Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Fred Mitchell addressed issues of citizenship during his contribution to the 2025/2026 budget debate in the House Of Assembly on Wednesday.

Mitchell sought to provide clarity as to who is eligible to obtain a Bahamian passport. He told Parliamentarians, “post 1973 the question of who is a Bahamian citizen largely is determined by the female line. So depending on whether you’re married or not married, born inside or outside the country it can be extremely complicated to determine whether someone is a Bahamian citizen. I would ask the public, therefore, to be increasingly patient. We want to make sure that these documents actually represent the people who present themselves at the Passport Office and that a Bahamian passport goes to a Bahamian.”

The foreign affairs minister also addressed repatriation. He said, “not everyone born in The Bahamas is a Bahamian at birth. And so it is possible for you to be born here but not have citizenship of the country. And so these deportees who give and list their birth as The Bahamas if they do not have Bahamian citizenship it is our view that they do not have an entitlement to be here in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.”

Mitchell also clarified that individuals apprehended in the United States with no affiliation to The Bahamas that the United States intends to deport them are not entitled to return to this country. “This has been a point of disagreement with us. So they have to go back to their country of origin or their citizenship of origin which is most of the cases connected with that it’s probably Haiti,” he said.