I feel your pain, however, she is not stateless. She is not prohibited from travelling or doing anything that she would want to do. She can very easily get a Jamaican passport, seeing as her mother is Jamaican and be entitled to apply for residency on the grounds of you being her father and provider. Also another thought would be for her mother to sign her parental custody over to you and you have the right to the child.
This is not a major problem. The way you may have gone about it makes an issue. At the age of 18 she is still entitled to apply for citizenship of the Bahamas, but she did/does not have to be stuck for the period prior to her 18th birthday.

Her being stateless is not the point though. No one is claiming that she is stateless. The point is that she is born to a Bahamian man, yet is disabled from getting citizenship until the age of 18 and thus she is unable to receive the same opportunities as her peers.

You can't be a Christian. In any civilized country she would be a Bahamian Citizen.

Too bad you are not going through this. You would be squealing like a stuck pig.

Would someone please explain why so many people seem to be ok with denying the children of Bahamian men citizenship. This child's mother is a permanent resident of the Bahamas and has been here since she was a child herself. The child was born here and has grown up here. If her father were foreign and her mother Bahamian she would be straight. This is clearly discriminatory and wrong and THIS Is what the referendum seeks to correct. To say one solution is for the mother to sign over her parental rights is just downright heartless and mean. Do you realize that means the mother has to say she basically denounces and rejects her child? THAT is a humane solution? The homophobia and xenophobia being exhibited by so many is truly frightening and is what will continue to keep this country firmly entrenched in third world status. For anyone to think that voting yes is going to mean a huge influx of foreign men coming here to marry Bahamian women. Think again. Come here for what? Our incredible economic opportunities? Our thriving economy? Our social benefits? Come on. And actually the Dept of Immigration has a great procedure in place to ensure that marriages are genuine and they can weed out the convenience ones. And nothing in this referendum gives automatic citizenship to anyone. It only gives all legitimate spouses of Bahamian citizens the right to APPLY for citizenship. Does not mean they will get it.

The resulting significant influx to our country of thousands of foreign men who will marry Bahamian women to gain Bahamian citizenship and of thousands of foreign children already born to foreign women fathered by Bahamian men will have grave consequences for our country unless the majority of Bahamian voters vote "NO" on June 7th to all four of the proposed amendments to our constitution. The proposed changes to our constitution are much less about equal rights for Bahamian men and women and much more about creating a massive wave of foreigners coming to our shores at a time when our country's very limited resources can least accommodate them. The PLP government has failed miserably on its promise to grow the economy in order to provide private sector job opportunities; as a consequence unemployment and under employment are at all time record highs contrary to the government's meaningless misleading statistics.

Is that the reason why we have thousand of foreign women flocking to our country to marry Bahamian men. Come on people, make sure your reasoning is sound.

You fail to understand that Mudda_take_sic is talking about thousands of foreigners going all the way back to July 10th, 1973.

@Deddie I was thinking the same thing.

Very well said Brother! W.M.T.S.

So in essence you are saying, allow the wiser Bahamian men to marry whomever they wish, as they are able to ascertain that the foreign women that pursue them, do so from a sense of love for them. On the other hand, the Bahamian women who gave birth to these Bahamian men, raised these men, own businesses, are professors, doctors and lawyers to name a few are just too stupid, naïve, gullible and desperate for a man that they should be protected for their own good by being denied the rights that Bahamian men have. I feel so much better with that kind of thinking expressed repeatedly in print, in the media and in conversations.By the way my comments are facetious at best. This kind of thinking shows exactly why we need to end gender discrimination. Women suffer as well as children suffer in the long run. Yes, women and children who should be really protected by our men.

Stop being so silly. What I've been saying all along is that marriage to a Bahamian man or Bahamian woman should not automatically entitle any foreigner to Bahamian citizenship with voting rights. Right now our constitution foolishly allows a foreign woman married to a Bahamian man to automatically acquire Bahamian citizenship. This should be corrected by way of an amendment to our constitution as opposed to compounding the existing problem by giving the same foolish right to a foreign man who marries a Bahamian woman. No one should automatically be entitled to Bahamian status of any kind by marriage alone, period! A known adjudged aggressive pedophile who is a foreigner should not automatically obtain Bahamian citizenship or any other form of Bahamian status by virtue of marrying a Bahamian man or a Bahamian woman.

We are talking about a person who knows of no other country as home except The Bahamas, feels that she is Bahamian, her dad is Bahamian.
why on God's earth would we not want her to have her citizenship?

