BARBADOS NATION – With Barbados putting the curbs on illegal immigrants, Guyanese here are increasingly looking to make the best of their own country’s “remigration” offer.

Guyana’s honorary consul Norman Faria made this disclosure yesterday, against the backdrop of Guyanese Press reports alleging exploitation of migrant workers, roundups and deportations, and the freezing of renewal or issuing of work permits.

Faria said “quite a few” Guyanese were asking for their government’s return package.

He added the feedback he was getting was that more than a usual number of Guyanese had decided to return home.

“Some of these are on work permits, [people] whose work projects have been on hold. A lot of the questions have to do with whether they fit into the time-frame as announced by the Barbadian Prime Minister.”

Prime Minister David Thompson recently announced an amnesty for Guyanese and other CARICOM nationals who have been living here (Barbados) illegally to get their status in order. But the offer pertains only to people living here for eight years, prior to the end of December 2005.

Meantime, two newspapers in Guyana – Stabroek News and the Guyana Chronicle – have noted demands Guyanese are making of their government to improve conditions in the South American nation.

The Stabroek News quoted one woman who had worked at a Barbados hotel which cut staff as saying: “We government got to step up and have less talk and more work.”

The Chronicle said reports coming out of Barbados indicated that Guyanese “are already beginning to feel the squeeze, even among those whose documentation, in terms of residency, [is] up to par”.

Stabroek News went further, saying that many of the Guyanese it had interviewed “recounted hearing of small raids by the Immigration Department on those persons who are more easily identified as Guyanese”.