The discovery of anthrax in US mail will likely further delay resolution of the deportee issue, but the Guyana government is pressing to try and ensure that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) related to the return of criminal aliens from the US addresses its concerns.

Sources close to the government have told Stabroek News that among the things which it wanted to see addressed in the MOU was the provision of sufficient time to allow for the verification of the Guyanese nationality of the persons to be deported.

Government sources said that there had not been any official notification as yet as to when the first batch of deportees would arrive. In the past, according to these sources, the US authorities had been cavalier in providing this information, with the Guyana mission being informed on the day the deportees were leaving, or on the day after they had left. Notification is not a legal requirement.

Stabroek News has been told that the US had proposed that applications for travel documents, supported by the relevant documentation from the US authorities, be completed in three days. However, given that at times the information provided was insufficient to facilitate verification the government was pressing for more time.

It also wanted the process centralised in the US with the Guyana embassy as the focal point. At present, requests for travel documents are sent to the embassy in Washington, the consulate in New York and the honorary consuls across the country. This does not allow for the timely attention these requests require and often requests are duplicated. Guyana's Ambassador to the US, Odeen Ishmael, told Stabroek News this week that he had made that request to the US State Department but it was yet to be acted on. Ishmael was unaware of the second list of persons the US wanted to deport to Guyana, which has been received by the authorities here.

Another concern, which is expected to be addressed in the memorandum, is the need for information about any of the deportees who may be in need of special attention for health reasons or otherwise, as well as the legal grounds on which they were being deported. However, observers have said that the provision of medical records could prove difficult for the US to provide since they were confidential and could not be released without the consent of the persons concerned.

The MOU is being negotiated against the background that Guyana wants to maintain a CARICOM position on the issue even though Trinidad and Tobago has signed its own pact. CARICOM's position is that the US should make some contribution to helping the deportees resettle in the Caribbean, given that some of them left the region at rather tender ages and had no real ties to the societies to which they were being returned.

US Ambassador to Guyana, Ron Godard, had said in remarks to the Berbice Chamber of Commerce that the US government was willing to provide assistance in helping the deportees to resettle. In line with this, Guyana has been pressing to ensure that the deportees were not deprived of any social security benefits they might have earned during their stay in the US, given that some of them had been resident there for ten years or more.

Since the imposition of the non-immigrant visa ban on government officials, employees and their immediate families on October 10, Guyana has fast-tracked the verification process, authorising the issue of more than 58 travel documents. By the end of the month the issue of 23 more would have been authorised. The travel documents are valid for three months.

The ban, threatened in September, was imposed to prod the Guyana government to act expeditiously in accepting Guyanese nationals who are deportable criminal aliens from the United States. The move by the US authorities was prompted by a US Supreme Court decision which made it illegal to indefinitely detain a criminal alien after he/she had served their sentence.

However, the US is not now in a position to respond to the efforts of the Guyana authorities, given the discovery of anthrax in mail and at post offices, which is preventing the quick processing of mail. Ishmael had been informed that one packet of documents sent to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Louisiana was received eight days after it had been posted. He was unsure when another packet of 25 which he had since sent would be received.

The lack of notification as to when the first batch of deportees would arrive has given rise to fears that a large number would suddenly arrive. Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, had said that some 100 could be here before the end of the year.