Minister of Immigration and National Insurance, the Hon. Alfred Sears informed Parliamentarians on Wednesday that thousands of people are seeking Bahamian citizenship and that his ministry is employing technology to make the process more efficient.

Responding to questions asked by the Member of Parliament for Killarney, the Most Hon. Dr. Hubert Minnis Sears said, “we take this constitutional responsibility very seriously.  We’ve been processing those application very expeditiously.”

According to the Minister concerns about immigration applications not being online is being resolved. “Thousands of applications which were in the possession of the immigration department were put in storage and persons who had applied coming back to the immigration department find that their application was not online.  Some were asked to submit applications again.  It was a source of genuine frustration.  In February of last year we made a decision to establish a dedication group of immigration officers to do, everyday, scan all of those files which are in storage so that we would have the digital copies of those files and they can be migrated to the online system,” he said.