protect its borders 
     and its people from persons, whether native born or 
     immigrants from disrupting the society. And it can do that by 
     enforcing its law.
       But to ignore the hard reality of what's happening in the 
     Caribbean, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, included, 
     is akin to burying one's head in the proverbial sand by 
     pretending that choirboys and girls are being shipped to the 
     region.
       That's unreal.
       According to a news agency report, Kramer believes that the 
     deportees are not playing a significant role in the upsurge 
     in crime in the Caribbean. In addition, she wants to get the 
     word out that the U.S. was ``not deporting people who go to 
     the U.S. as very small children and learn bad behavior.''
       The evidence indicates otherwise. Many of the persons 
     deported to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Lucia, 
     Guyana, Haiti, Barbados and their neighbors left the U.S. as 
     underage children and were sent back as hardened criminals. 
     Just as bad they had lived in the U.S. for so long that on 
     their return they knew no one and nobody knew them, a point 
     made by Grenada's Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell, when he 
     addressed Grenadians at a recent town meeting in Brooklyn. 
     ``They are sending people from America and they got all of 
     their bad ways in America and Canada and they send them back 
     to the region,'' was the Dr. Mitchell put it. ``Each time you 
     notice a problem home involving young people there is someone 
     from North America (involved in Grenada).''
       It's clear that criminal aliens are causing problems, 
     serious problems in the English, French, Spanish and Dutch-
     speaking nations and territories in the Caribbean.
       It's also a fact, an awful reality that far too many of the 
     deportees are involved in criminal behavior in the region. To 
     deny that, as Kramer seems to have done is to engage in 
     ostrich like conduct. The mistake she made was relying 
     entirely on the statistics which U.S. funded surveys have 
     unearthed.
       P.J. Patterson, until recently Jamaica's longest-serving 
     Prime Minister, cautioned the Ambassador against relying on 
     the data and the conclusions reached by the researchers.
       ``I don't think that one can look at it only in narrow 
     statistical terms,'' Patterson told this paper. ``I say that 
     because very often, especially in areas connected to drugs 
     those who return get involved in leadership of gangs that 
     maintain relationship with gangs that operate abroad and 
     really influence the criminal activities that are taking 
     place in particular communities in which they return.''
       Cabinet ministers from St. Lucia, St. Kitts-Nevis, Haiti, 
     the Dominican Republic and Dominica have all made essentially 
     the same complaint. Kramer should stick to the line taken by 
     senior U.S. State Department officials and members of the 
     U.S. Congress who have told Caribbean nations that American 
     authorities are simply following the law and that's not going 
     to change. To try to defend the bad bit of legislation and 
     its damaging consequences on the Caribbean by denying the 
     obvious isn't going to solve the problem.
       The solution isn't difficult to figure out. The countries 
     deporting the criminals and those being forced to accept them 
     should sit down and work out a reasonable policy that (1) 
     ensures only Guyanese are deported to Guyana, Haitians to 
     Port au Prince, Jamaicans to Kingston or Dominicans to Santo 
     Domingo and so on; (2) Caribbean nations are given a 
     reasonable amount of time to find out if the deportees are 
     their nationals before they are put on a plane back home; (3) 
     Caribbean states must accept the awful truth: U.S. lawmakers 
     and the Bush Administration aren't going to change the law to 
     stem the flow of deportees; and (4) a resettlement scheme 
     funded by the U.S. and Caribbean nations should be undertaken 
     to ease the re-integration of the deportees back into their 
     birthplaces. Such programs have been developed and 
     implemented on a pilot basis in a few countries and if the 
     organizations involved are to be believed they seem to work. 
     A re-integration effort is needed not only for detainees from 
     the U.S. but from Canada and the United Kingdom and those 
     countries must help too.
       Just last week, Tony Blair, the British prime Minister, 
     fired his Home Secretary, Charles Clarke because his ministry 
     had failed to deport criminal aliens after they had completed 
     their jail sentences. The criticisms showered on the head of 
     the Blair government and the public's demand that something 
     about people who enter Britain and then commit crimes were so 
     strong that they are bound to trigger a flood of deportees to 
     the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the 
     Pacific.
       Of the 77,000 inmates in British prisons, 10,113 of them 
     are from foreign countries, including nearly 2,000 from the 
     Caribbean.
       The outcry should serve as a warning to the Caribbean, 
     expect more criminal deportees on your shores and it also 
     cries out for some help from the rich nations. If, as they

[[Page E1117]]

     say, they are interested in the economic and social 
     development of the island-nations then they should be 
     prepared to help, not to undertake the total resettlement and 
     reintegration effort but offer a helping hand.

                          ____________________