By Kisean Joseph
[email protected]
The United Progressive Party says it will not accept a single deportee matching the profile described by the United States government, as talks continue on accepting third-country nationals.
Senator Jonathan Wehner said the party’s position leaves no room for compromise, regardless of how the government frames the arrangement. He said the country cannot claim to be selective about who is accepted when the US Secretary of State has already characterised the group in stark terms.
“Our government, through the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Gaston Browne, has announced that he wants to accept skilled individuals… whose criminal and medical records are up to par. Now clearly the Prime Minister is either missing the point of where the United States is coming from, or he is being willfully ignorant, because the Secretary of State… made that declaration about the most despicable perverts, pedophiles, child rapists, and the further away the better,” Wehner said.
He said the government’s stated intention to accept only skilled individuals with clean records is inconsistent with the terms already set out by the United States.
“We cannot be talking about we’re looking for skilled individuals, or we’re looking for individuals without a criminal record when the starting point of America is we’re sending… the undesirables. So, from the United Progressive Party standpoint, it is our position that we are not to accept even one individual who fits into that category. We don’t want even one of those individuals in our society,” Wehner said.
The senator argued that ordinary families, not government officials, would bear the consequences of any such arrangement. He questioned whether it is right for residents to be forced to live among the individuals he described, without having been consulted by the representatives they elected.
Wehner said the party’s position is also shaped by the country’s existing struggles with crime, arguing there is no capacity to absorb additional risk while law enforcement continues to grapple with a rise in violent incidents.
