Author: Ben Stubenberg (Page 1 of 4)

By Ben Stubenberg

As published in The Turks & Caicos Sun E-paper July 11 and 18, 2025

Who are they?

They live among us in the shadows and in plain sight. We might see them holding their mother’s hand while waiting along the highway for a jitney ride. Or shooting baskets at the court. Or walking from church in their Sunday best. They don’t seem any different than most other children living here, except for one thing: They have no identity. These are the stateless boys and girls of the Turks & Caicos who float through the perilous underbelly of our society, vulnerable and without hope. 

Almost all of the stateless children were born in TCI, grew up here, and may or may not have attended school. Some may have only a birth certificate, but many have no documents at all. And so, officially, do not exist. This means that as they mature into teenagers, they cannot work or get a driver’s license or enroll in national health insurance. They cannot open a bank account or be issued a passport to travel. 

These children likely number in the thousands. A US Department of Labor study published in 2014 estimated that TCI had around 2000 stateless children. In 2025, we can only surmise there are more. 

Their misfortune is not some faraway problem. In fact, they live little more than a stone’s throw from upscale resorts and our own homes. Just follow the dirt trail that turns off from the highway and disappears into the brush and you’ll come upon their homes—a patchwork of ramshackle hovels on the fringes of a settlement. Usually their abodes have no running water or electricity, but each hidden hamlet might have its own informal mayor, sheriff, stores, bars, lookouts, and “dealers” who act as powerbrokers for the powerless. 

Cut off from all opportunity, the stateless, like the thousands of undocumented migrants in TCI, struggle to survive—always fearful that they too will be discovered, that someone will rat them out. And that makes them prime targets for recruitment into local gangs who will give them things society does not—money, food, shelter, a sense of belonging. And maybe a gun. 

This should not be happening. The stateless have rights, including the right to nationality of the country where they were born when they have no other. Leaving them without nationality, and the protections that status affords, runs counter to all international and domestic law. Their plight may ultimately compel the courts to step in and give them the status they are entitled to. Meanwhile, it’s time to shine a bright light on what’s going on and what can be done.

How it begins 

In nearby countries wracked by extreme poverty or gang violence or both, the word has long been out that a better life awaits in the TCI with its swanky hotels, well-off tourists, and dollars to be made. The great majority who set their sights on TCI live in Haiti, just 100 or so miles (160 km) due south. 

They are driven by dreams and desperation, even with overwhelming odds stacked against them. But if they can make it to these shores, the hope is to land a job that earns them enough money to survive and send what’s left to relatives in need back home.

To embark on the journey to TCI from Haiti, each passenger will pay human traffickers $2000 to $3000 upfront. The price depends on whether the boat has a motor or just a sail. Few Haitians in Haiti can afford that kind of money, so they rely on friends and relatives abroad to wire the funds through a financial services company. 

On the designated night, the daring voyagers, mostly men but some women, and even toddlers, gather nervously at a remote beach or small village along Haiti’s north coast. Many will be carrying with them a grigris, a Voudou talisman to protect them. As added insurance, a Voudou priest performs a ceremony praying for a safe voyage. 100 or 200 people then say farewell and pack into a sloop less than 30 ft long. 

Traffickers might have made all kinds of promises about safely reaching TCI, but everyone on board is keenly aware they may not see tomorrow. Crossing the open ocean on a boat with gunwales barely two feet above the water line is fraught with peril. Sometimes the boat capsizes, drowning everyone. Sometimes the boat is spotted by drones or coastal radar and intercepted by TCI Marine Police off the coast. But sometimes the migrants are lucky enough to evade surveillance, steer through shallow coral reefs, and land on a beach on Provo before sunrise. 

When their feet touch the sand, they scramble into the bush to hide. If the migrant has made this trip before, deported, and returned for a second or third time, they may be able to call someone to pick them up. But more often the migrants run out of food and water and furtively emerge along the road listening for someone who speaks Kreyòl so they can ask for help. The local Haitians already here will usually spot them first by their ragged condition and give them a ride to the shrouded migrant communities in Dock Yard, Five Cays, or Blue Hills.

The new “home” for the migrants might be a tiny room they share with others Or it might be a camp in the bush where they sleep under a tarp. From there they meet the dealers who can find them work on the down-low. Gardening, housework, bartending, or construction. Anything. But it’s never that simple. 

The dealer may demand a cut of what the migrant makes and the employer may pay far less than the minimum wage because who is going to complain? And that subjects the migrants to exploitation, abuse, and the threat of being revealed to law enforcement. In those circumstances, women are especially defenseless. Some women might find a partner to look after them. Some band together for protection and share what little money they earn or food left behind by tourists. Others might be forced provide sex to remain hidden. Unaware of their rights, none apply for asylum. 

