Hundreds of people boarded a ferry in Freeport, Bahamas, Sunday night, thinking their immediate Dorian nightmare was about to end. Just before the ferry took off for Fort Lauderdale, bad news crackled over the intercom.
All passengers that dont have a U.S. visa, please proceed to disembark, a crewman said.
About 100 people had to gather their belongings and walk the gangway back to misery.
At the last minute like this, its kind of disappointing, Renard Oliver told WSVN. Watching my daughters cry. But it is what it is.
What it is is an example why the visa requirements need to be waived for Bahamians trying to get to the United States. And it needs to be done immediately.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio sent an open letter to President Trump last Wednesday asking him to quickly allow in refugees who have relatives in the U.S.
Theres been no response so far from the Trump administration. A State Department spokesperson sent a generic email Monday saying the U.S. is working with Bahamian officials to provide disaster relief. She did not address the visa situation.
Scott did address it Monday, after he heard about the previous nights events on the ferry.
We cannot have the kind of confusion that occurred last night in Freeport, he said.
Bahamians usually need a visa to visit the U.S., but the requirement can be bypassed if they present a passport and a recent police certificate showing they dont have a criminal record.
A lot of people didnt have such documents, or lost them in the wind and water of the Category 5 storm. Obtaining them now is next to impossible since the Bahamian government is literally swamped with bigger problems.
A lack of proper paperwork wasnt the big problem Sunday night, however. It was a surplus of confusion.
The ferry company, Balearia Caribbean, told passengers U.S. Customs and Border Protection told it to remove everyone who didnt have a visa.
The CBP said it did not order anyone off the ferry and would not have required visas for entry to the U.S. It pointed out that about 1,400 people traveled to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday aboard the cruise ship Grand Celebration. Many reportedly did not have visas.
Why they said that, I wouldnt know, a CBP official told WSVN. Its really heartbreaking for them to say that to these people who have suffered beyond comprehension.
THE WHOLE FIASCO might have been avoided if visa requirements had been waived. This isnt the Mariel boatlift of 1980, where Fidel Castro put thousands of Cuban prisoners and mental patients on boats and sent them toward Key West. The risk of an unsavory character penetrating the U.S. border is minor compared to the totality of the Category 5 carnage.
