The Cayman Islands government spent more than US$1 million during the last budget year on detaining, housing and repatriating Cuban migrants, Premier Alden McLaughlin told a group of Caribbean leaders Wednesday morning.
Mr. McLaughlin and Deputy Governor Franz Manderson took part in a pre-ministerial meeting at the Westin resort to prepare and to help set the agenda for a United Nations meeting to be held in Brazil later this year on the subject of refugees.
The premier said Cayman, like many other Caribbean countries, faces illegal immigration problems for which it does not have the proper resources to address.
“With the small population of the Cayman Islands, the per-capita rate of illegal migration exceeds that of most other countries, including the United States,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “The cost of receiving, processing, detaining and repatriating illegal migrants was over US$1 million in the 2013/14 financial year.”
In addition, costs of processing asylum-seekers, as opposed to economic migrants who land illegally, also increased during the last budget, Mr. McLaughlin said.
Among the reasons for the increased costs are that hundreds of migrants landed here on makeshift boats over the past 18 months. Consequently, there was a need for more repatriations, as well as additional expenses for housing and medical care while the individuals were waiting to be sent home.
The Immigration Department recently added security officers to help prevent a recurrence of escapes from the George Town detention center where illegal migrants are kept, driving up costs further. Mr. Manderson is scheduled to meet with the Cuban government later this month in attempts to renegotiate the agreement between Cayman, the U.K. and Cuba on terms of repatriation for illegal migrants.
“One of the major items on the agenda is a reduction in the repatriation time for those migrants who do not have a valid claim to asylum,” Mr. McLaughlin said.
He said Cayman has policies regarding asylum seekers, but the Immigration Department typically considers Cuban migrants who come through local waters as economic migrants. Most are seeking to travel on to Central America and on to the U.S. by way of Mexico.
Earlier this year, a U.N. representative noted that many countries around the Caribbean face similar problems with economic migrants and asylum-seekers.
Dr. Buti Kale, the deputy regional representative for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, said in April that the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas each spent more than US$1 million last year on the issue. According to statistics from a Freedom of Information request in 2013, Cayman spent around CI$600,000 to house, feed and repatriate Cuban migrants in 2012 and 2013.
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In these times no one gets anything for free. The Cayman Island Government for years has been bending to the wishes of the Cuban Government not to assist their fleeing people; however what do we get for this except a large bill for keeping them.
My thoughts are that we as a community and the Government should assist these people with food and water, Fix their boat and allow them to continue on their journey whether it is back to Cuba or elsewhere.
I feel absolutely no sympathy for any administration that lost money, because they repatriated Cuban migrants. It is 100% wrong for us to imprison them and return them to Cuba, as if they were criminals who had escaped a traditional prison and been caught on the lam. In the second place, if we were foolish enough to make an agreement that did not compel the Cuban government to pay 100% of any repatriation costs, since they want their citizens back, then we deserve to be broke. Make the Cuban government pay for food, lodging, security guards, electricity, water and the fuel in the aircraft. Most of the time these people haven’t breached our shores. We have towed them to shore.