MIGRANTS–says ex-Barbados PM
BARBADOS’ FORMER three-term Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, has thrashed the ‘false fear’ within the Caribbean Community that continues to impact against free movement of CARICOM migrants. “Nothing has more threatened to derail our regional integration movement”, said Arthur, “than conflict and controversy over the extent and effect of such limited labour mobility as has taken place….”
Quoting from an official CARICOM document in support of his contention against unjustified “extraordinary fears” that have held back the programme on intra-regional labouur mobility, Arthur noted: “A study conducted by the CARICOM Secretariat on ‘Migration and Free Movement’ has revealed that some 4,500 persons have moved under the (Community’s) regional skills regime.
“By comparison”, he added, “it has been revealed that between 2000 and 2010, some 85,000 work permits were issued by member states, of which 63,750 were issued to nationals of third (non-CARICOM) countries…”
In a word, declared Arthur who, as Prime Minister, had lead responsibility for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) project, “the main movers in CARICOM in the past decade have been non-CARICOM nationals who have benefitted disproportionately from the employment opportunities which our region has generated…”
Delivering at the time the feature address on Friday at the 50-50 Caribbean Conference on ‘Surveying the Past, Mapping the Future” at the UCCI/UWI Campus in Grand Cayman, the Barbadian leader challenged his representative regional audience to, “Pause for a moment to reflect on what would now be the region’s circumstances if even only half of those (employment) opportunities had been extended to Caribbean nationals…”
In the final analysis, he reasoned, to move towards a “more perfect union” in CARICOM, now in its 38th year, the member states “must give effect to the reality that full labour mobility is our best option for promoting and attaining regional development”
Such an approach, according to Arthur, will enable the regional integration movement to “contemplate the building of competitive enterprises by assuring them access to the full range of skills available to the region…
“It should make the development of education, health care facilities and affordable housing growth areas for most Caribbean societies. But above all”, he argued, “it will bring a uniquely Caribbean flavour to the development of the integration movement by resting the success on the movement on the availability and use of the most abundant and versatile resource available to the region—our people…”
According to Arthur, “most of the other options have been tried. It is, therefore, time to make Caribbean integration the lived experience without which it cannot succeed…”
Also speaking at the conference as one of the presenters was Sir Ronald Sanders, former ambassador for Antigua and Barbuda and a current business executive and social commentator.
Focusing on “Ilusion and Reality—Lessons from the Caribbean Experience”, Sanders warned that membership by three CARICOM countries (Antigua and Barbuda; St.Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica) of the Venezuelan-led Bolvarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), and the signal that two more might do so (Jamaica and St. Lucia), “suggests further fragmentation within the Community in the context of external relations….
“This”, he said, “can only result in the weakening of the organisation whose creation was founded to give strength in unison—if not in unity—to its individual member states…”
Sir Ronald also lamented that many Caribbean business people are “bedeviled every day by the continuing bureaucracy that delays, if not prohibits, the movement of their goods from one CARICOM country to another…
“Caribbean people also continue to face obstacles to the right of establishment, even when they qualify for freedom of movement in the categories identified in the Revised CARICOM Treaty”.