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HOMILY BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL
ST. AGNES ANGLICAN CHURCH
ADDRESSING THE BAHAMIAN COMMUNITY
IN MIAMI ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ON MIGRANTS
TO THE BAHAMAS Sunday 26th March 2006
March 27, 2006
I come to speak to you this morning in the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
Some words from Psalm 137, verses 1& 4:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion.
“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
It is hard to believe that it
has been almost two years since I spoke to this congregation when the
theme of the day was the men and boys of the parish. It is hard to
believe that five years have gone by since I was first elected to office
and I will be officially launching my campaign for re election in May of
this year. Next year this time, it ought to be clear who will be the
next Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.
I want to thank Canon Richard
Marquis Barry for his kind invitation to speak here this morning. I
come to speak as the Foreign Minister of The Bahamas, to simply thank
you and all Bahamians abroad for the general support of the Bahamian
community abroad for what our Prime Minister has called the best little
nation in the world. Many of you who are here this morning are either
born in or are descendants from that little nation that begins some
fifty miles off the coast of this state.
Traveling with me today are
Calvin Brown, my political assistant and Terry Archer from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hanna from the Bahamas Information Services.
The Consul General Alma Adams is
also with us this morning.
Later today, I will speak to a
similar congregation in Delray Beach, Florida, repeating a similar
message, and seeking to embrace Bahamians in that community. It is part
of the remit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Consul General
Alma Adams and all her staff to support, embrace and develop Bahamian
communities abroad and more particularly here in Florida. This is where
the largest Bahamian community abroad lives. My younger brother Matthew
and his twin sister Marva were born here in Boynton Beach, Florida back
in 1960 in the midst of Hurricane Donna. My brother lives in Delray
Beach now. St. Matthews Church in Delray is well known to me, started
as it was by people who left St. Matthew’s in Nassau.
The last time that I visited
this church I came to be with the then Rector of the home parish of St.
Agnes in Nassau from which this congregation in Miami sprang. That
inspiring voice of Fr. Patrick Johnson can be heard no more. Sadly he
passed away last year, gone too soon. In our sorrow, the church
continues to survive and so I want to bring greetings from that home
church, where Bishop Gilbert Thompson is now the priest in charge.
I have developed an observation,
a theory if you will about the state of mankind. Mankind always seems
to be in a state of migration, always on the move. It seems to be a
natural state of being. If you do not like where you are, you leave
where you are and find more fertile and satisfactory ground. This has
been so since the times of the Bible. In fact we all know of the story
of the great migration that took place following the ascendancy of
Joseph in Egypt. Then we know that the Israelites were enslaved in
Egypt and ended up migrating again back to the Promised Land.
Many in our country were
surprised to learn this year that contrary to popular opinion, some 58
per cent of those who complete tertiary level or college level education
who are from The Bahamas end up never leaving the developed countries
like the United States. From some other countries in the Caribbean
region it is more like 75 or 80 per cent of the college educated do not
return home.
What that is telling us is that
migration to the United States is still continuing from The Bahamas, and
while some people think that is a bad thing for The Bahamas, I take the
opposite view. It would be good to have our citizens at home and we
need our citizens at home, but wherever there is a Bahamian abroad,
that Bahamian can help his fellow Bahamians. You are our best
Ambassadors abroad.
I have come then today to seek
to explain and to lend support for you, moral support, to tell you that
in the midst of the storm The Bahamas stood tall, we never wavered, and
that we appreciate all of your support. We are an independent and
sovereign country, make our own decisions within the world community;
and no matter who shouts and screams, and threatens, the decisions have
to be made in the best interest of all concerned.
I have come then in a very real
sense to tell you that you can sing the Lord’s song in this land. That
song is a song of The Bahamas, and you can be proud of ourselves, our
culture and where we stand in this community and in the world at large
and what we have accomplished here. After these recent events we know
who are real friends are. There are many people of goodwill in this
community who stood with and understood The Bahamas, who did not use the
opportunity to say all manner of things about us at a moment of
vulnerability. For that I wish to thank all of those people of
goodwill.
