Caribbean News
2023 Already showing BIG COSTS to countries for Illegal Migration
By Dana malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, January 20, 2023 – In the first five months of 2022 there were over 500 migrants caught on TCI shores and the US Coast Guard recorded the highest number of at sea interceptions in decades; those were shocking numbers then.
In the first 18 days of 2023 alone more than half that number have been captured in thwarted human smuggling
As the situation with Haiti worsens, the fiscal burden to the Turks and Caicos’ shoulders is increasing. Last year in a scathing letter to the United Nations who had (and continue) to call on the surrounding states to make space for migrants seeking to escape the dangerous conditions in their home countries Minister of Immigration and Border Services Arlington Musgrove had indicated that an annual $3 million of the country’s revenue goes towards repatriations alone.
Edwin Astwood, Leader of the Opposition had said in the second quarter of the year that repatriations were costing TCI taxpayers $1,300 dollars per migrant. That dollar amount was before inflation around the world hit decades long highs and the cost of oil, airplane tickets and food skyrocketed. What would have cost $1,300 in early 2022 is certainly costing much more in early 2023 with the TCI’s last confirmed inflation rate at over nine percent.
Nigel Dakin, Governor and co-chair of National Security in the country described the issue as Haiti unintentionally “bearing down on the TCI” as its residents try to find a better life.
The Turks and Caicos has since put a freeze on new visitor visa requests from Haitians.