While Harry Dolce, a Bahamian-born police officer of Haitian descent who went through the citizenship registration process, explains how “you’ll have certain times during the election period” where “they’ll hold your citizenship—no matter if you’ve applied three years ago, two years ago. But when it comes time to election, [they say], ‘Okay, we’re gonna give you your citizenship. Okay, you’re a Bahamian.’”14 George Charité, a medical doctor of Haitian descent on the island of Abaco, similarly affirms that “It could take elections” for individuals’ citizenship applications to be considered. “They normally get up around election time,” he says, “they make them citizens. So pray to God and thank God for elections. Election coming up.… Most likely you’ll get [citizenship].”15 Such allegations are not limited to study participants either. The Bahama Journal (2013) cites Lovy Jean, a Bahamian-born student of Haitian descent who spoke before the Bahamas Constitutional Commission,16 stating that difficulties exist in getting Bahamian citizenship unless “you’re lucky during a general election [and] you’d get it right away.”
Newspaper articles and letters to the editor also report on the regularization of “hundreds” of Haitian nationals as Bahamian citizens prior to elections as a means for the ruling party to increase its vote share.17 The Nassau Guardian, for example, states that “a monthly average of 31” citizenship applications were approved “between May 2, 2007 and June 30, 2010” for a total of “1,144 citizenship applications” (McCartney 2011). This number more than doubled to “a monthly average of about 75” applications “between November 18, 2011 and January 13, 2012”—less than four months prior to the 2012 general election (2011). According to then deputy prime minister Brent Symonette of the FNM party, the increased number of citizenship approvals was due to “improved efficiencies” regarding “applications that had been languishing for many years” within the Department of Immigration (DoI) (2011)18 and not because of politically motivated reasons.
Archival data I obtained from the Haitian Embassy in Nassau point to an increased number of Haitian nationality renunciations in the years prior to the 2007 and 2012 general elections (see Table 1). This is of note because, as part of the Bahamian citizenship application process, a person must renounce his or her current nationality in order to be eligible to be sworn in as a Bahamian citizen. Table 1 demonstrates that 359 Haitian nationals renounced their nationality in 2006, or an average of 29 individuals per month. This number increases to an average of 41 renunciations per month in the period of January through April, 2007, just prior to the May 2 general election. In relation to the aforementioned statistic provided in the Nassau Guardian article—1,144 Bahamian citizenship conferrals in the period May 2007 through June 2010—the data in Table 1 illustrates that 543 persons renounced their Haitian nationality during this period.
Without data from the Department of Immigration listing the number of former Haitian nationals who obtained Bahamian citizenship during this time, there is no way to know whether these 543 individuals (47 percent of the 1,144 persons) obtained Bahamian citizenship or what the nationality was of the other 53 percent of Bahamian citizenship recipients.19 In email correspondence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MFA notes that the Department of Immigration “does not have statistics on the number of applications for citizenship each year. However we do have statistics on those persons who are sworn in as citizens. On average, between 265 and 400 such persons are sworn in each year since 2007.” If we assume that these 543 persons in Table 1 obtained Bahamian citizenship, it appears that Haitian nationals make up a large proportion of naturalized Bahamians during this three-year period. This is not surprising, however, given the aforementioned statistic that Haitians make up 11 percent of the Bahamian population, which is the largest foreign presence in the country.
Table 1: Haitian Nationality Renunciations by Year, 2003–2011
Source: Original printout provided to the author by Ambassador Rodrigue, Haitian Embassy, Nassau, Bahamas, October 31, 2012. Total of 2,229 renunciations.
Whether former Haitian nationals are the recipients of the majority of these grants of Bahamian citizenship, it appears—in the words of Haitian ambassador Antonio Rodrigue—that “The question of citizenship is very political here [in The Bahamas].”20 As Ambassador Rodrigue observes, pointing to the data in Table 1, the trend of Haitian nationality renunciations prior to general elections holds regardless of which political party is in power (see Figure 4 for a graphic depiction of the preelection peaks):
Figure 4. Renunciation peaks before 2007 and 2012 Bahamian general elections.
When you are close to the election, it [the number of renunciations] rose. After the election, here, the number is almost close to zero a month. And when you go getting close to the election, there’s a peak. There’s a peak. In this formulation of 2002, 2007, and 2012 you can see that. So each government … before the election, they issue a lot of citizenships.
The politicized nature of Bahamian citizenship bestowal is not merely reflected in data held at the Haitian Embassy or in Bahamian newspaper articles, however. As the study participants make clear, obtaining Bahamian citizenship is often predicated on knowing someone in the Department of Immigration or elsewhere in government who can do you the “favor” of granting you citizenship. Formal politics and informal personal connections thus have an equally significant influence on citizenship decisions in The Bahamas.
Bureaucratic Failures
Describing the reality of Latin American politics, Taylor states that “the only way to get anything done is to ‘pay an extra fee’ or ask a ‘friend’ to cut through the red tape on your behalf” (Taylor 2004, 213). Taylor may as well have been writing about the Bahamian case as her quote aptly captures one of the problems associated with bureaucratic failure in The Bahamas: going through official channels, and following the rules to acquire the “good” of citizenship does not necessarily translate into the most efficient way to obtain Bahamian citizenship. As artist Bernard Petit-Homme explains, he applied for Bahamian citizenship when he turned eighteen, but it took him three years to acquire citizenship, despite being born in the country and meeting all the requirements. He thinks it probably would have taken longer to acquire Bahamian citizenship if he had not run into a former high-ranking government official who had a friend in the Department of Immigration who was able to act on Petit-Homme’s application. “They called me the following week to say it is ready. So that’s how I got it,” he says.21
Desmangles similarly observes that “It’s all about networking and who knows who in some instances.” He adds that in his case, “it came to a point where I had to think for myself, ‘Who do I know out there? Who can assist me? Who can make this possible?’”22 Bianca Zaiem, born of noncitizen parents in The Bahamas, also remarks that “a lot of people get citizenship by doing favors for other people. And I feel like that’s hurt us over the years. So normal people like me who want to do it the right way are pushed aside for somebody who’s getting a favor done by somebody else.”23 Natacha Jn-Simon, a College of The Bahamas student, adds that sometimes these “favors” take on a more sinister tone:
You know what they have the Haitian kids subduing to? It’s like okay, I’m a female, right, and you’re in Parliament or [you’re] someone who