When the women become pregnant, a new set of trials confronts them starting with the lack of access to medical services. A few good doctors, midwives, and nurses on TCI volunteer to provide some pre-natal care without charge. But mostly the women are on their own to struggle as the pregnancy advances. When they go into labor, a stark choice confronts them: Give birth on the dirty floor of a squalid bush “clinic” hidden deep in the shantytown. Or take a chance, come out from hiding, and check into the hospital. 

The Birth Certificate Hurdle

The hospital is mandated to take in and treat anyone who has an emergency, including women about to give birth, regardless of financial condition. And they do. But the undocumented migrant woman dropped off at the emergency entrance by a jitney after her water has broken never has health insurance. So, after the birth, but prior to discharge, the hospital presents the new mother with a bill for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Of course, she cannot pay, but the debt remains outstanding. 

The hospital issues the new mother an “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” birth confirmation card. The mother must present that card to apply for a birth certificate through the TCI Registrar’s Office. But she must also provide other documents, including—crucially—a passport, though other forms of government ID are often accepted. 

Few of the mothers who arrived in TCI as migrants from Haiti have a passport or any documentation. Sometimes that leads them to buy a forged document through the thriving underground fake-ID market that preys on anyone without legal status. But government officials almost always spot the fakes which prevents them from issuing a birth certificate. Using a fraudulent document is a criminal offense that compounds the mother’s already precarious situation. 

Sometimes the mother will opt to pay someone with legal status to pretend to be the parent in order to secure the birth certificate. Again, government officials are alert to this kind of fraud and double check with the hospital. 

And then there is the ever-present fear factor that someone will call Immigration to send her and her baby back to Haiti. Although neither the hospital nor Registrar’s Office report their cases to Immigration, the deportation perception is there and that holds back mothers from taking the risk. And that leads to some women opting to give birth in the bush where there is no record of birth or any “proof” the child was born here or anywhere. For those children, the game is already up the minute they exit the womb.

Even in cases where the mother overcomes her fears, provides all the documents, and is granted a birth certificate, the child still has no status to remain in TCI. The birth certificate only allows the child to enroll in school.The child is still stateless even though it lists the mother’s nationality. Years, down the road, a TCI birth certificate might offer the child a slim chance to obtain TCI nationality but only if more hurdles can be cleared.

The Nationality Hitch

TCI government officials argue that no child in TCI is stateless because the child derives citizenship from the mother. So, from the government perspective, if the mother is Haitian, the child is Haitian. However, the law rendering nationality does not work that way. 

A mother or father of a child may theoretically pass on their nationality, but only if they take steps to register the child with their country of citizenship at an embassy or consulate or through the government department in the home country. Only national officials with authority can actually issue a passport or some certificate that certifies nationality. 

(For countries that offer birthright citizenship, a child can quickly acquire full citizenship status in the country. The US—for now, Canada, and most countries in the Americas fall into this category. Neither TCI nor UK, however, have birthright citizenship.) 

In contrast to children born in TCI to migrant parents without status, the children born here to parents with legal status, such as a work permit, typically register the children as citizens of their home country soon after birth. And from there they can be issued a passport confirming their nationality. Crucially, children of parents with legal status are added to the work permit or other status card as a family member. In that way the children are allowed to be in TCI as long as a parent holds legal permit to be here (up to the age of 18). 

Of course, the children of migrants here with no status have no way to provide their child with any similar permission to be in TCI. At first, their children grow up unaware of any difference. At times they may interact with other kids their age who do have legal status. It might be a soccer match or a birthday party that, for an hour or so, suspends and blurs the divide between their two worlds. But soon enough, harsh reality intrudes. The stateless children learn their place, as they are set apart in most fundamental, discriminatory, and sorrowful way from other kids born here to foreign parents, as well as TCI citizens. 

The one possible pathway for a child without a nationality to gain status in TCI is to apply for a British Overseas Territory Citizenship (BOTC). The Department of Citizenship and Naturalization in the Ministry of Home Affairs processes BOTC applications using guidance set forth in the British Nationality Act of 1981. But the BOTC procedure for children whose parents do not have legal status (through Section 15(4)) imposes its own severe and stringent requirement: The child must have lived in TCI for 10 years to be eligible to submit an application. 

In addition, a parent must supply a birth certificate, medical records, and letters showing the child has attended schools. A parent must also provide evidence of their own nationality, such as a passport or government ID. And the parent must once more set aside the fear that all the information provided on the application will not be used to find and deport them during the process. 

In short, the child in this situation is left to live in limbo for a full decade with no nationality or right to be here before having even a chance at BOTC status. During that decade, they too may be subject to deportation when Immigration discovers the undocumented mother. When that happens, a mother will sometimes make an agonizing choice and deny that the child in the house is hers. 

The mother reasons that her child, even with no status, is better off staying in TCI than going with her to Haiti, a country where the child has never been. In such cases, Social Services is often called in to place the child with foster parents who are paid to give care. Meanwhile, the mother deported back to Haiti has little chance of seeing her child for years. 

