Caribbean to benefit from US court ruling on deportees
December 11, 2006
The Caribbean stands to benefit from a United States Supreme Court ruling that a non-citizen cannot be deported for a drug crime under state law.
The highest court in the land ruled last Tuesday that while the drug crime may be a felony in the state where it is prosecuted, it is only a misdemeanour under the broader federal law.
The court, therefore, said that non-citizens cannot be subjected to mandatory deportation under immigration law after serving prison terms for a drug crime.
Countries in the region will see this as good news. Many of them have partly blamed their escalating crime situations on the deportation of convicted criminals from the United States.
Figures released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the October 1, 2005 to October 22, 2006 fiscal year show that the number of immigrants deported to the Caribbean stands at just over 5,000, with the majority of them having criminal convictions.
The figures indicate that Jamaica received 1,364 deportees, Haiti 743, Trinidad & Tobago 298 and Guyana 244.
Sixty-four persons were deported to the Bahamas during the last fiscal year, 40 to Barbados, 37 to Antigua, 24 to Grenada and 23 to St. Kitts.
St. Lucia and Cuba received 20 each, St. Vincent and the Grenadines 18, Suriname 12, the Turks and Caicos three, the British Virgin Islands, Aruba and Anguilla three each, while The Cayman Islands received one.
The Supreme Court voted 8-1 in rejecting the Bush administration's interpretation of immigration law.
U.S. federal law treats drug possession, in most cases, as a misdemeanour. But the government says possession of illicit drugs is an "aggravated felony" under immi-gration law, which strips an immigrant of the right to seek relief from automatic deportation, to seek asylum, or ever to return legally to the United States.
Implausible reading
Justice David H. Souter, writing for the majority, said the Bush administration's interpretation of the law is based on a "strained and implausible reading" of the definition of "drug trafficking crime" in the federal criminal code....
Author: Gleaner Reporter
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
