A New Montrose woman has been jailed for obtaining a St. Vincent and the Grenadines passport in the name of her deceased sister.
Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett handed down the sentences on Leolina Jack, 48, on Wednesday at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court.
The magistrate rejected the woman’s plea to be allowed to pay a fine, and jailed her for nine months on one of the charges and three months each on four others.
The sentences would run concurrently.
Jack pleaded guilty to four charges, the first being that on June 23, 2017, she went to the immigration office in Kingstown and falsely represented herself to Felicia Samuel, of Questelles, an immigration officer, to be Rebecca Neverson of Union Island and Campden Park.
Neverson, who is Jack’s sister, died in 1998.
Jack was also charged that on the same date, she gave Samuel, a person employed in the Public Service, to wit, the Immigration Department, a Form A application for a St. Vincent and the Grenadines passport and a birth certificate in the name of Rebecca Neverson, pretending to be Neverson, intending for Samuel to accept the document as belonging to Jack.
A third charge was that on July 17, 2017, Jack wilfully procured for herself a St. Vincent and the Grenadines national identification card in the name of Neverson by deception.
She was also charged on Sept. 4, 2017 that she falsely represented herself as the owner of a St. Vincent and the Grenadines passport in the name of Neverson.
In mitigation, Jack told the court that she accepted that what she did was wrong and asked that a fine be imposed.
However, the court had no such leniency on the woman, who was deported from Barbados.
She was jailed for nine months on the charge of presenting the documents to Samuel and three months each on all of the others.
The sentences will run concurrently.
She may not have been deported only from Barbados but, in the past, from America and/or Canada as well for illegally residing and working there and wanted a new passport to get back to one of these three countries.
Several people have told me that this is a common practice as is the practice of bastard children deported from these three countries and Trinidad who carry their mother’s name on their various documents acquiring their father’s name through legal means (no hard to do if the father agrees) and then getting new documents which they use to try to go back to those countries.
The new biometric id on passports and other documents will make these fraudulent practices more difficult.
The more fundamental question is why are so many people eager — no desperate — to leave our beloved homeland to look for work elsewhere when so many of our own people, most of them ULP supporters, keep saying that life is good here?
How did Politics came in this Scenario over an illegal and fraudulent activity! Didn’t the Person know that it’s wrong to do Such thing? I wish that we all can just express our thoughts on matters without dragging these Political Infusions into everything!Yes,many Persons want to go and get a better life somewhere but if we don’t do it the proper way there are consequences for our actions whether we are supporting a particular Political Party or not!
What was she trying to achieve?
She did achieve just what she set out to do and that is go to Jail, i do not see any other way that would of work out for her here
To help herself; to better her condition; to escape poverty; to seek a better way of life; to support her children.
How many ways do I have to say the obvious?
Ben what are you talking about Vince is a paradise where you can get breadfruit free ,catch the orca, hunt manicou an iguana, shoot people ,get free stuff during election time, catch tri tri. This is a real heaven on earth, won’t you agree?