Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 11, 2016 News
He paid the price for a life of violence in the United States. But 43-year-old Nicholas Craig believes that he is being made to pay all over again in his homeland for being a deportee.
Craig, known as ‘Yankee’, says it’s been nine years since he was shipped back to Guyana after a three-year stint in a USA penitentiary. According to Craig, he’s trying to steer free of crime while taking care of his two-year-old daughter. But his ‘Yankee’ accent, he says, identifies him as a deportee and people are reluctant to hire him.
Craig says he left Guyana with his family when he was just six years old. The family lived in a section of New York. But Craig confessed to hanging with the wrong crowd, and was often in fights. Eventually, he was charged with third degree assault and was jailed for three years. After his release, he was ordered deported. According to Craig, deportation may have saved his life.
“I think it was best that I was sent home, since many of my friends were dying.”
According to Craig, at the time, he had “a nice piece of money’. But he claimed that friends of one of his relatives found out and tried to rob him. He decided to go to Trinidad, staying there for two years. Craig said that he returned to Guyana to render financial assistance to a relative. When he tried to return to Trinidad, the authorities told him that he had overstayed his time and sent him back.
According to Craig, he then bought a metal detector and began prospecting in the interior, but fell prey to robbers.
His challenges increased when his daughter was born, and he began seeking employment, including shipping and clerical work, with various establishments. Because he had his driver’s licence, he also sought employment with taxi services.
The deportee claims that everyone turned him down, once they heard his accent.
“As soon as they hear my accent they would say ‘Yankee’, we don’t have no job,” he said.
“It’s like discrimination. You go to them with all the papers they need and they tell you they need references.”
His situation worsened when his mother, who lives overseas and assisted him with money, became ill. At present, he is staying at a dilapidated house that is also occupied by a cousin.
But he’s thankful that he isn’t homeless like many of his fellow deportees.
“I am trying to get help. I don’t want to go back to the life I was living,”
The US authories reported that the United States deported some 104 Guyanese last year.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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