It took a very long time.
But, the 'it' happened.
Suddenly, gone are the days when 'living in denial', as well as the 'ostrich-policy' were the 'modus-operandi' for the Government of the 'Friendly Island'.
The Brooks Tower Accord (BTA)- 'bubble' has been 'pricked', according to the editorial (Closure needed) of the Daily Herald of Saturday, August 13, 2011.
After having fooled immigrants for years and after having 'set them up' and 'played them out' against the local, native St. Martiners for political reasons, the 'chickens are coming home to roost'.
Many immigrants now, are realizing, that just like the natives, they too have been betrayed by Government !
And again, according to the Daily Herald, 'Government has to deal with a major throbbing headache called "illegal residents" and it seems clueless about the appropriate remedy'.
Not the words of Leopold JAMES.
Indeed, the 'Friendly Island', now finds itself confronting a 'conundrum' of epic proportions.
We said it before, and care to repeat it again.
Not structurally resolving this problem can result in a 'violent social fall out'.
And for the record.
Simply, giving all the thousands of illegal immigrants on the island amnesty, or any other form of 'regularization' is really a 'non-starter', because the native and legal residents will not accept that anymore....
Deporting them, apart from being a logistical and extremely expensive 'nightmare', has the real potential of immigrants responding with aggression.....
Doing nothing is no option either, since the laws of the land must be upheld one way or the other in order to prevent anarchy....
So, there we are now.
After years of total denial, we are confronting a seemingly 'mission impossible', in 'no man's land', legally speaking, where we can not stay for any extended period of time.
It is against this backdrop, that we were contacted recently by a 'delegation' representing illegal immigrants.
We were made very clear that many illegal immigrants want to stay on the island.
However, they too realize that any form of amnesty by Government, could result in a social backlash against them from the local population.
At the same time, there is a lot of bitterness among them, because they have come to realize that Government alone indeed can not help them and is not to be trusted, as the failure of the BTA now has proven to them.
More than ever, they now realize, that there will never be any sustainable solution, if the St. Martin people are not meaningfully involved in such.
Because, they have heard of our 'MARSHALL PLAN' and its 'win-win' point of departure, they indicated they would be more than willing to support this concept and to promote it within the immigrant society at large.
Our response was as follows.
We are certainly willing to work along with them and with all other interested parties in making our contribution towards creating a harmonious relationship between all relevant stakeholders, whereby in principle immigrant needs to be deported, perse.
However, in order to give Government a last, fair chance to come up with a solution that is mutually acceptable for all involved, we will wait until the end of August before taking a decision of going to the 'next level'.
If by September 1, 2011, Government still seems 'clueless', we will once again make ourselves available to work out the details of our 'MARSHALL PLAN'.
God forbid, that Government at that point in time still does not co-operate.
Then, we will have no other choice then to leave it up to society at large to draw its own conclusions.
Leopold JAMES