A defeat for President Bush in the US Supreme Court is being regarded as welcome news for the Caribbean.

The Court ruled that non-American citizens who are legal residents in the United States cannot face mandatory deportation orders, if they’re found guilty of a single case of drugs possession.

More than 5,000 Caribbean nationals were deported from the US over the past year alone.

Jayashri Srikantiah the Director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at Stanford University in California says that the Bush Administration had taken an unduly punitive stance on the drugs issue:

Harsh

“Each of the people who are facing immigration consequences have already served their time or whatever punishment for their crime.

We have to recognise that drug possession convictions happen in a wide range of circumstances.”

She told BBC Caribbean that, “because of the nature of drug possession and the nature of drug use, and the fact in many cases it’s a disease, the immigration consequences seem particularly harsh.”

The basis of the US Supreme Court ruling was that while drug possession may be a felony in the State it’s committed in, it’s only a misdemeanour - a lesser offence - in most cases under Federal law.

Many Caribbean countries have challenged US, and other countries’ policies of deporting convicted criminals with ties to the region, back to the Caribbean, especially in cases where they’ve spent most of their lives abroad.

Some countries say they are struggling to put in place programs to assimilate them into Caribbean society and divert them away from criminal activities.