Switching gears now to politics and government, the Minister of State for Immigration, Beverly Williams has lashed out at yesterday's immigration excitement at UDP hopeful Dianne Finnegan's divisional office in Lake Independence.
In a statement to the press today, Williams said, quote, "I want to make it categorically clear that the Departments of Nationality & Immigration Services is not embarking on an Amnesty Program.
What occurred yesterday at the office of Ms. Diane Finnegan was most unfortunate and totally misrepresented as a project designed to issue Nationality and other immigration related documents.
That is absolutely furthest from our intention…". End quote.
Now, it is unclear where things got confused, but Finnegan told us yesterday that she wishes there was an amnesty - and that that staff at Immigration would work harder:
Dianne Finnegan - UDP Std. Bearer, Lake I
"And so if I had the power I would call for an amnesty for these people, give them their documents. Your responsibility and the responsibility of the media houses is to blow this up for people to start to get their jobs done. We talk about not enough jobs out there, so employ 50 people at the immigration department to sort this out."
Perhaps put off by the scolding tone of that interview, Williams's statement makes it clear to her UDP colleague that there is a strict process without shortcuts or a fast track.
Her statement says, quote, "The requirement (of the law) is for validated applications to be published in the gazette for 6 weeks. Those gazette publications are further vetted by a Nationality Scrutinizing Committee, then passed to the Minister for further review & approval or otherwise."
And, about her visit to Lake I on Monday to meet with the hundreds of immigrants who went in desperation to Finnegan's office, Williams is very clear, quote, " (this is) solely as an advisory session only and no official document can be or would issued. The session will be properly conducted and supervised my the competent and trained officers of the Immigration and Nationality Services Departments."
We'll be there on Monday to see how that goes.
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