The psalmist in psalm 137 seems
to be speaking on behalf of a captive people, a people who have been
carried away to Babylon. Yes, the people of Israel had indeed been
carried away. They were captives. They had and have a history of
captivity. Their generations dispersed. But the Jewish tradition was
always to remember where you came from. I am told that in some Jewish
families it is the tradition for the youngest child to repeat the
history of the Jewish people at a certain ceremonial time of the year,
so that the generations will never forget the story. We must never
forget our story either. We came here to build this city. We helped to
build this city. We continue to build this city, and we will not be
moved.
That does not mean that we are
at war with anyone. It simply means that we assert the right to our
traditions, our culture, our worship services, our Junkanoo, our voice,
and we want our country to continue to survive and for the people there
in The Bahamas to continue to be able to make a living there and for
Bahamians here to be able to continue to make a living here and to be
proud of their Bahamas.
It is not an easy thing to
decide to leave your homeland, no matter what the circumstances. You
know when you decide to leave that things are not going as well at home
as you may have expected, so you bring that sense of loss of home with
you. You come to this land and you do not know exactly what you will
meet in the circumstances of your new land. Many migrants when they
come to their new country are despised in their new country,
particularly if you speak a different language or you are a different
race or have a different accent. It is certainly not easy. But what
helps to keep you together is singing the Lord’s song. Beating those
Junkanoo drums, coming to this House of Worship and keeping these
traditions going.
The question asked by the
psalmist is in one sense a rhetorical question. It is also a question
made in resignation. It also connotes irony. But it also has its
answer of course: we can sing the Lord's song, no matter how we feel
because we have to have the means to remember where we came from.
Singing the song helps us to remember.
I want you then to always
remember The Bahamas, and the Bahamians who live there, just as we
remember you, and just as we believe that you who live abroad are a part
of us. In the midst of any battle over our country and its reputation,
you are the front soldiers; you are the defenders of our faith. I want
to thank you for all that and more.
Some of you may not know the
facts of what transpired over the last 11 months. They are not complex,
and at the same time not simple. But what transpired from April 2005 to
the present was simply part of a larger geopolitical drama which is not
of the making of The Bahamas, and which we have no wish to be a part of
but one in which we find ourselves and which is a fact of Bahamian life
that we face. Throughout the time it was unfolding, the Government
sought to assure the Bahamian people that the nation was still standing
and that the matter would be resolved. You see that it has been
resolved, and what took the time was that it had to be resolved with the
concurrence or at the least the understanding of all the parties
concerned, all of the Governments concerned.
There is no question about the
closeness of The Bahamas to the United States. That does not arise. I
was the host last week in The Bahamas of all of the Caricom Foreign
Ministers, and one morning they were hosted to breakfast. One of the
foods at breakfast was grits. Several Ministers from the southern
Caribbean had never heard of it or seen it and asked what it was. I had
forgotten that because of our history, where the loyalist brought their
slaves after the revolution in the United States to The Bahamas, they
brought the eating of grits with them. So while the Caribbean
generally is close culturally to the United States, The Bahamas by
reason of geography and blood ties are even closer.
We also have a close neighbour
to the west of us. That neighbour is Cuba, and we have to live with
that fact. It is a nation of ten million people. Hundreds of thousands
of them would wish to immigrate to this country. They often use The
Bahamas to come to this country, but back in 1995 a migration accord was
negotiated and concluded in 1996 with the Government of Cuba to regulate
the flow of migration to The Bahamas. It was becoming a strain on our
resources, and it was becoming an issue with the United States that had
become concerned about the fact that migrants to The Bahamas from Cuba
were using our country to get to the United States.
The United State itself has a
migration agreement with Cuba. This agreement allows visas to be issued
to Cubans to allow them to come to the United States from Cuba. It
seeks to discourage illegal migration here from Cuba, and it allows
those who seek to come here illegally to be returned to Cuba directly on
the high seas by the United States Coastguard. So it is a fact that a
migration accord can be concluded with a Government that you may not
agree with ideologically. That is not unusual or new or unique to The
Bahamas.
The recent decisions then had to
be taken having regard to our agreements with all nations concerned, and
having regard to our relations with all the nations concerned. It took
time to be resolved but it was resolved in the best interests of all
concerned, with all the parties having an understanding about the way
forward. Our Ministers at home are determined that such a situation
will not arise again.