Instead we are telling her she is not one of us, she is a foreigner, she is different, she is not as good as the others that she grew up with.

What a bunch of small minded, scared, ignorant bigots.

I agree Economist as I have mentioned in prior posts that I personally have a step child who has a foreign mother. My husband, her father is a Bahamian but the child has never been considered one. These persons only know The Bahamas as home and did not enter this country illegally nor their forefathers. I am glad we are taking measures to address this moving forward.

Actually @ WMTS the fact that your comment was misconstrued by more than one person, shows that you clearly did not explain yourself. Now that you have either backpedalled or taken the time to elaborate, I can understand your point better although it is one not brought to the table during this referendum. Also keep your juvenile name calling to yourself as we are all adults on this site, and are entitled to our opinions and can express them freely, until a referendum is voted on saying we can't.. Thank you.

Right on DEDDIE. This bigotry in this Country has got to stop. It is one of the reasons why we have so much unemployment as this attitude permeates everything.

These Bahamians are no different from the white redneck bigots in the US who still hate Black people and feel they are better than Black people.

There has got to be more to the story. If she was born in the Bahamas and her birth certificate lists the father who is a Bahamian, she is a citizen of the Bahamas. She needs to higher a lawyer. How about comrad Fred Smith?

My stepdaughter has a foreign mother and has to apply for citizenship when she turns 18. My husband is a Bahamian. It is the way it is even though many Bahamian text books used to say if your father was a Bahamian so are you. They have since been edited.

oh oh !!! Here we go again. Another victim story. I wonder what's next...lol

You are correct because the Constitution says "if either of the parents is a Bahamian".

But the Government says if you are not married then how do they know you are the father.

Yet still, they will give the child citizenship if it born outside the country even if they are not married. Go figure

I am sure that upon seeing that her mother was not Bahamian, someone at the passport office or immigration put her on the wrong track of having to obtain a travel document. If obtaining a copy of the constitution was as easily available then, as it is now, he would have known better than to accept anything less than a passport for this child. By now, immigration should have an online tool to properly guide applicants toward the correct citizenship path based strictly on the many what if scenarios that apply to citizenship, and not leave it up to the bias and misinterpretation of front line employees.

In an election year, you can get citizenship in exchange for a vote and it doesn't mean you are suddenly allegiant to the country that gave it to you. Many use it as a means to an end (case in point, Loubey Georges). We are plagued with so many illegal immigration issue, we have trouble dealing with the persons who are here now, and yet we want to add three more classes of persons to the equation? We are opening a Pandora's box. Don't Do It. #killthebills #justvoteno!

amazing those who want to just see business as usual and the status quo maintained rather than having the country run properly. this is separate issue from immigration and won't have any impact on the business of Haitians and Bahamians loading their boats in northern Haiti for the one way cruise to the Bahamas.

If he had done the honourable thing and married that woman before the child was born this problem would not have existed.

Persons born in The Bahamas after 9th July 1973.
6.- Every person born in The Bahamas after 9th July 1973 shall be come a citizen of The Bahamas at the date of his birth if at that date **either of his parents** is a citizen of The Bahamas.

14.-(1) Any reference in this Chapter to the father of a person shall, in relation to any person born out of wedlock other than a person legitimated before 10th July 1973, be construed as a reference to the mother of that person.
(

14(1) relates more to a woman having a child, outside The Bahamas, to a foreign man in circumstances where they are not married.

This is where our **Constitution rewards a Bahamian woman for having a child out of wedlock** as it gives the child automatic Bahamian citizenship and **punishes a Bahamian woman for having a child in marriage as the child is considered a foreigner** and may apply at 18.

This would be corrected if we vote "yes" to Bill 1 so that a married Bahamian woman's child would also get automatic Bahamian Citizenship.

That Article 6/14 situation is a moral anomaly but a legal expediency ........... now we have DNA testing ..... and the father of this teen could legally adopt her and solve the problem ....... but throwing a "pity party" won't solve the problem .......... but many foreign women come here and believe that if they have a child for a Bahamian man, that their future will be brighter (wrong!!!)

If the parent is Bahamian and the parent's permanent residence is in the Bahamas, the children should automatically be Bahamian. The key would be the definition of permanent residence. If the parent lives in another country they should be entitled to "apply".

Why doesn't he adopt her? This bill will not help her anyway as it's not retroactive. Don't know the cost of an adoption, maybe that's a barrier.