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www.sxmislandtime.com
 PHILIPSBURG - Minister of Justice Magali Jacoba said she has asked that the residence permits applied for in St. Maarten under the Brooks Tower Agreement (BTA), not to be attached to the issuance of work permits, so that those resident permits pending be issued right away.
"That was never the idea, so I asked St. Maarten to look into this matter again and Commissioner (William) Marlin has promised me to do his best to look into this.
If you connect it to the work permits and the people cannot receive their Brooks Tower permits, they can never go away to get all the regular documents to come into the regular procedure," the minister explained.
The minister paid a visit to the Windward Islands recently to address matters pertaining to the BTA. She said her meetings were successful and she also met with Saba and St. Eustatius.
Meanwhile, concerning immigration raids which are scheduled to happen after the implementation of the BTA, the minister said the governors are directed to do the controls as they would have before November 3, 2009.
"The control issue isn't an authority of the Minister of Justice. It's an authority of the Lt. Governor. But as we agreed with each other at the beginning of the Brooks Tower project, we will lay low with the control because of the registration period.
And now the Brooks Tower is finished, so we ask the Lt. Governors to start the controls as they did before November 3, 2009," Jacoba said. She was asked about Haitians who are residing in the Netherlands Antilles illegally and who did not participate in the BTA process.
A temporary protection was being considered for Haitians, taking into account the state of the country after the earthquake that struck the island in January. "We are conscious of the problems of the detention capacity and other things.
You need money if you need to do big controls...we have our law and the people have to respect our law. When the controls are going to start, that's not my authority," she said.
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