A pioneering group of ten CARICOM nationals have become the first to secure indefinite stay and employment rights in Barbados, just days after the island enacted its historic full free movement regime, said Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong on Tuesday.
The ten nationals of Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, who claimed their right to live and work in Barbados, are among 99 residents of the three participating countries who arrived last Wednesday, the first day of the historic freedom of movement initiative.
Vincentians are the majority of the new immigrants, statistics have revealed.
When the arrangement went into effect, residents of St Vincent and the Grenadines who arrived in Barbados more than tripled those from Dominica and Belize combined.
Immigration authorities put the number of Vincentians arriving on the first day at 75, with 17 from Dominica, and seven Belizeans.
On the following day, most of those Caribbean citizens eligible to benefit from indefinite stay here were again from St Vincent and the Grenadines — 35 compared with a mere nine from Dominica.
No one from Belize came on that occasion, according to immigration data.
“Not all may be exercising right [to work]… or may be living here,” acting Chief Immigration Officer Janice Robinson told Barbados TODAY.
But the new arrivals will not be able to vote in an election here until they have resided in the country for at least three years, as required by law for Commonwealth migrants, Ambassador Comissiong stressed.
He said that the first week of the historic initiative saw a total of ten nationals from Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines being accorded “indefinite stay status” in Barbados, going on to claim their right to reside indefinitely and work by registering with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.
“The Ministry of Labour and Social Security will now process those registrations and, all things being equal, will issue a ‘Full Free Movement Certificate’ to each national. And so, we can say that this pioneering Full Free Movement venture is well on its way.”
“The four pioneering CARICOM member states… can also take great pride in the fact that they have made a critical breakthrough in the decades-long process of constructing our all-important CARICOM Single Market and Economy.
“It has long been acknowledged that if our small Caribbean nations and companies are to compete effectively in an increasingly hostile and competitive global marketplace, we will have to construct a CSME that permits us to treat our several national economies as ‘one single domestic space’, and to more easily and effectively bring together and make the best use of our combined resources.”
CARICOM regimes have been put in place to facilitate the movement of business, capital, and some categories of skills across the rest of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
“Now, with this new four-nation Full Free Movement Regime, we are taking the movement of CARICOM citizens beyond the restrictions imposed by stipulated skill categories to a full freedom for all our citizens,” Ambassador Comissiong asserted.
He explained that the only exceptions to, and exclusions from, the new regime will be people who “are a threat to national security and/or to public health”, and those who “are likely to become a charge on the public purse”.
The CARICOM envoy contended that the free movement regime is intended for people who have opted to move for good and wholesome reasons — to pursue new career and life opportunities, and to make a constructive contribution to their new host society.
He also addressed the question of whether Vincentian, Dominican, and Belizean nationals who become residents in Barbados will be able to vote in national elections.
“Well, the simple answer is that they, like all other persons who migrate to Barbados, will have to earn and qualify for the right to vote under the existing legal framework — namely, the Representation of the People Act, Chapter 12 of the Laws of Barbados,” Comissiong explained.
“And since nationals of St Vincent, Dominica, and Belize are all Commonwealth citizens, it means that their right to vote will be governed by Section 7 (1) (b) of the act.”
That section of the law states: Subject to this Act and any enactment imposing any disqualification for registration as an elector, a person is qualified to be registered as an elector for a constituency if, on the qualifying date, he (b) is a Commonwealth citizen (other than a citizen of Barbados) who has resided in Barbados for a period of at least three years immediately before the qualifying date.
“Section 2 of the act explains that the ‘qualifying date’ means the date on which the person applies to be registered as an elector,” Ambassador Comissiong advised.
“So there is a minimum three-year residence requirement before any such incoming national can qualify to become an elector or voter.”
Those first ten incoming nationals would therefore have to undergo three years of residence in Barbados before they could apply to the Electoral and Boundaries Commission to be placed on the voters’ list.
“They would then be placed on our national Electoral List, a list that contained some 264 000 names as recently as 2022,” Ambassador Comissiong said.
He urged Barbadians not to allow “little titillating partisan discourses” about voting to distract them from the core fundamental reason why “we need such a Full Free Movement Regime.”
He added: “The stark reality is that all of our CARICOM member states are losing far too many of our most valuable and productive citizens to outward migration to metropolitan countries in North America and Europe. This is the proverbial ‘brain drain’.”
Barbados is afflicted by “very serious” interlocking problems, he suggested: the demographic profile of a developed country — a very low birth rate; an increasingly ageing population; and not a large enough proportion of the population in the relatively young, economically active age range to sustain the growing number of retirees.
The majority of Barbadian emigrants are people with a tertiary level education, he noted, contributing to the proverbial “brain drain” as the island loses the educated and skilled people it most needs for its national development.
Ambassador Comissiong reasoned that if citizens are serious about combating these “crucial” developmental issues, they have to take steps urgently to make life in the Caribbean Community so attractive and rewarding for the youth — especially the most educated and skilled youth — that they opt to remain in the region and contribute to its development.
“However, as attractive and helpful as the Full Free Movement Regime may prove to be for our young people, we cannot stop there,” he added. “We now have to make further use of our creative intellect and come up with other complementary initiatives to make our Caribbean region even more attractive to our youth.
“Let us do the things that are necessary to make our Barbadian youth feel that Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean community is truly their ‘home’ — and that it is a ‘home’ that is second to none in terms of its attractiveness and its rewards for productive work.”
He appealed to Barbadians to give the youth a Caribbean community in which they are free to “stretch themselves” and to “roam” without undue obstacle or hindrance in search of career and life opportunities.
“Ultimately, this is what our Caribbean integration movement is all about,” the CARICOM ambassador concluded.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
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