The Barbados Bar Association (BBA) is urging Parliament not to pass new citizenship and immigration legislation without accompanying regulations.
Addressing the Joint Select Committee (Standing) on Governance and Policy Matters, which is reviewing the draft Immigration Bill, 2025, and Barbados Citizenship Bill, 2025, BBA president Kaye Williams also said there was a need to ensure the proposed laws were grounded on constitutional rights and based on a guiding policy document.
She and convenor of the law reform and legislation committee of the Bar, Lynne-Marie Simmons, appeared before the Joint Select Committee yesterday in the Senate Chamber to make an oral presentation on the BBA’s written submission.
Williams told the body, chaired by Marsha Caddle, Member of Parliament for St Michael South Central, that “unlike any other piece of legislation, citizenship and immigration lives and breathes in the regulations”.
“So to comment on bills without the advantage of seeing the regulations means that we’re not having a complete discussion,” the attorney asserted.
“We do wish to be afforded an opportunity for further comment should the regulations become available anytime soon, but we would caution that we ought not [to] pass a bill without the regulations in place.
“Don’t give us attorneys more work, please, because what will happen is that clients will come and say, ‘We want to apply, we want access to these provisions’, and we would say, ‘Well, the regulations haven’t come yet’, we will have to wait until the regulations come in order to access these [provisions],” she added. In response, Caddle gave the assurance that “when this committee first met, we also made the point that it would be beneficial to us to have the regulations, so you are pushing a door that is wide, wide open in this room”.
Another concern the BBA had was the absence of a policy document to guide the immigration and citizenship bills and how the laws related to the Constitution.
“When we look at immigration and citizenship reform, normally you need that policy paper . . . that
guiding force to show what informs the provisions of the bill,” she noted.
However, Caddle, making it clear she was not speaking for the minister responsible for immigration, said that “it is not in every case that legislation is brought on the heels of a specific policy document. Legislation often flows from overall development policies, in this case, population policies. The population policy is really the overall policy framework from which this legislation flows.
“So while . . . the committee will certainly pass on the specific question, I do not think that legislation must flow from a specific policy document that bears the same name as the legislation.
“Governments around across the world often use development frameworks, development strategies and broader policy documents to guide legislation. As a matter of fact, the population policy has an implementation plan that lists enhanced immigration policy and citizenship legislation as one of the things that is flowing from that piece of work,” Caddle added.
Williams reiterated the BBA’s position.
“We believe that citizenship, immigration, that level of reform needs to be looked at holistically, in the context of what is the new . . . republican constitution supposed to be.
“We want to be able to move from the supreme law of the land, which is the Constitution, allow that to be utilised together with a guiding policy paper. Then . . . we can frame the constitutional reform and the immigration reform policies. We also would want to harmonise that with the enhanced protocol from CARICOM on the freedom of movement,” she said. (SC)
The post Bar: Don’t pass bills without regulations appeared first on nationnews.com.