In the rare instances when the child manages to meet all the conditions for BOTC status and granted a certificate, that status only applies to the child. Should the mother be detained by Immigration, she would again be forced to make the same choice between taking the child with her back to her home country or leaving the child in TCI.

Can this heart-wrenching problem be fixed? It can. UN Conventions protecting the rights of the stateless, particularly with regard to children, and the TCI Constitution itself offer a remedy. But that will probably require an undocumented parent of a stateless child to come forward and file suit against the government at the risk of being deported.

Securing Rights

The stateless children (and adults), do in fact have well-defined human rights, including the right to a nationality. These rights are set forth by UN Declarations, Conventions, Protocols, and Covenants adopted over the past 75 years. Moreover, the TCI Constitution itself also offers many human rights protections that can be applied to convey status to those who have none.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Gutierrez, succinctly articulated the scope of the problem that in many ways mirrors the situation experienced by stateless children in TCI:

“Destitution, detention, lack of access to health care or education, the impossibility of marrying a loved one or registering the birth of a child. These are just some of the many problems faced by stateless people around the world, especially when their existence is ignored and their basic human rights are denied.”

It is worth a brief review of the UN instruments designed to protect stateless children from a bleak life described by UN High Commissioner Gutierrez. These UN protections are not mere aspirational goals but treaties which obligate contracting nations (aka signatory countries) to follow and implement through domestic law, including the granting of nationality. Indeed, the UK ratified the UN instruments, in whole or in part, and extended the application to the British Overseas Territories, including TCI.

• The UN 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons which provides the basic framework for the protection of stateless persons. It obligates the signatory nations to facilitate assimilation and naturalization of stateless persons who fall under the definition, “not considered a national by any state under operation of its law.”

• The 1961 Convention Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness which requires signatory countries to take additional steps to actively reduce statelessness in their territories. Article 1 states, “A Contracting State shall grant its nationality to a person born in its territory who would otherwise be stateless.”

• The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which further strengthens both the 1954 and 1961 UN Conventions to end statelessness as it applies to children. Article 7(2) of the CRC mandates specific acts to ensure that every child has a nationality, including requiring that “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth…to acquire a nationality.”  

The TCI Constitution itself aligns with UN international and UK domestic law and, through its provisions, can be cited as authority for giving TCI nationality to the stateless. Notably, the TCI Constitution extends protections to all persons without distinction. These constitutional protections explicitly entitle all persons to a fair hearing, equality before the law, free movement without arbitrary expulsion, an education for children, and not be subjected to inhuman treatment. 

Section 16 of the TCI Constitution in particular states that “no person shall be treated in a discriminatory manner by any person acting by virtue of any law in the performance of the functions of any public office or any public authority.” Under the TCI Constitution, discriminatory means “affording different treatment to different persons attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions such as by …national or social origin,…association with a national minority,…birth or other status…”

The key word here is “discriminatory,” and that applies to all persons regardless of status. By prohibiting discrimination based on birth or other status per Section 16, the Constitution makes plain that children without status or nationality should not be treated differently than anyone with status or nationality. 

The Way Forward

In sum, the various TCI Constitutional protections, taken together or separately, obligates the country to grant stateless children born in TCI the same rights as everyone else—including TCI nationality when they have no other citizenship. 

That obligation to “regularize” the stateless through the TCI Constitution, as well as UN international law, has yet to be tested in TCI courts. Any suit brought on behalf of one or more stateless litigants would certainly cite the long 10 year period for waiting for a chance to be put on a path for nationality. Nobody, especially a child, should be left to linger like this. 

The complex documentation requirements would also likely be argued as overly burdensome because they effectively hinder successful applications. Before any case can be brought, however, an undocumented parent would have to feel confident that filing a suit on behalf of their child would not trigger a deportation response from Immigration. That prospect may be the biggest hurdle. 

But it should not be necessary to wait for a litigant with a stateless child to ask the court to enforce a basic human right. Laws and regulations can be rewritten by TCI’s House of Assembly to bring the country in line with its Constitution as well as international obligations. 

The bureaucratic structure to process claims already exists in TCI to quickly determine statelessness and to grant of nationality for children born here without encumbrances. And any process should ensure that no parent need be afraid to register their child out of fear of being deported.

What other choice is there? To continue to ignore the stateless children who will grow into adulthood with no chance to participate in society? To relegate these children to the squalor of back alleys—vulnerable, exploited, and ever-fearful of being discovered? To deny them the most basic rights, an education, health care, and legal status to be here simply because they had the misfortune of being born in TCI to a mother who arrived without the proper papers? 

What we do or don’t do as a society to bring the stateless children out of the shadows will be a reflection of our own principles and commitment to human rights. In this case, the laws are clear, as is the moral imperative. 

Ben Stubenberg is a Caribbean writer living in TCI. His articles and commentaries about TCI, Haiti, and other islands can be found on his website benstubenberg.com.