Guyana, US close to signing deportee memorandum
Stabroek News
November 14, 2003
Guyana has indicated to the United States Government its readiness to sign the proposed Memorandum of Understand-ing (MOU) relating in the main to the rights of deportees.
This announcement was made by Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon at his weekly post-cabinet media conference held yesterday.
According to a Government Information Agency press release, the MOU was proposed to the US State Department when President Bharrat Jagdeo met with the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, during a trip to Washington in February.
At the meeting, Jagdeo requested assistance from the US Government for the rehabilitation of the deportees on their return. Luncheon said that the specific requests by the Guyana Government, as contained in its proposed MOU, had caused some delay in the countries affixing their signatures, as the US government had requested to review the proposal. The proposed MOU addresses all the issues affecting deportees, including: legal and compassionate treatment, particularly at the conclusion of legal issues; access to personal assets on their return to Guyana and the sensitive handling of health- care issues.
The MOU allows deportees to have access to the rights, financial and other benefits that might have accrued to them. "We have noted that the perpetrators of domestic violence seem to have gotten on the list of the unwanted, and are being deported with great regularity from North America. Many of them are spouses of long standing and may likely be the recipients of insurance, retirement benefits ... and the MOU has to anticipate what is happening in the American judicial practice with regard to deportees," Luncheon said.
He added that the United States had been willing to sign a general MOU on the issue of the deportees' physical return to Guyana but not an agreement that contained specific requests. Subse-quently, the US administration proposed that a separate MOU be signed at a later date to address the detailed concerns of the Guyana government.
However, he said that the issue of the deportees must be dealt with by a single MOU. Luncheon noted that there had been some improvement in the correspondence between the two governments.
The relevant agencies, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the President were scheduled to meet last Friday to discuss the US Government's response. The HPS noted that this meeting did not come off and the parties, with the exception of the Ministry of Home Affairs, concluded the deliberation.
"The Office of the President and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs went on with its own deliberations without the input of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the most recent draft has been suitably amended to make specific mention of what would be Guyana's final negotiation point. Notice has already been provided to the American authorities of Guyana's interest in concluding the signing of the MOU at the current time." Luncheon said he did not believe that the MOU would be revised to accommodate specific categories of deportees: "We have to have the most general of MOUs that covers all conceivable circumstances so that if tomorrow another category [of deportee] is brought in with some peculiar vulnerabilities, the MOU has a paragraph/article to address their concerns," he said.
Luncheon said the government's inclination towards the MOU governing the treatment of deportees from the US was prompted by the action of the US authorities in increasing the number of deportees coming home.
The deportee issue has been a source of contention between the two countries for a number of years. In 2001, delays by Georgetown in the processing of the first 141 names resulted in the US banning the issuance of visas to government officials, employees and their immediate families.
This was finally resolved but many have speculated that the influx of 300 deportees in 2002/2003 may have contributed to the recent crime wave, although few deportees were among those killed or arrested for violent crimes. Controversial legislation was introduced which gave police powers to put a deportee under surveillance if deemed a threat to public safety.