One piece of legislation that hasn't been debated yet is the one to give the Minister of State in the Ministry of Immigration power to sign certain documents. In the bad old days of Elvin Penner, it was standard practice to let the Minister of State sign nationality documents. Hulse explained today what the new law hopes ot achieve and why:...
Hon. Godwin Hulse, UDP Senator
"All that we're doing is, we're saying to the Minister of State is "you can sign nationality certificates, you can sign CSME certificates, you can sign certificates for refugees" and that's basically all that its doing. Also release from jail, in terms of those persons committed for immigration offences. Now you have to look at the structure, that power is not removed from me. That power is delegated to her and can be removed from her at any time. That is all the legislation is doing. But when you look at the practice, back in the days of Minister Penner, and I want to make this point very clear, Minister Penner could have gotten a file from an officer in the Department of Immigration with a prepared certificate, sign the certificate and that's a done deal basically. That certificate could have gone to the passport section, they see that the person has a certificate, and issues a passport. There are now many steps that have been put in between that. When we come to CSME, there's a CSME committee similarly formed. When we come to refugees, there's a refugee committee similarly formed. Those are tremendous steps to insulate both the public officers and the ministers and therefore there's far less fear that the minister would be under pressure to do something which he or she ought not to do. And I don't think the minister would even consider that."
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