One of the interesting things about living in a foreign culture is the perspective it provides, both on one's own culture and the one visited. This week, I was able to hear Dr. Willie, a Harvard sociologist comment on family life in the United States, an interesting topic to be sure. But what made it particuarly interesting was that the lecture was delivered to Bahamians and there was a mix of applicability and inapplicability in the topic.
Apart from the obvious differences from Dr. Willie's race-based research that didn't directly apply, I noted some strong differences in Bahamian family structure worth note. A few months ago, I met with the head of Her Majesty's Prison here in Nassau, and he was lamenting the breakup of the Bahamian family because of the prevalence of "sweethearting," the common practice of Bahamian men to have relationships outside of the traditional family. There is even a local term -- an outside family -- for men who keep women and children on the side. But the semi-recognized "outside family" is only one part of sweethearting, with the other being families not even recognized and perhaps not even known by the father. The result is a surprisingly high number of children born outside of a traditional family structure and, in the prison official's view, creating a generation of men without father figures in the home and more prone to crime.
I can't comment on whether sweethearting actually increases crime, though as a father I'd like to flatter myself that I can have such an impact on a child. But what is interesting is the legal structures that promote sweethearting in The Bahamas. First, the immigration system creates an interesting little problem. In The Bahamas, children are not citizens simply because they are born here. Citizenship flows through the father -- a relic of a previous century -- UNLESS the father isn't known, in which case it flows through the mother. Which creates an interesting situation from the huge numbers of Haitian men in The Bahamas. Should a Bahamian mother actually marry a Haitian man, the child would not gain Bahamian citizenship. Much better that the father remain anonymous.
Even when one is talking about a Bahamian father and a Haitian mother (though Haitian migrant women are less common than men), anti-Haitian prejudice makes it difficult for the Bahamian to admit fatherhood and thereby give citizenship to his "outside" son or daughter. More likely, the Bahamian man may not even know he has a child, or if he does -- why assume the burdens of child support and risk his main family by admitting it?
Another quirk in immigration law compounds the problem and has created persons in The Bahamas who are without a country, stateless, without legal protection. Because persons born in The Bahamas do not automatically gain citizenship both products of outside families and those born in The Bahamas to the many illegal immigrants (largely Haitian) have no country. Some persons are the second, or even third, generation in The Bahamas, but have little opportunity for legal protection. There is a one-year window for a person born in The Bahamas to apply for citizenship -- between his or her 18th and 19th birthdays. Of course, until that time the person is subject to deportation, even if one's family has been in The Bahamas for more than a generation. And even after application, some claim to wait for years and years for a decision on the citizenship application, and further claim that the documentation requirements proving birth in The Bahamas are not realistic for a person born outside of the law.
The resulting tensions in the Haitian community are palpable. With 30-60,000 Haitians in a country of only about 300,000, the problem is going to boil over sooner or later. From my observations, the issue is less with the first generation immigrants, who seem eager to work and happy to be away from Haiti, but the Bahamian-Haitians, those who have been born here without status, who see the differences in rights and legal protection as a result of national origin.
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