However, all of us understand
the concern that was expressed here in the South Florida community but
we think that we had the right result, and that the facts are clear, not
the propaganda, and we are happy that it was a happy result.
In the New Testament, the gospel
writer Luke relates a parable that Jesus told to illustrate the question
of good neighbourliness. In the verses between 25 and 37 in Chapter 10
of Luke's gospel, Christ had been asked what you must do to be born
again, and he explains that you must love God; you must love your
neighbor as yourself. He was then asked to say who was your neighbor,
and with it he told the parable of the Good Samaritan.
You all know the story about how
the high priest and Levite passed by a man who was injured on the road
side to ensure their ritual purity. But the Samaritan, a race with
which there was great hostility with the Jews such that they were
despised, stopped by and helped his injured brother and helped him back
to good life and health. Christ described that as an example of who
your neighbour is. In fact, it is anyone who is in need.
There is no one who can argue
that The Bahamas has not been a good neighbour in the truest sense of
the word to so many of peoples who come to our shores from other
shores. We have migrants from Haiti illegally in their thousands who
come every year. They are retuned home. We have hundreds come from
Cuba illegally. They too are returned home. And it is important for
our country to show equality of treatment before the law.
Our Prime Minister pointed out
to Governor Jeb Bush during a recent visit that The Bahamas as a Black
country cannot develop the reputation of discriminating between Black
Haitians on the one hand and Cubans who are white. Our public policy
must demonstrate equality of treatment. The treatment must be humane,
but it must be transparent and defensible. We think that it is.
And so my task here this morning
has not been a difficult one. It is an honour to be here. It is yet
another occasion to celebrate our Bahamianess. Yes it is true that the
country is very small. There are only 300,000 souls at home and there
may be 100,000 souls abroad. But as we say at all of us we are one
family. It behooves us to keep and strengthen our ties. In unity,
there is strength.
Late last year before the
hurricanes and the Christmas, we had been talking about a conference of
the next generation of Bahamians in South Florida. We want to be in
touch with your grandchildren, and great grandchildren and you
children. We want to let them know what The Bahamas is, and how they
connect to it. We want them to know that where their parents,
grandparents and great grand parents come from is a proud place, where
people have a great sense of tradition and where they are proud of their
heritage. It is time for us to look at planning that event again and I
am asking the Consul General to look at some dates before the summer
break and before the exams start in earnest. It is most important to
us.
Last week, The Bahamas hosted
the Secretary of State of the United States Dr. Condoleezza Rice. She
was attending a conference of with Foreign Ministers of Caricom that I
spoke abut earlier. While there she thanked the Prime Minister for the
resolution of the case of the two Cuban dentists. While there she said
that the concern of the United States was not about the ties of The
Bahamas with any other country. She said that was a decision for a
sovereign Bahamas to make. What she stressed was that it was her role
to strengthen the ties between the United States of America and The
Bahamas. We say amen to that. That is how it should be.
The Bahamas must live in the
real world. This is realpolitik. We must get along with all nations,
and we do. We respect all peoples and we do. We are Good Samaritans,
but we also have a responsibility to our own people to act in their best
interests.
I hope that you have come to
better understand where we are on so many of these latest events. I
bring you special greetings from our new Governor General Arthur Hanna
and our Prime Minister Perry Christie. I must thank all of the many
Caribbean peoples and Governments who stood with us as this recent issue
was resolved. In particular, we want to thank the Government of Jamaica
and its outgoing Prime Minister P. J. Patterson. It could not have been
done without them.
This week, a delegation from The
Bahamas will join the Jamaican people for the swearing in of their new
Prime Minister, the seventh since independence and the first female
Prime Minister in their history. This is a milestone for Caribbean
women. I think we should all be justly proud and I offer my
congratulations.
We are a proud people. We have
a proud heritage. Let us continue to work to uphold The Bahamas and the
people at here and there who call it home.
Once again it has been my honour
to speak here this morning. I thank you all.
Words from Psalm 137 verses 1& 4
“ By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion… How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
In the name of the father, son
and Holy Spirit. Amen!
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