THE ISLANDER STATUS CASE

This week, Former Chief Minister Hon Oswald Skippings - a current member of the TCI Status Commission responded to court filings by attorney Tim Prudhoe on behalf of several expatriates whose applications for TC Islander status were denied by the commission. Records show that the applicants - who have resided in the Islands for a number of years - had initially applied for TCI status some six years ago; applications that were denied last year.

In court documents - which the Sun Newspaper reported on last week - Prudhoe asked the court to “quash the decision of the commission as it relates to each of them and as contained in the rejection letters. They are also seeking an order quashing the appointments of the commission members and an order mandating that a reconstituted commission reconsiders their application for TC Islander Status; or in the alternative, an order quashing the Turks and Caicos Islanders Status Ordinance as being inconsistent with the Turks and Caicos Islands Constitution."

The members of the Status Commission are Herbert Been, Algernon Dean, Dozzlie Delancy, Benson Harvey and Oswald Skippings. What are your thoughts?

Put persons of heritage first

Turks and Caicos Status ought to be expanded for persons of HERITAGE. That is to say, persons who can trace their ancestry prior to 1950, should automatically be granted Turks and Caicos Island Status.

Turks and Caicos Status obtained as a grant of the law should have a limit of 75 per year.

Indigenous Turks and Caicos Islanders by Heritage should have more benefits in this country than BOTC and Belongers who were bestowed this right.

The Board listed appeared to be staunch opposition members.

The abused becomes the abuser

People who have historically been discriminated against should not themselves discriminate. But, psychiatrists and psychologists inform us that the abused tend to turn out to be themselves the abusers.

We are already outnumbered

First of all, we need to stop issuing Belonger Status and issue residence permits with strict guidelines. Once someone would have gained STATUS, there is no real separation on what should be restricted or granted to Indigenous Turks and Caicos Islanders. IT HAS TO STOP!!! We are already outnumbered.

Not because someone may have a lot of money or high social status, means that they are entitled.

I stand by the decisions that were made.

Lion in the winter

There are many times in history when leaders must come back from the “cold” to take the lead and the mantle to “rescue a nation and a people from sudden destruction”. These are of those epochal times when men like the Hon Oswald Skippings, former Chief Minister and a founding member of the nationalism movement in the Turks and Caicos Islands, must re-emerge to light the fire under an indolent and listless form of

Governance.

Just a little background is necessary. During the interim Government years of 2009 thru 2012, the reality had already set in that native Turks and Caicos Islanders (the Belongers with blood ties to the TC) were losing control of their land.

Talks ensued during the constitutional suspension to implement measures in the new Constitution to protect what was left of the franchise. The “franchise” was to hold Turks and Caicos Islander Status (formerly captioned “Belongership”) based on blood ties and or marital connections: the sacred right to vote, being free from immigration control, owning residential Crown Land and occupying a dominant position in the reserved category of business licensing (the “prevailing economic and social norm”).

This policy norm forms a vital part of the 2011 Constitution. To implement these Constitutional norms, laws were passed to protect the franchise and to establish the Turks and Caicos Islander Commission (the "Commission").

The Hon Oswald O. Skippings, “lion in the winter”, like other TCI nationalists, such as the Hon Herbert Been and Benson Harvey, Algernon Dean and Dozzie Delancy, were placed on the Commission, to protect the interests of native-born, Turks and Caicos Islanders, the franchise and the prevailing norm. His words, language and syntax, in the “defence of the realm” are salient, prescient and representing what all native Turks and Caicos Islanders are saying in such a time as this. He has found and has always protected the prevailing norm.

He is 100% correct for pointing out the fact that the Constitution refers only to the right to be “considered” and not the absolute and fundamental right to be entitled to TCI Islander status.

The Commission is absolutely and 100% correct in protecting the Franchise and opposing this ‘effrontery”. His defence of TCI people, their norms and principles, do not mean that he is anti-non-native, an absurd and cheap assumption on the part of the litigants to get their hopeless lawsuit into court. The Rt. Skippings a former Minister of Tourism and by his nature, a Christian evangelist, an extroverted politician; who has embraced all nationalities and races. He must just defend his people. That is all. He is pro-TCI, not anti-non-native and these two "mutuallyexclusive" concepts can "co-exist".

The new “expats” resist assimilation

There are many times in our nation’s history when former expatriates would have come, assimilate, join the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other charitable groups and