PHILIPSBURG--Comprehensive Business Association (CBA) President Elco Rosario says recent statements by Justice Minister Roland Duncan prove that the Brooks Tower Accord (BTA) initiative was a ?trap? for undocumented immigrants.
In a lengthy statement on Sunday, Rosario said: ?While that news [from the minister, ed.] sounded very shocking, in reality it was not, not at all. Everybody on the island knew that said practice was going on to a large extent, from day one of the introduction of the BTA policy in 2009.?
The BTA initiative was intended to provide an opportunity for thousands of specified undocumented residents of the then Netherlands Antilles to regularise their status.
?Everybody knew that we had thousands of undocumented foreigners on the island, who would try ? by any way possible ? to grab the opportunity offered by the BTA to legalise their stay on the island. Everybody knew that we had people on the island who, in return for good payment, were willing to help those foreigners, even if they did not comply with all the rules set by government,? Rosario said.
?Government knew this better than anyone else, as right away, while processing the first applications, it became clear that bogus employers were signing for a number of people who, easily verifiable, had not been employed by them.?
He said, ?All the time government had the opportunity to do something about this, but did nothing. Government continued accepting those applications and permitting those applicants to pay NAf. 1,600 to have their applications processed and also pay the thousands of dollars to those ?bogus? employers, even after 10-10-10, when the Minister of Justice re-opened the then-closed door of the BTA.?
Rosario said he had alluded to the ?the trap in the BTA? in several letters to the editor, from 2009. ?I encouraged the potential applicants, also through radio and TV programmes, to be very careful. Quickly thereafter the then-Minister of Justice Ms. Magali Jacoba called me by phone, accusing me of trying to destroy ?her work,? although the BTA initiative was taken by her predecessor Mr. David Dick.?
He said one of the things he had told Jacoba in that conversation was: ?Minister, being in the coalition with the Ministers of Finance and of Social Affairs, why don?t you ask them to announce publicly what would happen with the employers who had been employing undocumented foreigners for all those years and have not been paying the SVB premiums, nor withholding their wage taxes?
?As long you don?t do that, most of them will not be willing to sign now for those workers, as the back payments they now might have to make might end up being too much and the government then will know who they are and where to find them.?
He said Jacoba had not responded to him and had ended the conversation abruptly, but afterwards had instructed her subordinates in the BTA administration to say publicly that there was not a bit of truth of a trap in the BTA and that he was only trying to scare the people away from signing into it.
Rosario continued: ?In their desperation, foreigners continued going to the ?bogus employers,? as there was just one thing they wanted: to stay on the island in a legal manner, even if such was accomplished through wrong means. Obviously they were wrong, as were both their genuine employers and the bogus ones.
?Now the Minister is advising the genuine employers to present themselves ? ?we know who you are? ? to settle their relevant taxes and social security obligations and saying: ?We (he means you) are going to either live by the law or be prosecuted by the law.?
?But isn?t the government also wrong in this, by not saying before what the Minister is saying now and stealthily having accepted millions from those people, while knowing that they would be turned down? Isn?t government as much and perhaps even more at fault?? Rosario asked, adding that ?soliciting someone into doing something illegal sometimes can be worse than doing the illegal.?
?By his announcement the Minister, although not expressly admitting it, actually confirmed that this trap, indeed from the outset, has been an integral part of the BTA, which is, to say the least, utmost regrettable, particularly as the foreign workers will be paying heaviest with deportation hanging over their heads,? Rosario concluded.
Nicolas Anelka European football West Bromwich Albion Rugby union Bradford Bulls Small business
No comments:
Post a Comment